‘Playing Back’
How to make a Bad Field Recording
In the context of sound art there is often the mistake of re-defining certain techniques and practices, that whilst important to acknowledge, are often exclusive and reduce sound to good or bad quality. The hierarchical, masculine nature of this kind of space can often make it harder for woman and gender minorities to be seen as experts in the field. However, if we want to shift our way of thinking about recording away from the ‘detached ethnographer’ and the ‘object being studied’ we need those that are themselves other-ed to be at the forefront of experimental practise.
In a playful and more inclusive approach I hope to encounter ‘bad’ field recordings in my work, where human and more-than-human voices are not obviously distinct and where my experimental practice is not hindered too much by preconceived notions of what should or shouldn’t exist in the space. How can the physical act of field recording, which attracts such a strangeness in site and research, be per-sonified as a queer tool for challenging these socio-material binaries?
Playing Back explores the uncanny act of field recording and how as a practise it can be re-imagined as a tenuous reaching-out, a disturbance of lingering curiosity or a tactile materialising of the liminal space that queers the boundaries between self and other. The workshop will explore experimental recording techniques and use various types of recording equipment to investigate the current binaries and tensions prevalent in the field by finding ‘wrong’ ways to record unwanted sound.
