Voice memos from the dancefloor.

Stirling, C. (2019) Voice memos from the dancefloor. [Audio]

Abstract

While conducting fieldwork on musical audiences in London, I became interested in using field recording as a research method. Listening to my field recordings at home after a night out, I was often amazed at the small, forgotten moments that my iPhone had managed to capture: the mediation of sounds through the physical materials of a spatial environment; the jubilant collectivising energy that spreads across a room when a well-loved tune edges into audibility; the levels of shouting over the music and expressions of exasperation and disgust at the crowdedness of an event. It struck me that these kinds of audibility acted as a valuable way of knowing and understanding the texture of the urban social world and its musical and sonic environments. This piece explores these ideas through a field recording exchange with Freya Johnson Ross. The first three and a half minutes were originally included as part of a larger piece by Freya and I titled ‘I Mean They’re Not Actually Caverns’, presented at the Eavesdropping Symposium in London, 2018. This audio recording is available open access at the 'Official URL' given below.

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