IMAGES OF HOME
Dean Merlino, Centre for Cultural Partnerships, University of Melbourne
Michelle Duffy, Monash University, Gippsland Campus
Introduction
The town of Officer is situated some 50km southeast of Melbourne, Australia. Nestled quietly between
the current southeast edges of Melbourne’s suburban sprawl in Berwick and the satellite city of
Pakenham, Officer was once a solidly rural space. The main street of the town is an uncomplicated
stretch of the Princess Highway, connecting Melbourne on to the entire Gippsland region of Victoria.
It is lined with shops selling garden supplies, timber, hardware, pumps and irrigation supplies, sheds
and gazebos. Somewhat hidden amongst this focus on farming is Studio 428, the local hairdresser. One
can imagine men in utility vehicles do what constitutes shopping here, and no recycled shopping bag
would be quite big enough.
But Officer is part of Australia’s changing spaces. The population of Australian cities is growing
rapidly, and Melbourne’s suburbia pushes further out through its heavily populated growth corridors,
spreading west, north and east. Spreading on and into Berwick, this urban sprawl has infiltrated
Officer. Its once rich pasturelands and rural spaces are quickly being levelled and coated in asphalt and
housing slabs. A suburb has begun to emerge where once a rural town existed, with the population of
just over 1000 expected to reach 45,000 by 2030 (VicUrban 2009). Development, which at first
appeared as contiguous with Berwick and Pakenham, so leaving a sense of space between urban
centres, will eventually come to fill the open spaces – a change not often welcome by those who have
lived here for a number of generations. ‘The good times in Officer are gone when it used to be a quiet
country town. Now it’s too urbanised’ (quoted in Lynn & Monani 2010), was how one such resident
described it. Importantly, such transition impacts upon the lives and so identity of the community of
Officer, in turn affecting both social cohesion and sustainability. As with other growth corridors,
individual wellbeing and a sense of community will be increasingly tested as infrastructure and human
services lag behind population growth. These changes are particularly significant for young people.
The current population of young people is expected to more than double in the next decade, but, as a
local government reports suggest, there is an urgent need for improved infrastructure and initiatives
that will recognise and assist young people in feeling “connected to their community through a sense of
belonging and wellbeing” (Cardinia Shire Council’s Youth Policy and Strategy 2007). This is our point
of departure.
This chapter examines a research project conducted with young people, titled Images of Home:
Children’s Creative Response to the Changing Landscape of Officer (Images of Home). Images of
Home is a sound-based Community Cultural Development research project engaging young people to
explore social connection and the meaning of ‘home’ in this rapidly changing environment. Our focus
on sound signals our different approach to notions of change, connection and belonging. The use of
sound is empirical, as the young people are encouraged to listen to and record the sounds of the
landscape and environment. Yet it is also creative (or generative) as participants are encouraged to
manipulate those recordings to explore the possibilities of agency and connection in regards to the
environment, to create their own meanings and connections.
Part One of this chapter presents the theory underpinning Images of Home, and an outline of the
project structure. This is followed by an exploration of the art-based methodologies used to engage
young people, the significance in using sound and sound recording technology, as well as the
importance of merging the processes of both listening and creating. Part Two reflects upon the early
discussions and fieldwork sessions conducted with the participants so as to tease out some of the
successes and issues of our approach. In sharing Images of Home, we hope to demonstrate (1) the
value of moving away from visually dominated community arts projects, especially with an already
visually saturated age group, and (2) the importance in understanding that successful social connection
and a sense of community is simultaneously experienced and created by the members of that
community. This research was made possible through the generosity of VicHealth, and we thank the
principal, staff and children of Officer Primary School for their enthusiasm for this project. All
participant names have been changed to preserve privacy.
Part One: Theory and Method
Social connection
Images of Home engages young people to consider their sense of ‘home’ and the emotional
connections that underpin feelings of belonging and social connection. We argue that when we ask
people to be attentive to the sounds that mean ‘home’ to them, very diverse personal and affective sets
of social relationships can be uncovered, and that these are underpinned by values attached to both
lived and imagined notions of home. Sigmon, Whitcomb and Snyder (2002) assert that a sense of
‘place’ is an emotional response to a meaning-laden location. Moreover, the meaning of home has a
psychological foundation, one which ‘relates to how individuals impart their self-identity to a particular
physical locale... psychological home represents a dynamic process by which an individual manipulates
the environment to reflect his or her self-identity’ (pp. 31-32). In their seminal work on the
psychological sense of community, McMillan and Chavis recognise this dynamic process as a
‘personal investment’ that individuals make as time and effort whereby belonging, or in their example,
membership of a community, ‘will be more meaningful and valuable’ (1986 p. 10). They also
recognise the collective identification and ‘common symbol system’ that create a sense of belonging
common to members of a community (p. 15). So any sense of place is much more than simply a
location. We also draw on recent theoretical work, such as Teresa Brennan's (2004) notion of the
transmission of affect, as well as the recent interest in the processes of listening (Nancy 2007; Waitt &
Duffy 2010; Wood et al 2007). In thinking about sound in these ways, what we are arguing is that we
can better understand the processes involved in constituting our relationship between the self, the
other and place if we pay attention to sound and the impact it has physiologically and psychologically.
If such dynamic or participatory notions about home and community are correct then we can begin to
understand the particular difficulties experienced by young people in growth corridors. In such spaces,
forces outside of one’s control are transforming the landscape in which one has invested emotionally.
The stability which once reflected one’s self-identity collapses and spatial contestation erodes
definitional boundaries (Bowles and Gintis 2000; Hillier 2002). The landscape and soundscape of
home literally disappears as fields are transformed into housing developments. The human geography
of Officer also changes as new families and faces appear with potentially different social, economic
and infrastructural needs.
We can also understand the loss of social connection in its temporal sense. Certainty in the future,
especially for young people, is based on the repetition of the past. There is a predictive element, be it
conscious or intuitive, stemming from the replication of certain events or behaviours. However as
Officer undergoes its transformation from a rural to urban space, today’s investment in self or
communal identity cannot guarantee a sense of home into the future. Young residents are uncertain as
to what or who may stay or disappear, and to what may take its place. Therefore, if connection and
belonging cannot be invested with any certainty of a temporal payoff, the response is one of
resignation, withdrawal and a lack of desire to attempt social connection.
Social connection is also difficult for those new families moving into Officer as ‘...the spatial
availability of and the contact frequency with [former] network members’ evaporates (Nauck 2009,
emphasis in original). They face issues of separation, loss and social disjunction as they begin to settle
into their new environment and rebuild social connection and ‘their’ sense of place. This is especially
difficult for young people as (1) the immediacy of friendship groups is lost, and (2) they must connect
with or prove themselves to established youth communities.
Art-based methods
A contention of CCD practice is that art-based and participatory methods are valuable in young
people’s exploration of their emotional connection to home. In Images of Home, we are refining the
broad current of art-practice to specifically the experience of sound. As community artists and
researchers it is time to revisit notions of place, landscape or community not as simply geographical or
physical but as sonic locations. Jacques Attali (2006 p. 3), in his critique of the Western world’s
apparent visual fixation, states that ‘[f]or twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look
upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is
not legible, but audible’. Why then is the audible significant to understanding our everyday lives?
Sound is not merely a background to our lives. Sounds render place quite differently to vision, and
recent research suggests listening occurs around and through our bodies, so reminding us how place
and people are very much intertwined – albeit often partial and fragmented – as sound passes through
and into the body (such as Back 2003; Carter 1992; Cohen 1995; DeNora 2000; Duffy 2000, 2005;
Smith 1994, 2000; Wood et al 2007). Sound and how we listen and respond to listening is not a passive
activity of simply hearing sounds. Rather listening is a process of actively creating and attributing
meaning. The ways in which individuals respond to particular sounds is informed by life histories, and
what they value.
For example, sounds can trigger memories of past events or far away locations. In other instances,
certain sounds may stir emotions that help bring into sharp relief a sense of self or that of a community
(see also Waitt & Duffy 2010).
Our project facilitates a sense of agency as the young participants choose the spaces to listen to and the
sounds in those spaces they wish to record. The choices are significant in both a positive and negative
sense; that is, they can represent either an emotional sense of home, or a sense of loss. As the
participants begin to manipulate and reconstruct the sounds, they are enabled to rework the external
world and reengage with it as an extension of their own experiences and emotions. It is through play
and creativity that they can reignite the dynamic processes of self-identity and hence recapture a
psychological sense of home.
Importantly, the process of reconstructing sound is generative in both an active and passive sense.
Reconstruction of these sounds is in a sense passive in that participants manipulate and interact with
already recorded sounds. The sound recordings are inert objects that will only change when
deliberately manipulated. Sound reconstruction is also generative in an active sense. As the
participants familiarize themselves with the process and recognize their ability to reconnect to a sense
of home, they are given the means to continue the process in their encounters with new situations.
They can do this either as a recording process, using this same technology, or through imagined
reconstructions of the soundscape within their minds. While the technology is a necessary tool to
engage people in issues about sound and place, it is not necessary in order for these participants to
continue active construction once it is understood. Unlike many theatre or visual art-based CCD
projects, the learnings from Images of Home are not dependent upon the replication of the project and
all its tools. The participants merely need to develop the skill of manipulating the experience of the
landscape/soundscape regardless of its familiarizing or disjunctive effect upon their sense of home.
Methodology
The methodology of Images of Home consists of several stages spread out over a number of months.
They involve the following components:

Planning discussions

Sound recordings

Sound diaries and experiential discussions

Sound manipulation

Exhibition
Planning
As the participants are of primary school age and the project conducted within Officer Primary School
itself, it was crucial that issues pertaining to duty of care and the use of class time be carefully
addressed. Though sometimes overlooked in CCD projects, this planning phase is critical when
working with children. Projects that engage young people should have a solid base and support within
the school, from which the children’s participation and creativity can be maintained and developed.
Upon establishing this support, the method is relatively simple. As a group, the young people were
asked to nominate and come to a consensus on three parts of Officer that were significant places to
them. The group discussion serves a few functions. First, it allows the participants to nominate places
in Officer of personal significance to them as individuals and as a group, with the freedom to suggest
places to which they may have a positive or a negative connection.
Secondly, in discussing their interest in certain spaces, the participants begin to gain a sense that they
have different emotional connections to different parts of Officer. The notion “I live in Officer” can
give the impression that this refers to a single space where all difference is homogenised to represent a
single connection. Once that spatial singularity is broken down into more specific spaces, such as the
train station, new housing developments or the school oval, the participants begin to recognise that
their relation to the space of Officer is in fact mixed. They begin to recognise that the space(s) of
Officer allows them several different emotional connections simultaneously.
Finally, as the group of participants discuss possible recording spaces, they begin to recognise that
friends and classmates may replicate their feelings. This becomes important later in the project as they
begin to manipulate the sound recordings to create new senses of connection. Although Images of
Home explores the emotional connection of each individual, we also acknowledge that social assent
can give validity to their emotional responses to landscape, and their sense of social connection.
Sound recording and diaries
The methodology for Images of Home is participatory and collaborative within an aural (acoustic)
framework. An auditory awareness is much more than ‘the ability to detect that space has changed
sounds’ (Blesser and Salter 2007 p. 12). It is instead an ‘…amalgam of spatial attributes, auditory
perception, personal history, and cultural values’ (Ibid). Steven Feld (2005) calls this experience
acoustemology, ‘...an exploration of sonic sensibilities, specifically the way in which sound is central
to making sense, to knowing, to experiential truth’ (p. 185). On the other hand, Blesser and Salter,
echoing Anthony Storr’s Music and the Mind, recognize that soundscapes are interactive. In
influencing our ‘social behaviour’, our ‘navigation through space’ and ‘our aesthetic sense of space’
(Blesser and Salter p. 12), soundscapes interact with the perceptions that each individual carries into
those spaces. Storr expresses this notion as ‘empathic identification’ (Storr 1992 p. 39).
With these ideas in mind, enabling the young participants to decide upon the significant spaces in
which to record therefore recognises the deeper identifications that they have with the more specific
spaces of Officer. Most of the young participants in Images of Home come from families of ‘Old
Officer’, that is, families that have lived in Officer for several generations. They have had family
members who were schooled at Officer Primary School. Not just brother or sister, but parents and
grandparents too. The sense of these spaces carries a history beyond their immediacy. The participants
therefore are not only identifying with spaces significant to themselves, but spaces that they are aware
have cross-generational significance too. They may have had conversations with older relatives about
their own time at Officer Primary and recognise the significance of spaces beyond themselves. The
acoustic rendering of such connections to place cuts through pure linguistic expressions of connection
to capture an emotional or emotive conjunction. This echoes Ellen Dissanayake’s notion of aesthetic
empathy (Dissanayake 1992 pp. 186-188), in other words, those non-linguistic emotions, feelings and
sensations that are both part of an experience of a self within a landscape, and that shape the experience
itself.
The young participants will also create sound diaries and be encouraged to use them in several ways
(refer also to Waitt & Duffy 2010; Duffy & Waitt forthcoming). First, the diaries allow for the
recording of individual emotional engagement with place and community as they evoke images of
home. In this sense the participants are encouraged to record short words or phrases that express the
emotional connection to Officer. Second, the participants are encouraged to observe, narrate and
reflect on their individual, family and community lives and the places they call home, during a period
in which these places are undergoing change. Combining the sound capture with sound diaries
reinforces the active and ongoing experiences of landscape and place. Though the participants are able
to write in their diaries at any time, the discussions with artists and facilitators will take place the day
after the recording sessions. This ensures the experiences of the recorded spaces are still fresh in the
minds of the participants. Recognising that emotions and sensations can be fleeting, or their totality
can diminish over time, it is important that young people have the opportunity to discuss the
experiences before significant elements fade from their memory.
Sound manipulation
As this is a CCD project valuing participation and the generative drive, the participants will be asked to
engage creatively with both the recorded material and the place of Officer itself. If our earlier premise
is correct, that is, if our feelings and sensations are themselves part of the experience of place, then the
creative engagement with the representations of place will lead to both new representations and new
experiences. Often in community practices the creative process is restricted to an instrumental
function. Participants are encouraged to create theatre performances or dance pieces to tell a story or
narrate an experience. There are many examples of this in texts such as the Community Performance
Reader (Kuppers and Robertson (eds.) 2007), and Adams and Goldbard’s Community, Culture and
Globalisation (2002). Many projects discussed in these texts use the artform as a vehicle with which to
carry or construct a personal or collective narrative.
What Images of Home demonstrates through the manipulation of the recorded soundscape is that the
landscape, the empathic identity, the connective narrative and the artistic vehicle can all be rewritten or
reset. With technical assistance from a CCD sound artist, the young participants can literally remake
their world, their emotional connection and emotional responses to place. A negative response to
changes to the landscape of Officer, perhaps initially represented an emotional loss or longing, can be
remade to the participants’ own choosing. Art-based narrative therefore is no longer representational,
but generative. Like the effect of an echo, one is not restricted to only changing the tone, timbre or
volume of the initial call, but is free to rework the surfaces of the landscape within which the sound
reverberates. This creates a distinct condition for sound-based community arts engagement as the nonlinguistic and non-representational nature of sound breaks the spell of the representational narration
that underpins much CCD work.
Exhibition
Images of Home culminates in an ‘exhibition’ of the reconstructed soundscapes. Here the participants
join with the CCD soundscape artist to create a public sound exhibition of their representations and
reconstructions of Officer and their sense of place. The exhibition is a wonderful way for participants
to share their experiences with friends, family and the wider public. More importantly it will display
the deeper emotional connection to place and the fact that place-making as a representation of social
connection and belonging is often only possible after the elements that constitute a sense of place are
experienced and remade.
Part Two: Fieldwork
Listening to the affective spaces
We meet with the children in the art room, and go over what we're wanting them to do today. They're
eager to get going, sitting in small groups and watching us expectantly. I introduce the research team,
and then remind them about our project. 'Last time when we met we talked about how we'd like you to
take recordings of sounds that mean something to you about the football oval - what sounds would you
collect to share with friends or family about the place?' Nods from many, one group of boys laughing
and talking amongst themselves, while a few sit quietly waiting. While I hand out notebooks to the
children so they can record their observations and ideas, Angie, our sound designer, talks to each
group in turn, explaining how the digital recorder works. We're soon ready to leave, and head out,
ambling in twos and threes, along the main highway, trucks and cars zooming past. We enter the gates
of the oval and make our way to the seats located in front of the pavilion. Excitement increases. We
divide into our small groups, and each spreads out around the western area of the oval. [ethnographic
note, 18/08/2010]
The collection of our sound diaries and follow-up conversations has only very recently started, with a
further two sets of data collection scheduled in the next couple of months. Even so, a preliminary
study of the material from this first field site visit - at the local football oval located about 5 minutes
walk from the school and known as the ROC (Rythdale Officer Cardinia Football Club or ROC FC) has yielded some exciting issues around the connections between sound, affect and belonging. As the
above ethnographic note suggests, we are tapping into emotional and affective relations these children
have with their everyday spaces. The excitement was palpable leading up to our fieldtrip, and
increased over the 2 hours we spent at the oval, as the children moved (ran, skipped, stomped!) through
the various parts of this space. As with all research, we did have some unexpected responses come out
of this initial work. With a few notable exceptions, our participants enthusiastically engaged with
collecting their sounds, not only capturing what was available to them on that day but also attempting
to recreate the sounds and emotions of activities they held as significant to this space - an imaginative
process we had actually scheduled for the second part of our project when the children would work
with the CCD sound artists in the creation of the sound art piece. Yet the children's attempts to
recreate feelings they had experienced at other times at the oval opens up interesting questions about
memory and emotion. These memories were not simply recreating the act but were a recreation of the
affect of that act, an attempt to tap into those affective states of being in this place. Drawing on these
responses, we can start to uncover the ways in which affect and emotion shape our social realities, and
hence our feelings of belonging in place - or conversely how some may feel alienated. In terms of this
project's overall goals, these sounds and the follow-up conversations point to the ways in which sound
can help elucidate the role of affect in constituting social spaces.
Brennan's (2004) work on affect is significant to understanding how the children engaged in this first
field trip visit. Her fundamental argument is that Western conceptualizations of the self as a separate,
bounded and self-contained entity is incorrect. While we may think we are separate, we are, at the
same time, very aware of the ways in which the totality of the environment - that is, the people, the
material and the 'atmosphere' of this environment - 'gets into the individual' (p. 1). How can this be,
she asks, if we are self-contained? As she points out, 'we are peculiarly resistant to the idea that our
emotions are not altogether our own' (p. 2). Her argument is that affect and its transmission is not
generated solely from within an individual, rather that it is a social construction, even while its impact
is biological and physical in effect (p. 3). Brennan goes on to explore these physiological processes
and their involvement in transmitting affect through the notion of entrainment, defined as the alignment
of an individual's nervous and hormonal systems with another's (p. 9).
Brennan's discussion of entrainment is focused on our olfactory senses, and specifically the role
pheromones play as molecules that extend beyond the body so as to connect individuals. This bringing
together of the social and the biological opens up exciting possibilities for understanding the children's
connection to places within Officer as embodied, intuitive and emotional experiences that then go on to
constitute feelings of belonging. As Brennan suggests, affect is the vehicle for connecting individuals
to one another and to the environment, as well as connecting the mind and cognition to bodily
processes (p. 19). However, Brennan fails to fully consider sound's role in transmitting affect and
emotion, instead equating sound and hearing with sight in its affirmation of boundaries and the self’s
contained identity (although she does note the significance of rhythmic entrainment in feelings of well
being and connectedness while arhythmia isolates and separates, p. 70). For further discussion on the
significance of rhythm refer to Duffy et al 2010).
Yet sound is very much about the porosity of the body - a reminder of how very much we are
intertwined within the environment (Ansdell 2004; Kahn 1999; Waitt & Duffy 2010). Hence we wish
to emphasise the significance of listening as a fundamental methodological and theoretical tool in this
project. Through listening - through the time taken to carefully consider the space of the oval and what
its various sounds arouse in the listener - we are asking the children to attend to their connections to
and through this place. In this approach we draw particularly on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy (2007)
who argues that to listen (the French, écouter) is the experience of sound but one which we don't fully
interpret, that is, we need to distinguish the experience of a place from the interpretation we give to that
experience. To listen then is to be immersed within the rhythms and timbres of a space - and it is this
approach that reminds us of our intimate inhabiting of space with others, both human and nonhuman. So while we agree with Brennan that pheromones are important in connecting people, we wish
to acknowledge the intimate physical connection of bodies and the environment through sound waves
(refer also to Benzon 2001). As violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain explains, sound is an intimate
touching for sound as it enters the body (The Music Instinct, broadcast Australian Broadcasting
Commission, 26 August 2010).
Moreover, the processing of sound by the brain is located very closely to the brain’s region for
processing emotion and affect (Benzon 2001; Levitin 2006) - part of the more primitive areas of the
brain and where sensory data processed here bypasses the cognitive processes of vision and
language. This is the significance of sound and hearing, for we respond at a non-cognitive level, that
is, through our unspeakable connections to the world - and, as some have argued, the very reason why
we engage in musical practice (Langer 1942). So it is not what participants can tell us about their
sound collections that is important, for as Brennan tells us, feelings are sensations that 'have found the
right words' (p. 5). Rather we want to explore the affective, non-linguistic and intuitive processes that
constitute self and place. Hence we draw on the participant's attention to his/her bodily affects, of
knowing place not cognitively but experientially, and through this approach we start to hear the ways
in which these children individually and collectively constitute this space.
In the material collected so far for our project such processes of affect were at work, most clearly in
the sounds recorded of 'banging chairs' collected by a number of the children. In our follow-up
conversations many used the words 'annoying' to describe how this sound made them feel, even though
this was a sound they chose to recreate about this space. As one participant, Sarah, explained, 'that was
the chairs getting banged...and it's really annoying because every time you stand up the seat bangs,
when, like if you sit down and stand up the chair falls up and makes a noise...a lot of people do it'
(conversation 18/8/10). Yet on closer questioning there was more to this annoyance than simply the
noise (as loud as it was). Andrea also recorded this sound, but she connected it to specific situations
and members of the school, explaining, 'um, I recorded the chairs all banging together because they’re
really annoying when we're at house athletics and cross country because we'll be sitting on them then
the preps'll [sic] come along and sit on them and then they get off, so they bang together, and it's really
annoying and it's just this really loud banging noise and I absolutely hate it! [laughs]’ (conversation
18/8/10). In thinking about this example, then, what we find is that this particular space at the oval has
attached to it certain affective registers - of annoyance, of knowing/remembering how others act in this
space - registers that the children enter are already attuned to because of prior experience and
knowledge of this space. Yet in recreating that sound, the children took on an affect connected to the
oval space, translated into the feeling of annoyance, then increasing its affective impact - the velocity
and sound of the banging chairs piling up and far exceeding the more usual range of sound of a sports
day - so turning its affective impact into something to be played with and even ridiculed. In the
following sections, we explore these connections through two broad themes raised in this first set
of field data; first, the ways in which the sound diaries drew the children's attention to 'nature', and,
second, the differing scales of sociality that were understood to occur within the space of the oval.
Nature and self
Michelle Duffy: What were you thinking of when you recorded the crunching [of leaves]?
Jane: Well, me and Mary did it because when you, like, walk on it, it cracks, and it, it really sounds like
you're in the bush even though, like, you're nearly on the freeway
MD: Yeah?
J: Yeah, and it sounds really good...it's sort of relaxing, 'cos you can't hear anything except the leaves
Recording the sounds of nature - i.e. bird song, leaves, grass moved by the wind - was a category of
sound collected by many of the children, perhaps not surprising given the rural context of this space
(albeit one that is undergoing rapid urbanisation). Yet, as Jane indicates above, the children were
actually surprised at what they could hear. Noticing for the first time a variety of sounds that they did
not realize were present at the ROC oval, they were keen to both listen to and capture these
sounds. Many such sounds were subtle and required a more contemplative engagement with the space
to recognize them within the soundscape, hence we need to differentiate this focused listening from the
children’s normal engagement with this space.
In the more usual activities that occur at the oval, when the children, particularly the boys arrive at the
ROC oval for football training and matches, they are focused on the excitement of the purpose or task
at hand. Their senses are tuned to those external experiences that enhance their engagement with their
purpose for being at the oval. This task focus has serious consequences, as David was very quick to
point out; ‘Because if we don’t [focus on the game] the coach will put us on the bench… so we have to
train hard and be good to play.’ When training or playing a game of football, David attunes his aural
perception to those sounds relevant to the competent performance of the necessary actions. Many ball
sports such as soccer, Australian Rules football, rugby and tennis etc, require the swift recognition and
classification of sounds to perform competently. David must distinguish between relevant and
irrelevant shouts by teammates, opponents and excited crowd, the footfalls of an opponent closing in
behind to tackle him, as well as directives from his coach. The quicker he can recognize a sound by its
sonorous qualities such as attack or decay, timbre or dynamic, the better he can perform (in a game to
aid his team, or in training to impress his commitment and qualities upon his coach). David is a realtime performative example of R. Murray Schafer’s notion of sonological competence (1994 p.
153). His ear is trained to hone in on those sets of sounds classified as relevant to his performance
when he is required to do so.
However, in visiting the ROC oval as part of Images of Home, the participant’s experiences were very
different. There were no performative expectations associated with the physicality and the behavioural
structures of football. They could be in the space and engage with the soundscape in any way they
chose. Lacking both the need and the context to focus on one set of sounds, there was surprise at what
could be heard when attention was drawn to the possibilities inherent in this space, as this follow-up
conversation demonstrates:
Dean Merlino: …What were some of the noises that you heard, or sounds that you heard that you
don’t normally hear?
Simon: Kookaburras!
DMe: Yeah, right
S: Um, birds. I heard a lot of birds…
Simon recognized for the first time the amount of ‘nature’ sounds contained within the space of the
oval. Moreover the everydayness of these sounds was a revelation to the children. The oval and its
surrounds were not only teeming with sounds, but also teeming with natural life that they had never
noticed. Whilst the engagement with these sounds of nature changed the children’s perception of this
space, it also changed the way in which the space was experienced and emotionally expressed. In the
conversation opening this section of discussion, Jane connects the crunching of leaves with a sense of
being in the bush. Drawing together the immediate physical experience with the memory experience of
walking in the bush, she expressed positive emotional responses connecting the aural to the emotional:
‘…it sounds really good...it's sort of relaxing’. Given her usual experiences of the oval represented by
the sonic agitation of sports and human intention, Jane has recognized the possibility of a calmer and
more relaxed sense of self within that space after she had explored the possibilities through listening.
Similarly, Michael’s capturing of the sounds of walking through long grass shows the connection
between experience, memory and self:
Michael: [The sound is] people walking through the grass
Michelle Duffy: Yeah?
M: And I like that sound ‘cos I like kind of hiking through long grass
MD: Oh, do you get to do that a lot?
M: Yeah
MD: Yeah?
M: I go up to this camping place and yeah [sighs] I walk through long grass
MD: Yeah?
M: Yeah
MD: What do you like about walking through the long grass?
M: Because when I go like something – camping – or...
MD: Yeah?
M: Yeah, or I just like walking around. Having a, like, wandering around and seeing all the stuff
MD: yeah?
M: And the plants there
MD: So recording the sound was a way … recording the sounds was a way to remember those sounds?
M: Yeah
Echoing Nancy’s sentiment that ‘listening opens…up to resonance and that resonance opens… up to
the self’ (p. 25), we hear in these collected nature sounds and the children’s understanding of what
these sounds mean to them a very physical relationship to this place that, while heard through multiple
and overlapping soundscapes, nonetheless anchors the children in their familiar world.
Creativity and self
An unexpected turn of events for the researchers was the attempts by some participants to (re)create
what 'should' be in such a space of 'nature'. Rather than capture the sounds that they were hearing
around them, they constructed some of the hidden sounds behind those of their
everyday experiences. After recognizing the amount of bird sounds at the oval, David attempted to
imitate and capture the sound of a bird pulling leaves off a tree, as he explained later:
Dean Merlino: I heard on one of the tracks, the second track towards the end, there’s kind of almost
like a whipping sound?
David: Yeah
DMe: What was that?
D: Um, the leaves getting pulled off by, like, a bird…
DMe: Was the bird very high up?
D: Oh well, like, I actually done it
DMe: Oh right. To make it sound like a bird?
D: Yeah
DMe: Cool
D: Like a bird trying to pull leaves to eat, or to get rid of
David’s additions to the natural sounds of the oval are significant. Like most of the participants he
recognized the sonic differences between his usual football-related experiences of the oval and the
nature sounds that he was now hearing. But, to further enhance his experience, David added sounds
based on his imaginings of the situation of the natural sounds. He constructed those sounds he
perceived could or should be part of the soundscape, but could not be immediately heard. Yet, even
though these sounds were audible only to him, the additions were critical in the transformation of his
experience of the space.
This behaviour is significant in understanding what is at play in this project. The sound recordings and
comments of the participants have shown the changes in perceptions that occur when one actively
engages in listening to a space. Many of the sounds captured were not in themselves new to the
children, but were new to their experiences of the oval. However as David, Michael and Jane show,
there is a substantial difference between hearing and listening within a landscape. Again drawing on
Nancy, ‘to hear’ is to make sense or understand a situation, both logically and figuratively. Hearing
therefore aids in our contextualization of the spatial and aural experience and of ourselves. In contrast,
‘to listen is to be straining towards the possible meaning, and consequently one that is not immediately
accessible’ (2007 p. 6, emphasis added), hence by creating new sounds the participants are
constructing new meanings within the space of the oval and exploring possibilities that were not
immediately accessible. Listening therefore is to engage in the potentialities of a space, an engagement
requiring several connections between the self and the landscape. One must connect aurally to the
space through hearing, connect emotionally to the experience of hearing (affect), connect temporally to
the emotional response through memory (self), and finally to reconnect to the space creatively through
the construction of possible meaning (reconstruction). In this sense, not only do new interpretations
and transformations emerge for the space, but also possibilities for new meanings and connections to
place appear for the participants. Finally, as a consequence of these processes, there emerge new
possibilities for a sense of belonging and a sense of home.
Different scales of sociality
Many of the sounds collected during this field site visit were overtly about the function of this space.
For example, this is where the football and netball teams practice and play competitively and so the
participants wanted to capture the sounds of these team events - the cheers and excitement of
barracking for your team, the banging of chairs as discussed earlier, the sound of the football and
netball being bounced or kicked, and, for some of the boys, singing the football club’s theme
song. However, during her interview with Deb Manning, Anne captured some of the broader social
implications entailed in the affective relationship to such sounds;
Anne: I like the sound of people cheering like at a football game at ROC because it makes us sort of
feel good because it makes me feel good that people appreciate Officer and everything so it feels
good…to hear people cheering
Deb Manning: So you like hearing people cheer?
A: Yeah
DMa: So how to you feel when you hear that?
A: So I just feel good because like it means that people like Officer and everything, well yeah
In this short excerpt, Anne demonstrates a particular transmission of affect, one she senses as an
atmosphere in which Officer is underestimated or unappreciated, perhaps by the residents or perhaps
by those from outside of the space. When at a football game and experiencing the cheering and vocal
support, the positive atmosphere associated with supporting the ROC Football Club, Anne experiences
the sense that ‘people appreciate Officer’. In attempting to recreate those sounds (i.e. cheering and the
expressions of support) Anne is approximating the physical events as well as the embodiment or
physical experiences that triggered these affective sensations within her. Lucy, who discusses having
captured the sounds of laughing, also supports this reading of the affect around Officer:
Deb Manning: What did you record?
Lucy: Some people like spinning around on it [a roundabout at the oval] and laughing and having fun
DMa: OK and why did you record that?
L: To show that people in Officer like having fun and enjoying (laughs) themselves
DMa: OK, what does that mean to you?
L: Like, it’s fun, and a fun environment and yeah
These examples reflect the different scales of social connection or sociability amongst the
participants. As earlier examples show, some of the children connect to place in a very immediate and
personal way. They captured sounds that were very specific to the space or to their own engagement
with it. Other children connected sounds and their affective register to broader categories of social
engagement. They experienced not just a one-to-one connection between self and space, but a
connection between self and the multiple habitations of space. In other words they recognized the
social construction of place and its role in making meaning. For Anne, the cheering ‘means that people
like Officer’. For Lucy, sounds of laughter means that ‘people in Officer like having fun and
enjoying…themselves’. Through their own embodied experience, the two girls were able to recognise
a large-scale connection to Officer felt by many other people. At other times, sociability was reflected
through small-scale connections that bound the participants to one another. Mary captured the sounds
of her and her friend playing on the slide.
Mary: Well down the slide um the slide is very um it’s a nice ...place to relax and just [takes breath]
talk about well talk about your feelings and all that
Michelle Duffy: Yeah
M: When you’re alone
MD: By yourself or with friends?
M: Well with one friend who understands
MD: Yeah
M: You just talk about yourselves and just go down the slide and up again. ‘Cos I like doing that
MD: Yeah
M: It’s a good experience
MD: Yes. Makes you feel good?
M: Yeah. And I like, also when I go down the slide, I go ‘wheeee’ so I said to Jane, go down the slide
and say ‘wheeee’
The experience for Mary is one where she can be with one special person who ‘understands’. This
understanding refers to both the body moving through space (that is, down the slide) and the expression
of the affect of release (‘wheeee’). This repetitive shared experience creates a space where friends can
connect on a more intimate level. As Mary states, ‘you just talk about yourselves and just go down the
slide and up again’. The sharing of the physicality, an affective state and the conversation creates for
Mary a ‘good experience’ perhaps not just in herself, but also one of sociability. Yet, unlike the
broader sociality of Anne or Lucy above, Mary’s experience is expressly to be shared with only ‘one
friend who understands’. Hence sociability can also be constituted as a private sphere for just a few
people, a sequestered domain, as well as the domain of people en masse.
Conclusion: But is this art?
In this paper we have examined the processes and implications of a sound-based CCD research
project. On the face of it the project is unusual in that it does not situate the participants directly in an
art-making exercise. Rather, we are exploring the very foundations of art-based methodologies for
community engagement and social inclusion. There are four building blocks for CCD present in this
project; participation, connection to the external environment, affect, and creativity.
Though the researchers devised some of the elements of this project, the children from Officer Primary
School chose the sites within Officer to explore. Also, and most importantly, the participants were free
to conduct themselves within those spaces however they chose. As shown above, there were many
different approaches to exploring sound within the oval, from simply recording traffic noise, to
capturing unusual sounds, to constructing missing sounds from the environment. As there was no right
or wrong engagement with the soundscape, the participants produced a remarkable variety of sound
data.
The children themselves decided upon the amount of collaboration with which to make their sound
recordings. Some, like David or Michael, worked alone; others collaborated in twos or threes; while
some of the (re)constructed events, such as the boys singing the football club anthem, required the
collaboration of six or seven participants. All collaboration was purely spontaneous on the part of the
participants. This underscored the differing degrees of sociability exhibited amongst the cohort, as
well as the shared emotional connections to place and affects that some sounds engendered.
We have argued that sound has a significant role in both our experience of the world and in our
everyday lives. Sitting for a few minutes to ‘tune’ themselves to the space before beginning to record
any sounds, the participants were surprised at what they could hear. Whilst this was the same space
both visually and of their recollections, the oval became a different place for them to explore and
connect to aurally. This process of listening and thinking on their relationship to the space led to a
transposition of space into place as new forms of experience and connection were recognized and
investigated.
The capturing of these sounds using digital recorders meant the children could focus on and isolate
those sounds that were of significance to them. In this process, they demonstrated how affective states
are the basis of each participant’s connection spatially and socially: spatially to the oval and to the
broader landscape of Officer, and socially to each other and to a sense of being a resident of Officer. If
theories of affect are correct, as we have argued, then these two senses are interrelated.
Finally, many of the participants engaged creatively with the project, constructing both sounds and
their associated affect so as to transform the space. This was both surprising and heartening as it
showed a natural inclination towards constructive connection to and reclamation of a sense of
place. The belief that we all possess a creative inclination is fundamental in all theorizing about the
community-based art forms. However, the experiences in this project show that in creating a situation
where self, environment and affects intertwine, creativity will manifest. It is critical to note here that
the constructed sounds were all made with found objects and/or vocal effects. There was no need to
create a rupture between self and environment through the artifice of an overt arts project. Rather, the
creativity was a consequence of the connection itself.
Listening to the environment and asking themselves what sounds were significant, the children
explored the real world of what was heard, and the potential world of what was missing. At the same
time, through entrainment and the processes of affect, they were exploring their real connections to
place and hence recognizing connections to place that were absent. The totality of this experience is
the core of the transformative nature of this project.
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