Ethernet Orchestra

Interesting colloquium and public lecture hosted by the Transforming Cultures Research Centre, University Technology, Sydney. The event is on Wednesday 9 December 2009.

Why, how, to/by whom and where does listening
take place in your research practice?

Participant statements:

Roger Mills – Improvised Listening: The Role of Listening in Online Networked Improvisation.

Exploring improvisation as a medium for remote cross cultural musical collaboration 
not only necessitates, as Roland Barthes famously stated, hearing as “a physiological
 phenomenon” but “listening as a psychological act” (Barthes, 1976). This idea 
resonates with collaborations in Internet audio platforms, in that signifiers present in 
a ‘local’ face to face jam session are not available to remote networked musicians.
 Ultimately this requires them to engage in what Pauline Oliveros describes as,
’inclusive listening’ where “many places at once are treated as one rather than many.”
(LaBelle, 2006). Collaborators can also face issues of unfamiliar, dislocated listening, 
augmented by their own culturally tinted hearing.

This kind of ‘inclusive listening’ takes place as multiple threads, “lending significance 
to the relational and associative connections found between the many” (LaBelle,
2006). Such threads are the technological transportation and receiving of sound as 
binary code in cyberspace, the ‘psychological act’ of the interpretation of that sound
and the creative musical interaction with it.

Commonly, improvisation in online audio platforms finds the musician  “listening for
the purpose of focusing on the qualities of the sound itself (e.g., pitch, timbre) 
independent of its source or meaning.” (Chion, 1994). This is not to say that source
or meaning are irrelevant, only that one is informed of these by rudiments such as
 pitch and timbre, to which texture could also be added. Indeed this interest in
 remote networked improvisation, stems from the hypothesis, that it is through
 exploring these rudiments that new hybrids in improvisation can occur.

References
Barthes, R, (1985) The Responsibility of Forms, trans. Richard Howard, Hill and Wang.
New York, p. 246.
LaBelle, B, (2006) Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. Continuum, New York,
p.159.
Chion, M, (1994) Audio-Vision:Sound on Screen, trans. Claudia Gorbman. Columbia
University Press. New York, p. 223.

Ian Andrews
Traditionally listening, as a mode of revealing, has occupied a secondary position in relation to sight. However, to foreground listening as a research practice requires more than simply inverting the hierarchy or restoring listening to the privileged position occupied by seeing. I’m interested in audio practices that go beyond the ‘sonic research’ paradigm that has become the staple of a great deal of aesthetic and
positivist theory and practice. Rather, I see the practice of listening as being constituted, at the very site of (its) experience, by repetition and language. In my research practice I’m interested in how meaning occurs and is mediated through the act of listening, and how listening is linguistically and socially constituted.
Such an approach resists privileging a ‘pure’ listening practice (acousmatic, ‘deep listening’). I like to work in between mediums and modalities: an approach that could be called ‘intermedial’ (sound–image, sound-text relations).

The central problem of all practice based research, as I see it, is the relation between practice and the production of universally valid knowledge—since being valid for everyone is the condition of objective knowledge within the Western tradition, and, in a certain way, such validity is the precondition by which there can be any relation to an other in general. However, it is possible to conceive of the process of knowledge production in terms of a double movement: not only as the assimilation of the unknown other to the known and familiar, but inversely, as the unsettling transformation of the previously familiar and self-evident.

Sarah Barns
My listening practice constitutes a way of researching the historical and cultural geographies of the city.  I work with broadcast archives that capture fragmentary moments in the history of a location,  ‘listening in’ to these archival soundmarks in- situ. This practice seeks to establish a way of interacting with a historical built environment that enables an auditory experience of the past to be experienced as the present – as it was originally recorded – rather than as a recollection or memory. This practice is positioned as an alternative methodology through which to explore the sedimented, invisible layers of the real time city not just as a visual or informational environment but as an experiential practice that allows for greater
attentiveness to the historically-constituted nature of urban space.

The practice has established new media platforms through which to access audio- visual archives. This includes the ABC’s Sydney Sidetracks (http://www.abc.net.au/sidetracks) in which I located audio samples of Sydney’s history using the collections of the ABC’s Television and Radio Archives, and the National Film and Sound Archive Collection, along with extensive video and image

Listening in/as research: Practices, Localities and Communities with SARAI/ANKUR ECR/PG & resources sourced from the Powerhouse Museum, the State Library of NSW and  the City of Sydney. The listening practice constitutes a practice-based component of my doctoral thesis titled The Death and Life of the Real Time City, to be submitted in early 2010. Further information and presentations relating to this work can be accessed at http://sitesandsounds.net.au

Tripta Chandola
Tripta Chandola is currently a doctoral candidate at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. Her PhD topic is, The Noisy City: In-between Sound and Silence, and through my doctorate research I aim to understand the dynamics between the acoustic and physical space(s) in the city and the manner in which each influences the trajectories drawn into these spaces. Also, I am interested in exploring the relations between aurality and modernity and the manner in which it is posed vis-à-vis visuality and modernity.

This thesis highlights sound – its production, performances, and articulations – as an act, which has social, cultural, and political implications and manifestations. ‘Noise’ can be understood as a political construct to identify Others – and both slum dwellers and middle-classes identify different sonic practices as noise to situate the Other sonically. It is in this context that this thesis frames the position of Listener and Hearer, which corresponds to their social-political positions. These positions can be, and are resisted and circumvented through sonic practices. For instance, amplification tactics in Govindpuri slums which are understood as ‘uncultured, callous activities to just create more noise’, by middle class neighbours, serve definite purposes to shape and navigate the space through its soundscapes whilst asserting a presence otherwise denied. They allow the residents to define their sonic territories and scope of sonic performances; they are significant to exert one’s position, territory, and identity; and they are very important in subverting hierarchies. The residents of Govindpuri slums have to negotiate many social, cultural, moral, and political prejudices in their everyday lives. Their identity is constantly under scrutiny and threat. However, the sonic cultures and practices in Govindpuri slums allow its residents to exert a definite sonic presence which the middle class has to hear. The articulation of noise and silence is an act manifesting, referencing and resisting social, cultural, and political power and hierarchies.

Kay Donovan
In my research practice, listening takes place between the filmmaker and the participant or subject of the documentary inquiry at various stages during the production process. It occurs in early research conversations; it occurs during the filming in situations of varying formality depending on the type of documentary being made and it occurs during post-production when the filmmaker / editor dissect and
reshape the spoken words in a disconnected environment. At each of these stages, the filmmaker is engaged in constructing a relationship with the participant / subject even though the participant/subject may no longer be physically present or engaged with the process.

My research is in investigating the nature of this relationship and the ethical considerations that it raises. I think of listening as taking place at the site of this developing relationship and one feature of my research has been to identify ways that the filmmaker can continue to engage with the participant / subject through the whole of the filmmaking process, creating opportunities for consultation and collaboration that do not demand that the participants become filmmakers themselves.

Katie Hepworth
The listening in and for my research began in March 2008, when I arrived in Milan during the lead-up to the Italian national elections that saw Berlusconi return to power, and it continued and still continues long after the end of the fieldwork period and the passing of the security legislation first proposed as part of that election campaign. An intense intimate period of ‘deep hanging out’ (Clifford 1997) framed as three micro-geographic studies, the research focused on three carefully defined ‘out- of-place’ populations undocumented, live-in Latin American carers, Romanian Rom living in unlawful shanty settlements and undocumented Senegalese street vendors – chosen for their high visibility in the national political and media discourse. As migrants, their presence calls into question the smoothness of the national space, exposing the volatility of urban imaginaries and identities (Chambers 2008) and assumptions of an easy relationship between city, state and individual. The listening occurred in unexpected ways. Prior to my arrival in Italy the scope and places of listening was carefully framed, guided by ethics reports and clearance, through interview guides and mapping studies (Ranade 2007) to concentrate only on what would later be used in the research. What was unexpected was that for those that decided to talk, what was desired was the kind of intimacy that only occurs when you know the person will disappear, or at least remain unconnected and partitioned off from your life. The anonymity of the space set aside for listening invites disclosure from these people that experience the ambivalence of community. Migrating alone they depend on it for support, and as such are hyper aware of its potential for judgment and subsequent exclusion. So now, what to do with that listening that took place not for the research but around it. Before. After. And still.

Ben Ho
My research examines how the conjunction of catastrophe and everyday life is
witnessed in blogs that document civilian experiences of war. What happens when a
media form with numerous affordances for focusing on domestic minutiae operates
in situations of geopolitical emergency within a global network of information? In an
ethical sense, who speaks in situations of war, and who listens, and how? I look at
how such blogs negotiate problematics of witnessing and trauma: the impossible
imperative to represent the ultimate unrepresentability of catastrophe, and the
thorny ways that such accounts can be reframed in wider networks of circulation.
For example, the framing of everyday voices as belonging to authentic informants 
might sometimes reinforce an established system of geopolitical identity and
attention, under which “we” might try to totalise our surveillance and apportioning
Listening in/as research: Practices, Localities and Communities with
 SARAI/ANKUR ECR/PG
(!
of the world, in a kind of Orientalist elephantiasis of intelligence-gathering.

As a way through these conundrums, I see my own listening process as a process of
 attunement to certain sensibilities about catastrophe, which emerge not from any
particular audible statements, but from how statements and silences are collectively
arranged: architectures of mood. My process is a kind of repetitive traumatic
 mimesis, recursively attempting to mimic some of the processes occurring in my
objects of study. For me this mimetic attunement to the inaudible frequencies of
traumatic experience is nothing less than a different form of solidarity: a radical kind
of “sympathy” — not the patronising, narcissistic kind, but more in tune with the
physical phenomenon of “sympathetic vibration”, in which different objects, if they’re
close enough and oriented in a particular way, begin to resonate at the same
frequency.

Aneta Podkalicka
My work on the processes of ‘listening as a cultural work’ is grounded in an ongoing
ethnography of Melbourne-based youth media project called YouthWorx Media
 (YWX) for ‘youth at risk’. As part of my involvement in CRN Listening workshops in
2009, I investigated the social/cultural practices of learning to listen enabled by radio
training and production intended as transformative strategies for disadvantaged 
young people. These included a reflexive ‘listening to oneself’; ‘collaborative listening
to others’; and the empowering and responsibilising process of ‘being listened to’. I
have also used listening research (e.g. the emphasis on the notion of ‘the right to be
understood’ (Husband, 2009)) within the broader context of communication/ human
rights discourse and participatory culture framework to explore how we might
better understand such a right and how it can be translated into practice? Again, I 
have drawn on empirical material from our ethnographic research into YWX, a
partnership between The Salvation Army, NMIT, SYN Media, and Centre of
Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (via Swinburne’s Institute for Social
Research), focusing on the importance of the institutional framework and
interpersonal relationships underpinned by values of human dignity and ‘listening and
understanding’ in facilitating learning experience for ‘youth at risk’. Findings from the
study of YWX so far confirm that access to media tools and expertise
(= ‘voice/individual expression’) is not enough to draw and retain disadvantaged
young people in youth media organisations. Instead a genuine human interaction and
supportive nurturing ‘community of practice’ are essential for projects with social
inclusion agenda.

Jian Xu PhD candidate, Journalism and Media Research Center, UNSW
.
My research aims to study the alternative journalistic practices in China’s
cyberspace. Internet as the most important alternative media in China plays a very
important role in the formation of civil society. Internet helps the marginalized and
oppressed groups make voices, form public debate, establish virtual community and
facilitate popular protest. As an alternative media, which is different from the state-
controlled mainstream media, Internet brings the light of democracy to non-liberal
democratic China. This project aims to discuss the co-evolutionary relations
between Internet and state, market and civil society. It will systematically map the
alternative journalistic practices in China’s cyberspace on the bases of the author’s
participatory fieldwork over representative Internet events and updating Internet
cultures. It aims to propose a multi-perspective model of understanding alternative
Internet and alternative journalism in China’s cyberspace.

Internet as an alternative media in China provides a comparatively free space for the
ordinary people to form debates, discuss problems and express opinions. In this way,
the oppressed and marginalized voices have the opportunity to be heard. ‘To be
listened’ is a basic need and a fundamental human right for human beings. ‘To listen
to ’ the powerless and the oppressed is the obligation of any responsible mainstream
media and government.  The negotiation between ‘listening’ and ‘being listened’ will
reach a mutual understanding and harmonize the relations between the state and the
society. In this project, Internet plays as an important arena for the oppressed
groups to struggle for the double-way ‘listening’. In one part of my research, I will
study the discussions and debates on BBS (Bulletin Board System) over legal injustice
Listening in/as research: Practices, Localities and Communities with
SARAI/ANKUR ECR/PG
*+!
issues and unfair treatments to see how the victims and their supporters struggle for
the ‘being listened’ rights and express their own voices. As the online public opinion
becomes strong enough to catch the attention of the mainstream media and
motivate its investigation report, the pressures from public opinion force the
government to listen to and solve these unjust and unfair issues.

Facilitators:
Prabhat Kumar Jha
- Cybermohalla Project
 ANKUR/SARAI
Prahbat is Programme Coordinator at ANKUR: Society for Alternatives in Education
for the past 15 years. Prabhat’s work has involved initiating learning spaces &
experimental media labs in different working class neighbourhoods in Delhi, including
the Cybermohalla, and bringing the knowledge that emerges in this process into
circulation within a wider dialogue and engaging with discourses around pedagogy,
education and curriculum development in local, national and international contexts.

Sophea Lerner University of Technology, Sydney / CSDS-Sarai.
Sophea’s installation/performance/broadcast practice explores a range of
participatory and distributed collaborative modes and ensemble production
processes. She combines personal, mechanical, edible, spatial, digital and telephonic
networks into dynamic, flexible and open hybrid radio architectures. As a live
performer she plays radios and works with gesture responsive sensors, improvised
digital instruments, telephones and network spaces as well as live mixing and
diffusion in concerts and radio broadcasts. She has had numerous radiophonic compositions commissioned and broadcast by
ABC Radio Arts and was recipient of the 1998 Australia Council New Media
Arts/ABC Radio Arts fellowship during which she produced The Glass Bell. In 2005
she directed open-content open-format radio FM station Ääniradio and
particle/wave workshop-festival of hybrid radio practices in Helsinki. In recent years
her work includes a number of projects instigated as a key member of the
foodradio_network such as global radio dinner where_are_we_eating? &  Grilli
Radio, Helsinki 2004 and Snack City, New Delhi 2007.

Sophea studied dance and group devised physical theatre before completing a
communications degree focussing on sonic arts, new media and philosophy of culture
at University of Technology, Sydney. She has also trained and practised in sound
design, radio production and broadcast operations and worked extensively as an
educator including 5 years leading media & sonic arts courses at the Sibelius
Academy, Helsinki. She has led intensive workshops on sound in public space in
many urban contexts.  Sophea has lived and worked in Australia, U.K., Finland &
India

Ravikant Sharma CSDS/Sarai
Ravikant, currently an Associate Fellow with the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies (CSDS), is a historian, writer and translator working with the Sarai
programme of the CSDS for the last ten years. His publications include Translating
Partition and the Deewan-e-sarai series. His research interests include Language,
Technology, Media and Translation.

Convenors:
Devleena Ghosh University of Technology, Sydney
Devleena Ghosh is an academic at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University
of Technology Sydney where she teaches in the Social Inquiry Program and is the
Director of the University’s Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network. She is
the author of Colonialism and Modernity (with Paul Gillen, UNSW Press, 2007) and
the editor of Cultures of Trade: Indian Ocean Exchanges (with Stephen Muecke,
Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), Water, Borders and Sovereignties in Asia and
Oceania (with Goodall and Donald, Routledge, 2008) and Women in Asia:
Shadowlines (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009).

Justine Lloyd Macquarie University
I am a lecturer in the Culture and Everyday Life stream at the Department of
Sociology, Macquarie University, Sydney. My recent research has aimed to
understand the social dimensions of listening practices (See O’Donnell, Lloyd &
Dreher 2009). I have been involved in a UTS-based project assessing media practices
and cultural citizenship in a community media organisation, Information and Cultural
Exchange (ICE) since 2006, which was awarded ARC Linkage funding in the 2007
round in partnership with Arts NSW and the Australia Council.

As part of the Listening Project I co-convened a workshop on Technologies of
Listening in July 2008, and am co-editing a special issue of New Media and Society with
Kate Crawford, which will be forthcoming in 2011. I also am working on a book
manuscript based on an ARC postdoctoral fellowship project conducted during
2004-2007 on the pre-history of feminist programming on Australian and Canadian
public service radio. Based on both audio and written archives, this study explores
the feminine public sphere as imagined by the ABC and CBC before second-wave
feminism, and will be accompanied by a radio documentary drawing on rare audio
recordings of speeches, debates and discussions by women journalists and
presenters, and will include many useful homemaking tips.

Listening Project members:

Tanja Dreher 
University of Technology, Sydney
Dr Tanja Dreher is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Transforming Cultures Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney and a Co- convenor of The Listening Project. Tanja’s research focuses on the politics of listening in the context of media and multiculturalism, racism and anti-racism after September 11, 2001 and of Indigenous sovereignties and discourses of gendered protectionism.

Tanja was a co-convenor of the workshops on Media, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Listening and Methodologies to Capture Listening. Tanja is currently working on a number of projects on listening, including a co-authored paper (with Cate Thill and Kate Crawford) on ‘Methodologies to capture listening’; a pilot research, ‘Listening across Difference’ funded by a UTS ECR Grant and examining the practices and ethics of listening in Living Libraries and Digital Storytelling initiatives; and an ARC Linkage project with new media arts organisation ICE (Information Cultural Exchange).

Tanja is interested to explore the productive tensions between the politics of recognition and the politics of listening. The highly influential recent debates on recognition in political theory have highlighted uneven patterns of value, esteem and attention as fundamental questions of justice. The politics of recognition insists that cultural injustices of misrecognition and disrespect are as significant as, and inextricably intertwined with, injustices in the distribution of resources and rights. Although rarely deployed in media research, the recognition framework suggests that media justice requires not only access to resources and to airtime, but depends also on the value and attention afforded different voices, forms of media and cultural productions

Cate Thill Sociology and Communications University of Notre Dame Cate was the project officer for The Listening Project in 2008 and then joined Justine Lloyd (Macquarie), Tanja Dreher (UTS) and Penny O’Donnell (USyd) as co-convener in 2009. Additionally, she is a member of the Australian Research Council’s Cultural Research Network. With Professor Gerard Goggin (UNSW) and Rosemary Kayess (UNSW), Cate is completing an edited collection on disability, democracy, media and listening that developed out of the 2008 workshop of the same name. Cate is also working on the Methodologies to ‘Capture’ Listening project with Tanja Dreher
(UTS) and Kate Crawford (UNSW). This project explores the tension between the use of listening as metaphor and an aural capacity, the distinction between audience studies and listening research as well as the relationship between the outcome of recognition and the intersubjective practice of listening.
Cate has most recently published an article ‘Courageous listening, responsibility for the other and the Northern Territory Intervention’ in a special issue on ‘Listening – new ways of engaging with media and culture’ edited by Penny O’Donnell, Justine Listening in/as research: Practices, Localities and Communities with SARAI/ANKUR ECR/PG

Lloyd and Tanja Dreher (Continuum: Journal of media & cultural studies, 2009). Cate co-convened the Methodologies to Capture Listening workshop in 2009 with Tanja Dreher (UTS) and Kate Crawford (UNSW). She is also co-convening the Listening Project Symposium.