OS (Ordinary Schizophonia)
with Joella Bitter, Cade Bourne, Megan Jeanne Gette, Jay Hammond and Harrison Montgomery, 2019–21
Collaborative quadraphonic sound work and panel
Sound collective: quadraphonic sound installation, roundtable and publication
Quadraphonic installation: Dynamo Arts Association, Vancouver, November 21, 2019
Panel and roundtable: AAA/CASCA, Vancouver, November 22, 2019, with David Novak as discussant
Anthropologists of sound and acoustic ecologists have considered the problem of “schizophonia” — the technological separation of a sound from its source — through the rubrics of noise pollution and the cultural appropriation of Indigenous sound recordings. Adding to this conversation, and in the spirit of American Anthropological Association multimodal panels, this collaborative project considered the contemporary digital terrain of field recording through the speculative tools of multimedia artists. At its centre was a collaborative sound installation by anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and artists. Ordinary Schizophonia foregrounds moments of breakdown, interference and environmental noise, as well as the speculative malleability and potential of schizophonic auditory reproduction; the multi-channel installation seeks to expand ordinary, everyday attunements to ecological fragilities.
Weaving together text, digital and modular tape manipulations, the sounds of plant rubbings, the collaborations and conversations of participant Jay Hammond and Sun Ra Arkestra member Ken Moshesh, the avian wheezings of engines in transforming urban environments, the droning of power generators and other sonic instances of ecological fragility, the installation brought these questions into a speculative engagement with field recordings from Gulu, Uganda; New Orleans; New York City; Austin; Durham; Guatemala and Vancouver. If separating a sound from its source is at times an environmental threat, and at other times an enabling condition of alternative sonic modalities, the installation and roundtable sought to better understand the kinds of environments made possible through creative, collaborative engagements with field recordings.
The project was subsequently presented at Distribute 2020 (Society for Cultural Anthropology / Society for Visual Anthropology, May 2020, panel with Marina Peterson); the Duke University Ethnography Workshop (Affordances of Schizophonia, October 2020, with John Supko); Multimedia Encounters: Experimental Approaches to Ethnographic Research at University College London (January 2021); and the CAMRA Multimodal Conference at the University of Pennsylvania (2021). In 2021 the collaborators published Notes on ‘Ordinary Schizophonia’ in the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Visual and New Media Review.
Ordinary Schizophonia (composition) (Vimeo) ↗
Publication: Notes on ‘Ordinary Schizophonia’, Fieldsights, 2021 ↗