Protocols of Listening: Reflections on the development of an interactive digital platform for cross-disciplinary sound research

This article presents six separate but connected understandings of a digital platform of listening vocabularies and protocols produced in the context of Listening Across Disciplines II, (LxDII) a cross- and transdisciplinary research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK (AHRC), conducted by the authors from 2018 to 2022. This research project set out to investigate and promote the use of listening across arts, humanities, science, and social science disciplines. To this end it worked with different partners from various fields to observe, co-work, and analyze, and finally to connect and compare different forms of listening.

Early on it became clear that one of the main issues in establishing such a cross-disciplinary listening was the lack of a joint vocabulary and thus a means to share processes, methods, and insights. Therefore, it became a central objective to develop a resource of listening vocabularies and protocols that reveal differences as well as similarities and point to ways that connections can be established and methods shared. Subsequently, and to ensure cross-disciplinary and public use, these vocabularies and protocols were organized on an interactive digital platform, enabling browsing between methods and words, and hopefully affording shared approaches and cross-referencing.

This article represents a reflection on the background, motivation, processes, and realization of this platform. It does so deliberately from the six listening positions of the research team. In this way it reproduces the project itself, in that it allows each listener their own understanding while connecting them through a shared platform. Please visit the online version of the journal to see and hear video and audio files.