Week 9’s seminar Introduced multiple frameworks of listening, this included the difference between hearing and listening which to me is only separated by involuntary and voluntary exposure to sounds. Adding to this point, we discussed harmful and exploitative listening which should not be called ‘listening’ but ‘hearing’ as to me something that is harmful or exploitative is not usually voluntary for the identity its subjected to. To me an exploitative sound can be anything that is heard un-consensually like the bus outside my window that just relieved the pressure within its air brakes or sounds purposely designed to be heard unwillingly like long range acoustic devices. This brings me to our discussion of harmful listening or sounds that cause physical or psychological harm to living things. This can be sounds created to intentionally harm like interrogation techniques or unintentional biproducts like loud motorways that directly effect local residents or confuse or distract local wildlife. We also dove into soundscape composition and acoustic ecology especially focusing on Westerkamp and some of her works,  I enjoyed ‘Kits Beach Soundwalk’ as to me it explored the idea of the  acoustic ecological impact of suburban sounds on the natural environment, Declan from class stated that he thought filtering away the city sounds distracts and restricts the accessibility of the piece which I don’t think was Westerkamp’s intentions. I think Westerkamp intended to explore and show how many sounds and details are blurred or unheard by the city sounds and by filtering the distraction away, it achieves this.

The task this week was to locate or pick a field recorder from a website that displays the location of where that sound or soundscape was recorded.

I chose this field recording as it’s an area on the South Coast that I frequently visit and have many memories of. Recorded in stereo with a cardioid pair as stated by the uploader these recording details a rather vocal harmonious ensemble of local birdsong contradicted by the distant sound of gunfire from the near-by Lulworth Tank Ranges. It depicts an odd mix of human and non-human sounds, the gunfire so common its not hushing the birds which tells me it’s almost relentless. I can not imagine an idea of this environment as I have been there many times but from a listening perspective, I would imagine deep quiet countryside broken by a warzone from the gunfire. As I know where this is I know the impact and disturbance this has on the local area, the harmful and very exploitative gunfire ruins the peace and beauty of its location.

Finally, after reading this week’s literature ‘Quantum listening’ by Pauline Oliveros I discovered the idea that all culture and expanded ideas are developed through voluntary listening. Also discovering the idea of focal (detailed) listening and global (whole field) listening which brings me to the main idea of this text being quantum listening: the idea of listening to multiple environments at once, like how two quantumly entangled atoms allow each one to portray the others environment. This in listening allows perception and focus to be concentrated into different places without actively ignoring the other.