Post-Natural Sound Arts

This article argues for a new critical perspective called “Post-Natural Sound Arts” (PNSA). Its focus resides within the context of environmental sound arts and disciplines such as field recording, acoustic ecology and soundscape studies. PNSA questions entanglements of power and agency between recordists and their subjects and produces new epistemological consequences in relation to silence, subjectivity and technology.

By discussing historical and contemporary audio documents, the author demonstrates how sonic representations are part of an interlacing of geographies, media, and time. These recordings harbor trace evidence of anthropogenic incursion and are re-heard in order to question a history of non-impact within the practice of environmental sound arts. PNSA therefore aims to function as both an audial-analytical methodology and instigator for artistic praxis.

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