Royal Geographical Society – Sonic Methods

“Sounding Underground: Listening, performing and transforming” was the paper given in the Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society in London. The Session “Sonic Methods” organised by Michael Gallagher and Jonathan Prior, was a rich environment to share different methods that study our acoustic experiences and their cultural and artistic value. At the end of the day we had a one minute recording experiment with loop tapes. A real challenge!

The Theme of the conference was sustainability, and perhaps this last exercise proposed by Michael Gallagher, is a representation of old media and its degradation, the qualities of degradation and a technology that records just one minute making of it ephemeral in the recording but rich in the experience. If you just have one minute in a tape to record, what would you record?

This experience is so refreshing in this digital world where “memory” is a commodity, as regards machines, and our own “memory” can get lost in a (too much) over information. The importance of reflect, and listen to each moment as if it was the last minute available to listen…