Whistle-blowing the field: how might perspectives and aesthetics of field recording adapt within a contemporary ‘post-crash’ world?

Since the turn of the twentieth century field recording, a practice based upon recording the sounds of a given environment, species or phenomena, has increasingly moved from hobbyist, science and ethnomusicology traditions, towards an artistic practice in its own right. Today it represents a key facet within contemporary sound art praxis and discourse, whilst continuing to cross-pollinate geographic, cultural, social science and anthropological studies. Built upon the persuasive foundations of an ecologically engaged practice, field recording - whether for science or art - is deemed an unobtrusive act of conservation or design, with little or no apparent consequences. Does this mean “the field” should be granted political, aesthetic or ethical immunity? If the extraction of sound from an environment or species may not be mining a finite resource, nor for that matter leaving a tangible footprint, perhaps we have to be more imaginative, more disruptive, even more absurd in how the practice is critically unpicked?

This paper will propose a new methodological schema for field recording in light of 2008’s global economic crash and its protracted socio-cultural fallout. Through personal and practice-based reflection I will draw parallels between field recording and banking bubbles; preservation and consumerism; silence and hegemony; sound and oil. Inspired by the ethnographic crisis of the mid to late 1970’s, I intend to inflict a similar state of emergency upon my own practice and its broader contexts.

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