Field recording as method of sonic ethnography

This is a theoretical paper. The presented issues fit the Polish anthropology scholarship as well as nonacademic ethnographic practice. I fit the method of field recording into methodological and theoretical frameworks of the anthropology of sound and a broader framework: the anthropology of senses. Field recording must be understood as one of the research methods of sonic ethnography and a way to create alternative representations of fieldwork knowledge. Application of field recording in ethnographic research makes it possible track down social patterns, connections between collective emotions, auditory practices and social structures, which usually remain hidden and faded out in textual representations. Doing field recordings also allows the researcher to experience anthropological fieldwork in a more sensuous and immersive way. Field recording as an ethnographic practice focuses on extra-musical and extra-verbal sounds. It is a sort of deep listening: listening with particular attention. I also try to explain the notion of sonic ethnography which should be associated with the interpretation and translation through sound of local systems of meaning and values. Inside these systems do not always have to be connected directly with an acoustic phenomenon. Applying methodology of sonic ethnography allows to recognize non-visual meanings in social life and cultural practices.
 

Audio-soma-visuality. Body in relation with audio-visual object

Dichotomy between visual and acoustic culture is fiction and as a result of that thinking, we can find concept of neutral audio-visuality – idea which is bonding the two semantic fields: audio and visual. Unfortunately, this idea is only an illusion than actual practice. An attempt to analyze the experience of only one perspective pictorial or sound, is only epistemic misapprehension. Contemporary artists prove us how complex is this experience and how to continually moved the boundary between what is visual, what is only audio and what kind of utopia can be audio-visuality. Their projects hit directly in the monumental division between where located is body, sound and images in our experience. Musicians such as Peter Ablinger (Deus Cantando), Dmitry Morozov (Reading My Body), or artistic group Pendulum Choir are best examples of new kind of audio-
-soma-visality experiments. Their musical projects and objects involves perceptual and bodily sensations, thereby opening classically understood sensorium to a whole new dimension of experience. They put body as a figure that is necessary to bond and fill the gap between the language of sounds and language of images.
 

To hide, to disguise, to camouflage: troubling visibility of sound amplifying instruments

In the 19th century, the ear trumpet became a ubiquitous attribute of deaf people. This large clumsy device was synonymous with deaf issues such as misinterpretation and other communication difficulties, leading to deafness being seen as a funny impairment, in contrast to blindness. Deaf users wanted to hide these stigmatizing devices, therefore producers invented sophisticated ways of disguising them as hats, fans or even chairs. Similarly, producers of the new electric hearing aids of the time followed this trend by designing them in the form of bags, jewelry, and glasses (it was still better to be shortsighted than hard-of-hearing). The miniaturization afforded by transistors consequently served the same aim.
However, trumpets and especially hearing aids reflect the social and cultural emancipation of deaf communities that took place over the course of the 20th century; from aids bashfully hidden to instruments available in vivid colors and styles (e.g. with animal patterns or in punk styles) and decorated with specially designed jewelry used by the “proud Deaf”.
The article is based on twofold empirical research: object-oriented analysis of the ear trumpet and hearing aid collection at Thackray’s Medical Museum (Leeds, Great Britain), and analysis of hearing aid advertisements published in Volta Review since 1910.
 

The introduction to the tradition of sound studies in Poland

The article presents examples of research and related theories that starting from the specific issues related to sound (medical, musical or environmental) propose to think about the sound in a wider cultural perspective. In particular, attention was drawn to: the impact of the nineteenth century audio-visual media to think about the sound; medical analysis of the impact of sound on human health and the discussion of the ecology and the record industry. It allows examples to talk about the tradition of sound research in Poland, which contributed to increased interest in this issue today.
 

What about quality? On how “Kronika Filmowa” and Trybuna Ludu battled for a good quality radio for everyone

This article discusses the development of the concept of “quality” in the relation to the strategies of Radio-engineering Plants “Diora” in Dzierżoniów and “Kasprzak” plants in Warsaw, which were two main producers of music equipment in the Peoples’ Republic of Poland. While taking into account the materials of Polish Newsreels and documents from both the Polish Radio and industrial plants’ archives, this analysis aims to show that the concept of “quality” was a subject of various modification and was influenced by such factors as official government’s policy and a propaganda, as well as the economical factors and social practices of users.
 

Rebuild identity, reclaim modernity. From plunderphonics to remastering archives

The aim of this work is to shed light on the cultural context of the contemporary practices in music production. The essay focuses on the use of the archival recordings (both: African-American free jazz heritage, and Polish Radio Experimental Studio tapes) in the process of the reinterpretation of basic cultural categories: „identity” (to rebuild „African-American identity” – Présence Americaine) and „modernity” (to reclaim „Polish modernity”). The field of my research are „Polish Radio Experimental Studio” albums produced by Polish label Bôłt Records, and series of free jazz albums produced by labels such as ESP-Disk, Nessa, NoBusiness Records and Transparency. The question is: are these practices a part of the interpretive research and/or a critical theory of the contemporary culture?
 

Audio-anthropology of sounds

This article addresses three major concepts: audiality, anthropology and sound, outlining research horizons for the adopted approach to the topic discussed. Audio-anthropology studies sounds situated right between the main sound narration produced by culture and anthropological experiences of a man – his biology, physiology and mechanics. A sound, as a manifestation of behavior – a sound event, becomes part of a particular behavior stream, social activities which reflect a variety of cultural forms centered around different aspects of experiencing reality by a man and his relationship with the surrounding world, expressed through behavior patterns, habits and customs, traditions and rituals, reflected by social norms and standards, related to experiencing corporality (intimacy, sexuality, hygiene, illness, death, etc.), emotions, sensuality, etc. Based on the phenomenological-anthropological approach, the proposed comparative tool intends to move towards semiotics, which enables to read sounds in the cultural code of a particular community. Thus, it becomes an element of cultural communication: not so much a sound as a semantic gesture, interpreting various phenomena existing in a specific culture. Audio-anthropology of sounds opens a whole new field for scientific discourse to cultural studies researchers, allowing to better describe a man and his place in the surrounding reality.
 

Jakub Papuczys, Tour de France jako przedstawienie kulturowe,
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2015.

Sebastian Jakub Konefał, Kino Islandii. Tradycja i ponowoczesność,
Wydawnictwo w Podwórku, Gdańsk 2016