The Acoustic Sanctuary: A Dedicated Listening Place

Abstract

Focusing on auditory phenomena through the processes of listening and hearing requires us to inhabit time, to be present in the temporal continuum of place. By participating in the auditory moment, the continuously changing present can be more fully known through experience. The present becomes the past in a moment and activates memory thereby penetrating many layers of consciousness. What are we hearing, what did we hear? To stop still, to take time to listen is an uncommon practice in modern civilised white society. Listening requires a sharing of temporal space; it is a communal experience very much defined by the accumulated soundscapes of a place over time. Every site is an acoustic space, a place to listen. Acoustic space is where time and space merge as they are articulated by sound. An acoustic sanctuary is a place to contemplate our sonic habitat and the sounds we inscribe as significant. Sounds have meaning whether wanted or unwanted. In a sound garden, one can consciously include wanted sounds such as aeolian harp wind sounds. But we can also contemplate sonic weeds, sounds we want to eradicate, so that the sounds that are endangered and the sounds we want to preserve can be more audible. Sonic gardening. What is our sonic heritage? What do we understand about Australia as sung country and do our sounds collect in the collective consciousness of the dreamtime? We are sharing inscribed acoustic habitats, wittingly or unwittingly.