The disruptive nature of listening

today, yesterday, tomorrow

Hildegard Westerkamp

pp. 45-63

in: Milena Droumeva, Randolph Jordan (eds), Sound, media, ecology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

Westerkamp discusses the emergence of a listening sensibility inspired by acoustic ecology, and grounded in her own personal histories in the World Soundscape Project (WSP), and decades of work as a soundscape composer—a sensibility that is a practice, a metaphor for research and an active force of engagement with the conditions of modern life. The introduction offers a definition of what is meant by the disruptive nature of listening. This chapter ultimately explores what has happened to the fundamental message of the original WSP soundscape work, whether the energy and language tone of the 1970s still makes sense today, and whether a re-articulation can relevantly update its basic proposal for acoustic ecological changes in today's environmental, social and political atmosphere.