NOTES TOWARD A METHODOLOGY FOR LISTENING IN PLACE: HONG KONG

Abstract

Listening in place (This is in differentiation to the notion of space as an abstract dimension such as the cyberspace.) means the locality in which one is listening, a geographically situated place (cf. Stokes, 3). Even though one cannot escape being in a place, one can avoid listening to this place with the use of headphones, which allow to listen to other sound spaces, to be immersed in one’s own audiotopia (cf. Bull, 2011, p. 529). Such audiotopia in fact is the negation of the soundscape of place. When going to the field, the musicologist is listening to the soundscape in place. As a musicologist: what I was doing in Hong Kong was listening in Hong Kong as a place. When, afterwards, I am listening to its recordings, on the contrary, I am listening to Hong Kong as a space, to a memory captured in sound. These distinctions, and the anthropological framework which I use to elaborate them, refine the pedagogical models advanced in “Mediating a Soundwalk: An Exercise in Claireaudience” by Ian Reyes (2012, pp. 98–101). Listening to recordings is fundamentally different from the listening experience in Hong Kong. I believe that knowing and exploring these differences could lead to new techniques of listening, and that is the work of this short essay.