Making Listening Audible

This research addresses the idea of sharing someone's listening to access inaudible aspects of listening experience.

By conducting creative and analytic processes I seek to reveal a sonic knowledge that can only be achieved through bodily and sensitive experience. Investigation starts with an epistemological discussion about the material and relational aspects of listening.

Then, a methodology is presented to approach non-verbal forms of knowledge within the creative domains of music and sound art, enabling the emergence of a sonic thinking supported by imaginations, desires and affections. The proposal is developed through a systematic investigation based on four interconnected phases.

The first phase Conceptual refers to an epistemological discussion about listening as a form of knowledge.

In the second phase Diagrammatic I depart from an exercise involving individual and collective listenings of a heterogeneous set of records of women's voices. This will lead to the creation of an inventory of listening developed by participants of a first workshop and myself.

The third phase Creative Sonification is based on conducting a second workshop and interviews in which art students are encouraged to reproduce and share their listening experiences. The results of phases 2 and 3 will provide material for empirical and comparative analysis in the fourth phase.

This Analytical phase will embrace elements that cannot be easily systematized or objectively described, such as personal impressions, insights, bodily actions and sensations.

The main idea is to explore non-verbal forms of knowledge that can stimulate the development of engaged artistic production and foster the construction of individual's identity, plural narratives, and forms of self-awareness expression.

It will also contribute to the current debate on how contexts, materiality and subjectivities can reflect on the power relations - political, economic, and social - implicit in the process of listening.