Lance Gapuz Laoyan
Keywords: Sound, Noise, Ecology
Limited to our senses, it is difficult for us to comprehend what the world sounds like to a non-human animal. However, research illustrates some harsh realities that ecosystems endure under the pressures of sonic forces.
Our Shared Acoustic World a five-channel audio installation explores the ecological impacts of anthropogenic noise on vocal non-human animals. The study is situated in the Netherlands and pays particular attention to industrial and motorised infrastructures, in close proximity to animal habitats, that are notoriously loud and widespread.
Through a semi-fictional narrative Lance Gapuz Laoyan highlights the complications that surround the acoustic territories of machinery and nature; where different powers and meanings are entangled in the competition between being heard and being silenced.
Listening as a Tool. Methodologies of Listening for Agential Actions in the Capitalocene.
Thesis
Listening practices vary in different forms of ontology and methodologies rich in meaning and positive potentialities toward others and to non-human beings. Listening is particularly ignored within industrial and technological contexts that have resulted in the decline and disruption of animal species that inhabit their surroundings.
In this paper I explore the impacts of anthropogenic noise on both human and non-human beings, highlighting the weaponization and industrialisation of noise. I investigate the contemporary meditative practices of Pauline Oliveros, drawing in philosophical perspectives of Jean-Luc Nancy in what he means when one listens in the sonic environment. Furthermore, I examine how one may engage in this space by providing a comprehensive review on the Runa and Blackfoot peoples as an example of Indigenous ontological and methodological forms of listening contrasting to that of modern listening technologies. Finally I aim to build an ethical framework of listening in regards to providing justice and agency to non-human beings in the capitalocene.