Field Recording as a “Drawing Practice”

I don’t usually publish my field recordings or release them as albums (although there are exceptions to this). I don’t make field recordings in order to capture the sound of an environment but as a framework for interaction and co-creation with that environment or ecosystem.

The choice to press record — even deciding not to press record — is an interaction that has an effect both on the environment and the recordist themself. These recordings are experiential artifacts, documents arising from an encounter, rather than materials or objects in their own right separated from the web of contexts that make them possible or thru which we make them meaningful.

Field recording is something that I do to generate ideas and experiences, in the same way that painters have a drawing practice. Sometimes, it brings me to make sound works, however, it has also brought me to other strange places.

There’s a lot of talk about “immersive experiences” in art but we are already immersed. When you press play on one of these recordings, I wonder from where you are listening with my listening, having your own encounter, in another place or time. What does it mean for these encounters to overlap?

What do you hear?

What do you not hear?

Isle of Iona, Scotland

Historic Lowes Theater, Jersey City, NJ

Johannesburg, South Africa

Limpopo, South Africa

Yellowstone National Park, USA

Manaus, Brazil

Palestine

Tensaw River Delta, Alabama