Landscape AudioIn Situ
Michael J. Gallagher · Contemporary Music Review · 2015
This paper uses a mobile audio work in a ruined landscape as a starting point for thinking about what environmental sound art does. I distinguish between transpositional works, which take sonic material from landscapes and re-present it elsewhere, and in situ works, listened to within landscapes. Listening, in this analysis, goes beyond attentive conscious perception, encompassing how bodies are moved by sound as an affective force. Thus as well as representing landscapes, in situ audio can shape listeners' movements within the landscape, and hence their relationships to places, albeit in ways that may be small-scale, temporary and difficult to articulate. I also discuss some ethical and epistemological issues raised by the affective potency of in situ audio.