I performed field audio tests with a parabolic microphone. They generally have a lower fidelity sound than more conventional microphones but the angular resolution in the frontal plane is very high. This creates a highly directional, almost penetrative effect which allowed me to begin my exploration of the sonics of intrusion and privacy. A person’s footsteps could be heard with some clarity over twenty metres away, creating an almost disorientating multi-sensory tableau, wherein my perception of sound travel and distance was warped as the distance between the subject and their produced sound failed to align. I am yet to explore the notion of a field recordist’s sensory condition when working, but entering a space as a supposedly detached, objective viewer, and that having that status immediately infringed upon as a result of one’s own methods seems to be an extremely rich subject matter. The idea of sonic intrusion sprang up after taking this in. Pointing a rather garish microphone at a passer-by and extracting such private and idiosyncratic sounds such as their footsteps belies the calm, methodical, and poised temperament that is commonly associated with field recording. Suddenly, as a field recordist I become responsible for the disruption of my immediate environment. Am I now responsible for some kind of cultural decline? Do the alarmed faces of these civilians, from whom I’ve pillaged their bodily rhythms and their conversations, prove that I have managed to weaponise field recording? This route of analysis evokes images of salvage anthropology. I will use this ethical, dialectical lens to constantly evaluate, re-evaluate and critique my practice and praxis.
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