Il suono come metodo: ecologie dell’ascolto nell’arte sonora
[Sound as a method: ecologies of listening in sound art]
Published in: Quaderni dell’Accademia
Date: 01/2027
Abstract:
Through a series of examples drawn from the author’s personal portfolio (no blank pages, Non si era mai vista tanta neve), the aim is to show how considerations on soundscape fit within an electroacoustic tradition that brings perception back to the centre, offering the opportunity to return to a discourse that situates the listener in the world not only in a phenomenological sense but also in a sociological one. This assertion of situatedness is now so deeply rooted and mature in contemporary practices that the very concept of landscape is superseded in favour of a broader and more conscious ecology of listening. The author’s journey shows how sound is increasingly becoming a means and a method of acting upon territory, of exploring the simultaneity of events, of creating opportunities for dialogue between concurrent yet distant elements. No longer aestheticised sound, therefore, but sound as a moment of aisthesis: capable of investigating, bearing witness, positioning itself and entering into relation, in the revelation of an inextricable bond between aesthetics, ethics, and care — which finds its place in what, in Lefebvrian terms, might be defined as the potential conflictual space defined by art.
Ethical-Aesthetic Convergences in Ecologically Oriented Electroacoustic Practices
Published in: EMS2025 Conference Proceedings
Date: 03/2026
Abstract:
This paper examines the convergence of ethical and aesthetic frameworks in electroacoustic practices shaped by ecological awareness. It begins by addressing how the semiotic richness of recorded sound—central to the interdisciplinary nature of electroacoustic music—has encouraged composers to engage with philosophical and scientific discourses on perception, environment, and alterity. Drawing on traditions such as the GRM and the World Soundscape Project, the paper traces how figures including François Bayle and Luc Ferrari, alongside more recent practitioners such as Toshiya Tsunoda, Anne F. Jacques, and Diane Barbé, have employed sound recording to articulate situated and relational perspectives. These practices reveal a perceptual ethics informed by phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) and early ecological thought (von Uexküll), challenging modernist notions of aesthetic autonomy. Instead, they reclaim aesthetics in its original sense—as aisthesis, the embodied practice of perception—proposing a compositional approach grounded in attentive listening, ecological sensitivity, and the politics of sonic engagement within an increasingly interdependent world.