[in]Transition

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s audio work elegy for Bangalore—from the portion we hear at the beginning of this piece—is somehow both lush yet dry, both warm and ghostlike, grounded in reality and yet decidedly surreal. This compelling sound world has been relegated, literally, to the margins of this discussion, providing a sonic frame for a 30-minute conversation between Chattopadhyay and Maria Papadomanolaki that delves into the experience of urban sound environments. As our interlocutors’ conversation unfolds, their familiarity with the work contrasts with the listener's. The full 56-minute recording is available on a CD released in 2013 on the German label Gruenrekorder, and seeking out this recording would seem to be a prerequisite for fully appreciating the dialogue. However, decisions have been made about the interview's production that are surprising and disarming, such as the hushed level and relatively poor quality of the voice recording. We are allowed to hear each speaker fumble their words, lapse into contemplative silence, repeat their ideas, and negotiate the flow of conversation in ways that a more traditional approach to editing for radio would eliminate. We can tell by a change in voice when a question is being asked spontaneously and when it is being read. The unfiltered quality draws us closer to the speakers, exposing their editorial decisions while reinforcing the idea that we are listening in on a private conversation. 

As they talk, a profile emerges of the interests and listening techniques that inform Chattopadhyay’s practice. He undertakes a “contemplative listening” that distances the listener from the sounds heard, allowing one’s observations to remain detached.  Such a listener is not part of the heard environment, but a nomadic and individuated presence. As the conversation wraps up, he further refines the description of his practice to “hyperlistening,” a technique where sounds are heard in constant juxtaposition with memories of other, similar sounds drawn from previous experiences.  The central role of memory in this listening methodology explains the “elegy” of the title – this style of listening is inherently nostalgic and melancholic.  This technique also has the effect of making the experience of any place a universal experience of every similar place the listener has encountered, which is a critical feature of this work's aspiration.

Through absorbing and periodically recalling the excerpt that kicks off the conversation, we can begin to guess at how these ideas manifest in elegy for Bangalore, though our understanding feels incomplete. In presenting this interview as a sound recording, the producers could have chosen to connect Chattopadhyay's words to the body of work he is describing by, for example, interspersing illustrative clips throughout the conversation. The missed opportunities here are perplexing. However, we are not left entirely empty-handed. At one point in the discussion, Chattopadhyay says of his concepts, “If you experience an Indian city, then you’d understand this better.” Even those uninitiated to the urban Indian soundscape, and without access to a copy of elegy for Bangalore, will find here a formula for a sort of universal listening to cities, and an implicit invitation to "hyperlisten" to one's own environment.

Reviewer Bio:

Stephan Moore is a sound artist, designer, composer, improviser, coder, teacher, and curator based in Chicago. His creative work manifests as electronic studio compositions, improvisational outbursts, sound installations, scores for collaborative performances, algorithmic compositions, interactive art, and sound designs for unusual circumstances. He is the curator of sound art for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, organizing annual exhibitions since 2014. He is also the president of Isobel Audio LLC, which builds and sells his Hemisphere loudspeakers. He was the music coordinator and touring sound engineer of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (2004-10), and has worked with Pauline Oliveros, Anthony McCall, and Animal Collective, among many others. He is a senior lecturer in the Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University. 

Eye Contact was originally produced for the Sensing Cities program on Resonance.fm, a London-based community arts station. The model for this audiography is the radio interview, perhaps the form most familiar to readers of this special issue from time listening to NPR, the BBC, and similar national broadcast institutions. While the content of Chattopadhyay and Papadomanolaki’s dialogue is highly engaging and covers a territory that will be familiar to sound artists – who often walk a distinction between the embodied, place-specific sound art inspired by the work of R. Murray Schafer and the more abstract approach to sound art linked to Pierre Schaeffer (see Rosati and Bhagat, 2020) – it shows little of the high-end technical polish we typically associate with large national broadcasters. As Moore details in his response, the audio is roughly-hewn and little effort has been made to smooth edits and repetitions. Many venturing in to the world of audiography might find their work sounding a lot like this, and should look at whether or not preserving roughness or attempting to eliminate it to make the work more immersive and “professional-sounding” fits with the objectives of their work.

Does it fit for Chattopadhyay? Twice in their discourse, the artist and interviewer discuss themes of distance and detachment. The first comes about half-way through the piece, as Chattopadhyay reflects upon what it felt like to return to recordings he made in Bangalore long after the recording process itself while he was back in Europe. He emphasizes that when it came time for layering and processing, these recordings “came back to him as objects,” shedding their strong attachment to the city. Instead of being reminded of an embodied experience, he became especially cognizant of feelings of melancholy and nostalgia through which that experience had become mediated. Later in the discussion, the conversation turns to a different version of this same theme, as Chattopadhyay explains how the overwhelming environment of Indian cities encouraged him to develop “contemplative distance” – the opposite of “immersion” – even an alienation and thoughtful marginality. Like the distance created by the time lapse between recording and editing, developing a sense of contemplative distance is constitutive of an identity. “Without having a contemplative distance,” he explains, “I would never imagine myself nomadic.” Would a smoother, easier style of recording and mixing the discussion have captured this spirit as well? In expressing a nomadic aesthetic, Chattopadhyay and Papadomanolaki’s discourse on audiography takes an anti-immersive approach.

Work Cited

Bhagat, Alexis and Lauren Rosati. 2020. “’Listen My Heart:” Sound Art, Cinema, and the Problems with Surround Sound” in Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship. Ed. Laura Brueck, Jacob Smith and Neil Verma. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.