The unsounded ocean: how sound studies can further the relational ontologies of the ‘oceanic turns’

Keywords: Ocean, sound studies, music, relationality, complexity
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 13

Abstract

This presentation will explore an aspect of the ocean that has remained largely unsounded by the various oceanic turns. This is the role that sound plays as a methodology for exploring and expressing the complexities of ocean space. Sound, after all, is not an object, but rather a rhythmic vibration that travels as a wave through a medium such as water. It articulates space through reflection, refraction, and reverberation. But this articulation is not like a map, nor is it static and unchanging. Rather, sound’s articulations express the complexity of oceanic relations through an engagement with process and time. Sound therefore demands an attentiveness to movement, change, distortion, and entanglement, and so can perhaps help us to understand the complexity and relationality of ocean space.

This paper will bring together my PhD studies into the temporality and spatiality of climate change and my experience as a composer to ask how music and sound studies can connect with and further the relational ontologies of certain oceanic turns. To do this, I will assess aspects of oceanic turns that have developed poststructural and relational ontologies to theorise ocean space. I will draw on work by Stefan Helmreich, Melody Jue, and Kimberly Peters and Philip E. Steinberg to ask how sound and relationality connect with one another. I will also analyse sound and musical works by Jana Winderen, Chris Watson, and Joel Cahen to ask how an attendance to sound as an expressive and exploratory methodology can further recent theorisations on ocean space.