Listening to/in the Field: Polyphony in the Exploring Arctic Soundscapes Project

• Published in: GeoHumanities Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 94 - 115
• Main Authors: Steinberg, Philip, Baxter, Robert, Egan, Eric Skytterholm, Kramvig, Britt, Lehman, Jessica, Winderen, Jana, Winterling, Susanne M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02.01.2025
• Subjects: Arctic; co-production; fieldwork; sound; transdisciplinarity
• ISSN: 2373-566X; 2373-5678
• DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2025.2467669

This article reflects on the Exploring Arctic Soundscapes project, a transdisciplinary venture of seven natural scientists, social scientists, and artists that sought to explore how a focus on sound could spur development of a new research sensibility for generating insights beyond the comfort zone of any one discipline. Viewing sound less as an object of study ("what sounds define a place?") or methodology ("how do we listen to a place?") than as an inroad for addressing complex forces and questions of becoming in place, the researchers turned to sound as a focal point for exploring difference and relations between the researchers and their modes of data acquisition, analysis, and artistic-academic production. The "field" in which we carried out our work thus became, simultaneously, the place (the island of Andøya, in Arctic Norway), the human and more-than-human communities on Andøya and the adjacent ocean, the transdisciplinary team of researchers, and the universe of (direct and indirect) outputs from our research. The experience of listening to sound(s) in the field demonstrated how transdisciplinary research across the sciences, arts, and humanities must be seen as an unfolding process, where all parties learn from each other as they pursue their disciplinary research agendas, rather than a pre-determined journey toward a single, "interdisciplinary" output.