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.