Auditioning the Sonosphere: Live Audio Streaming as Expanded Geo-Practice

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The story of environmental sound is the story of capture: of the exploratory search for sonic 'treasures', the calls of rare birds and the vibrations of places deemed 'untouched' and 'wild'. In this model, environmental sounds are treated as pristine artefacts, devoid of human intervention, even as they are the product of laborious field recording practices and technological intervention. However, the last 15 years have seen the rise of another model of listening to environments, albeit far less practised and theorised. In 'live audio streaming', microphones are embedded in places semi-permanently; they transmit sound continuously from one location to many possible listeners over the internet. Through these 'streamers', it is possible to tune in to the sound of a forest in Japan or a garden in South London in real-time. For some, live audio streaming is a symptom of the digital shift toward streaming everything. For others, it transforms the act of listening to environments from 'listening to' into 'listening with' allowing for the expansion of geographic borders. The implications of this shift in listening are underexplored both in contemporary sound art practices and in the sonic debates of the environmental and geohumanities.From my position as a professional sound artist and organiser of eight international audio streaming networks, this PhD project will examine contemporary live audio streaming from both scholarly and creative perspectives and will propose a critical framework for 'listening with' environments. The research will unfold through:i) analysis of the work of contemporary live audio streaming practitionersii) interviews with organisers and participants in five major live audio streaming projectsiii) creative practice-based experiments with live audio streamingMy aim is to develop a critical framework and transdisciplinary creative practice that employs live audio streaming as a unique platform for alternative models of listening and responding to environments.