This mixed media contribution investigates the multiple modes of inscription possible within a practice-based investigation of the Sonic Anthropocene. Drawing upon critical contexts from Geology, Geography and Anthropology, and the relations between writing, bodies and earthly matters, the authors suggest a re-writing occurs in mediated acts such as field recording (phonography). Microphonic translations from the field not only re-inscribe sites, plural; they reveal sound's itinerant nature to be full of duplicitous and fictive potential. Operating such possibility through the practice of Foley, the post production art of material based sound effects, the authors pivot discussions around their soundwork Decoys (2018) and its attempt to address the urgency of anthropogenic change through a latticing of source and signal, site and studio, subject and observer, human and more-than-human.
This article examines the microphone and its connective political and nonhuman ecologies. A media archaeological excavation of Leon Theremin’s role in the development of a specific bugging device (“The Thing”) facilitates discussion throughout. Situating the microphone within a networked history of power relations and ethical consequences, the author draws upon contexts of surveillance, parasites and horror in order to ask whether microphones are agential actors and, if so, what the consequences might be.
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