Soda

Background Field recording and place-based sonic creative practices are criticized for how they can idealize ‘nature’. Recordists and composers frequently edit out sounds of their own presence and that of their equipment. This is an example of what Donna Haraway (1988) terms the ‘god trick’, presenting the world as if experienced objectively despite the subjective and creative practices involved. Sound studies researchers are now actively theorizing and experimenting with approaches to sonic practice that instead enable and express productive entanglements of the domains of geophony (physical sounds), biophony (living sounds), and anthrophony (human sounds), as conceived by Bernie Krause (2012). For example, Mark Peter Wright (2022) with his work on ‘listening after nature’. Contribution Soda is a binaural audio work that traces the flow of water around Hepburn Springs, on Jaara Country near Naarm/Melbourne. I recorded and composed it using ambisonics, a geophone and a hydrophone, creating a 360 degree field of sound that includes underwater recordings and vibrations in the earth. Designed to be heard on headphones, it charts the way the water courses through a mix of wild and built environments, extracted for human use and flowing on into the valley below. It contributes methods for field recording and composition that connect rather the isolate the sounds of the physical environment, local species, and humans, creating a material, multispecies sonic field in which listening in place is extended to immersive listening experiences for audiences. Significance Soda was produced as an invited contribution for the SNOsound project, initiated by curator Ian Andrews for Sydney Non-Objective, a gallery that has for 20 years been at the forefront of non-object-based art in Australia. It was published online in December 2023. It was subsequently featured on Austrian broadcaster ORF 1’s Kunst zum Hören program in March 2025, selected by ORF 1 programmer Elizabeth Zimmerman.