Book Chapters by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Situated Listening: Attending to the Unheard, 2025
In seeking to understand listening as an everyday practice and method, one can also consider its ... more In seeking to understand listening as an everyday practice and method, one can also consider its negation or its boundaries in terms of “unlistening.” As much as people hear and attend to the world around them, they could also be said to unlisten. Through this chapter, the authors speculate on a notion of unlistening along a spectrum of practices, acts, and methodologies, from routine psychoacoustic processes to unresponsive and oppressive political positionalities. This chapter identifies and calls out different possible instances of unlistening. By considering and probing scenarios of unlistening in micro and macro contexts, this chapter aims to build knowledge around the margins of situated listening. Rather than seeking to establish a neologism of “unlistening,” this chapter focuses on understanding the ramifications when unlistening arises with intention in various situations, from personal to public and from social to cultural.
Hyper-listening: Praxis
Art & Design Education in Times of Change, 2017
Hyper-listening: Praxis is a series of workshops that operates as a set of exercises and collabor... more Hyper-listening: Praxis is a series of workshops that operates as a set of exercises and collaborative experiments involving the methodology of hyper-listening. As a conceptual framework hyper-listening intends to explore the mindful and transcendental aspect of listening and engaged learning about the surrounding environment through community art practice. The participants are asked to locate certain sites that trigger a multitude of associations, imaginings or personal memories. They are guided to utilize these auditory associations embedded in everyday navigation helping the participants to engage inclusively with their environments. This paper theorizes the intent and method of the workshop series.
17 Mapping the Aesthetic Choices in Sound Production
The Auditory Setting, 2021
The fourth chapter is a reflection on the book’s findings regarding presence, rendering and sonic... more The fourth chapter is a reflection on the book’s findings regarding presence, rendering and sonic reality presented across three chapters. In critically listening to the trajectories of sound production within world cinema and audiovisual media arts, it is observed that sites have been irregularly rendered and produced through various phases of sound production. Three primary historical markers are underscored that seem useful when locating and mapping prominent technological shifts. These developmental stages have manifested as aesthetic choices embraced by sound practitioners. This chapter details how these principles are reflected in the production of a site’s sonic presence. In other words, the various forms and formats of technological innovations and transformation have informed the degree of site-specific presence produced through the use of ambient sound components. Critical listening, reflection and analysis of the passages of sound from representative films, specifically d...
2 The Auditory Context and Signification
The Auditory Setting, 2021
From the very advent of sound in cinema, ambient sound has been a practical production concern. I... more From the very advent of sound in cinema, ambient sound has been a practical production concern. Initially, it was considered negatively, as unwanted ‘background noise’ from the location, and then positively, as site-specific information to be included in the film’s diegesis. The latter clearly explains ambient sound’s relevance and considered role within film sound production. Every site depicted in a cinematic narrative contains distinct and subtle sounds emanating from its environment. These sound sources can include, for example, wind, rain, running water, rustling leaves, distant traffic, aircraft and machinery noise, the sound of distant human movement and speech, creaks and pops from thermal contraction, air conditioners and plumbing, the noise from fans and motors, the hum of electrical machines, room tone, etc. Although film sound has received extensive academic interest, much of this attention has been invested in explaining the role of voice and music in relation to the vi...
9 Forest, Jungle
The Auditory Setting, 2021
When I was seven years old, I once got lost in the forest. I had been following my father, who wa... more When I was seven years old, I once got lost in the forest. I had been following my father, who walked faster than me, on our way through the trees behind our house to meet someone in the tribal village. At a certain point, I realised that I couldn’t hear my father’s footsteps in front of me – sounds that I had been tracing while looking around in curiosity. I had been taken by the sunlight as it played on the leaves and butterflies as they passed by in solemn unison with the green leaves and dark tree branches. Then, I found myself alone. The murmurs of wind blowing through leaves and the friction between movement and stasis had already drowned out my father’s footsteps – my lone sonic navigational tool in the forest. Their absence accentuated other sounds. The intimate whispering wind carrying news of fallen leaves, its intensity and proximity suddenly sounded ominous and dreadful. Surrounded by this maze of sound, I lost my sense of orientation and security. I wanted to escape thi...
6 Stereo Sound and the Expanded Space
The Auditory Setting, 2021
As I have shown in the previous chapter, ‘dubbing’ was introduced in cinema in order to avoid cam... more As I have shown in the previous chapter, ‘dubbing’ was introduced in cinema in order to avoid camera noise emanating from the popular and affordable Arriflex 35 III cameras along with other incidental background noises from the location of shooting. Dubbing, like ‘looping’, quickly became a norm in the sound techniques of producing the auditory setting primarily inside sound studios. Such sound practices in the dubbing era, with an emphasis on post-synchronisation, effectively destroyed perspective in cinema as argued by many film writers like ...
13 Street, Public Squares, Urban Neighbourhood
The Auditory Setting, 2021
On a hectic morning in a busy street, pedestrians are walking by without looking at one another. ... more On a hectic morning in a busy street, pedestrians are walking by without looking at one another. They may listen to the footsteps of others, but such listening implies recognition of the social other’s existence and encourages public confrontation through eye contact. Such private contact within public spaces, whether streets, squares, parks or public gardens, counteracts the rhythm that city life demands. Many people are absorbed by the acute socio-political aura that urban sites underscore. Sounds of heavy traffic, electrical machinery and electronic devices, directly human-made sounds such as rustling clothes, a cough, discernible footsteps, a car horn being used, a shout carved out from the background – all of these sounds will eventually dissolve into the city’s monotone, leaving no trace. Little memory of their occurrence will remain. Everyday urban sounds are indifferent; they alienate by absorbing everything into one great cacophony. City inhabitants may endeavour to survive...
16 Underwater, Outer Space
The Auditory Setting, 2021
Ever since I was a child, I have been afraid of water. My mother’s only brother drowned in a lake... more Ever since I was a child, I have been afraid of water. My mother’s only brother drowned in a lake while learning to swim. He was just twelve years old at the time. I have developed a deep fear of unknown depths and underwater crevasses, knowing that the only uncle I could have had from my mother’s side of the family was taken away by water. In the bathroom of my childhood home shivers would run down my spine when I looked at the world under the water scattered on the floor, even though they were mere reflections upside down. I have never learnt to swim because every time I went underwater I would hear ghostly, unknowable, otherworldly sounds that were beyond my cognitive universe....
3 Key Concepts and Definitions
The Auditory Setting, 2021
The Greek notion of storytelling, diegesis, which denotes the use of a narrative process to const... more The Greek notion of storytelling, diegesis, which denotes the use of a narrative process to construct the diegetic world, is often cited in film theory. Mary Ann Doane refers to it as ‘the internal space’ of the cinematic universe (Doane 1985b) framed and constructed by the technical tools of filmmaking. Translated to sound, this term could be understood in relation to the environmental, incidental and other location-specific sounds that are made to emanate from the story space in which events occur (...
4 Approach and Method
The Auditory Setting, 2021
The Auditory Setting takes a practice-based approach to its investigation of how ambient sound re... more The Auditory Setting takes a practice-based approach to its investigation of how ambient sound recorded from particular sites as sonic material contributes to the production of mediated environments in films and media artworks. Places are studied for their specific sonic environment and as sites recorded and (re)presented, firstly, in a number of films and, secondly, in a few sound and media artworks developed from field recordings made at specific sites. Methodologically, five primary tracks are followed that open dialogue with one another: a historical overview; ethnographic research and fieldwork; personal input, including interviews with artists and practitioners; artistic research; and self-reflective analysis....
14 Public Transport
The Auditory Setting
The seat next to me is unoccupied. Someone drops her glance after momentary eye contact. The subt... more The seat next to me is unoccupied. Someone drops her glance after momentary eye contact. The subtle vibration of the moving train progresses rhythmically; the city’s trace slips backwards beyond the partly soundproofed window. Dark, heavy clouds are gloomy in the sky, but I can’t hear any incoming thunderstorm. I drop a hint in the hope of opening a conversation with the person sitting opposite to me. In response, the face turns opaque. The look of most co-passengers is fixed on nowhere as if they are waiting for a catastrophe to happen. The shared space in the compartment is speechless. The absence of any preconceived dialogue in the faces around me renders our environment one of soliloquy. Sporadic announcements cause everyone to focus intensely on the disembodied voice, but it disappears, leaving some information about the direction of the train and the name of the next stop in an automated voice to evaporate. What do the boy and woman sitting in opposing seats think about one an...
12 Riverbank, Beach, Island
The Auditory Setting
Where land meets water such as at a city’s riverbanks or on a seashore, a dynamic encounter betwe... more Where land meets water such as at a city’s riverbanks or on a seashore, a dynamic encounter between stillness and motion is enacted. Relentless waves crashing on a shore invite land to break away and delve into an unknown realm, a wild nature of abandon. However, the land cannot always move. It is often bound by girders and fences, culture and civilisation. The subtle drama that emerges from this tension (sound-)marks most water sites: riverbank, beach or island. This is a collection of interrelated sites; all of these, however, are situated around water. There are degrees of human involvement in these sites. Some of them could be natural as such. On the whole, I refer to the cityscapes, as in the river by a city, whose banks have been constructed. Island would perhaps be the least humanly constructed. When these sites are recorded on media, the constructed auditory settings provide a glimpse of the conflict between water and human habitat, mobility and stasis, nature and culture....
18 Auditory Presence and Better Practice
The Auditory Setting
In Michel Chion’s book, Film, a Sound Art (2009), he argues that watching movies is more than jus... more In Michel Chion’s book, Film, a Sound Art (2009), he argues that watching movies is more than just a visual exercise, describing it also as a process of ‘audio-viewing’. The audiovisual makes use of a wealth of tropes, devices, techniques and effects that convert multiple sensations into image and sound, therefore rendering, instead of reproducing, the world through cinema as a ‘truly audiovisual language’. Chion’s formulation adheres to the image-centric reading of sound in cinema and, therefore, fails to make a clear distinction between approaches towards the auditory and visual setting as two distinct production practices. This book aspires to make this distinction clear not only by using the coinage ‘sound art’ and ‘media arts’ as a metaphor but, unlike Chion, to also cite real works of sound-centric media artwork to show how the creative possibilities and potentials of sound in film are delimited and often suppressed to cater to the industrial needs of storytelling, diegesis an...
8 Land, Field, Meadow
The Auditory Setting
The third chapter consists of nine smaller sub chapters that discuss relevant sequences from film... more The third chapter consists of nine smaller sub chapters that discuss relevant sequences from film and sound/media artworks where generic sites (e.g. land, field, meadow; forest, jungle; village, rural environment; indoors; riverbank, beach, island; street, public squares, urban neighbourhood; public transport; airport; underwater, outer space) are the specific settings for narration or the select sites for recording and documenting sound for site-aware artwork. Critical listening is employed to analyse relevant passages from a number of films and representative artworks developed from specific sites. The critical listening and reflective analysis of these artworks shed light on the artistic transformation of ambient sounds recorded from select sites producing what will be termed ‘manufactured presence’ and ‘poetic presence’ in the spatial experiences of films and media artworks, respectively. These works are studied thoroughly to understand the strategies employed in their productio...
5 Monaural Soundtracks and Recording (Sonic) Reality
The Auditory Setting
The second chapter titled Sonic trajectories consists of three broad sub chapters that investigat... more The second chapter titled Sonic trajectories consists of three broad sub chapters that investigate the technological trajectories of sound practices and conceptualises the use of ambient sound from optical recording to the contemporary digital realm. By historicising the developments in the use of ambient sound through different intersecting phases of optical recording and monaural mixing, magnetic recording and stereophonic mixing, digital sync recording and surround design, the second chapter demarcates, rationalises and historicises the primary eras of sound production. Each of these sub chapters mentions specific film and media art examples from global film and media as historical markers in sound production. The chapter also provides a comparative analysis of global film industries in their working with sound; and various concurrent practices that were emerging from local cultures despite colonial pressures and influence of the Hollywood norms and techniques. The chapter helps ...
15 Airport
The Auditory Setting
The airport is a site of perpetual movement, punctuated by awkward periods of waiting, inclined t... more The airport is a site of perpetual movement, punctuated by awkward periods of waiting, inclined towards an insular private way of being in an essentially public space. Such a public site is usually built with large metallic pillars and transparent glass panels on which the empty face of a nomadic passenger may fall and be distorted. Voices slip away and are rendered redundant. A gentrified lounge has no odour. Rows of metallic doors open and shut silently. Elevators go up and down carrying tired travellers keen to rest for a little while. Instructions appear on large LED screens. The lack of curiosity on the faces of itinerant travellers breeds social alienation. Moments of interest in an unknown other evaporate as the gentle automated announcement makes people aware that the time to leave is approaching. The sounds of escalators echo aimlessly along grey walls and ceiling skylights. Reclining figures and their organised belongings keep changing places. A vacant seat doesn’t remain ...
19 The God of Small Sounds
The Auditory Setting, Apr 13, 2021
Juan Duarte
Sound Practices in the Global South, 2022
Mariana Marcassa
Sound Practices in the Global South, 2022
Ximena Alarcón Díaz
Sound Practices in the Global South, 2022
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Book Chapters by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay