Seismograf Peer - Sound and the More-Than-Human Worlds
Audio paper for Seismograf Peer
Being-at-work in the Field
This paper explores how field recording practices can be impacted by concepts from the fields of energy production/efficiency [Lovins,1976] and energy ethics [Marder, 2017].
We’ve seen greater focus on the agency of field recordists at work; from noisy non-presence [Wright, 2017], to extractivist listening [Robinson, 2020], yet attempts to capture worlds without anthropogenic noise persist [Winderen, 2019]. Simultaneously, the embodied energies of recording tools have come under scrutiny [Polli, 2017, Wright 2022]; where ethics of care are held close.
But what of the field itself? From an energy perspective, we need actualisation rather than potential for fieldwork, and thus require the field to expend energy for our purposes. In this paper, I’ll look, via Michael Marder’s philosophical work, at how we have come to think of energy as resource. How post-WWII optimism led to the energy crisis of the 1970s, and how mitigating strategies contributed to the present energy situation.
With reference to my own fieldwork: with more-than-human worlds in experimental nuclear fusion, and isostatic uplift in the Baltic, I’ll consider the energy dynamics of human expectation and demand on the field itself and show, despite the best intentions, how we often still operate within 20C energy strategies and paradigms.
Additional broadcasts on Lake Radio
The paper is also being featured on rotation at Lake Radio in 2026.
Upcoming
Symposium: Telling (Other) Energy Stories
15-16 September, Bristol, UK
Julian will present a paper at Telling (Other) Energy Stories; a symposium co-organised by the University of Exeter's Nuclear Societies Research Group and the University of Bristol's Centre for Environmental Humanities.
LOM+you
Julian is very pleased to have had a forthcoming project supported by LOM audio under their LOM+you initiative.
Details coming soon…
Recent
Colour Out of Space - 17-19 April 2026
Julian has been invited to present a public soundwork for the 9th edition of COOS: the experimental sound art art festival in Brighton, UK.
Autumn/Winter 2025
Future Audition: in the offing
Beyond Infrastructure?
Julian will present a paper Future Audition: in the offing at Beyond Infrastructure? (Un-)built Environments in the Anthropocene in Vienna, Autumn 2025
Future Audition: in the offing presents an investigation of Nuclear Fusion, its ongoing quest to become the power source of the future, and its wider implications in terms of post-natural environment and energy landscapes.
The conference will address a variety of issues stemming from human axnd more-than-human interactions with built, unbuilt, and not-yet-built environments, this conference infuses infrastructure studies with environmental perspectives. It will feature contributions from across the social sciences, arts and humanities, natural sciences, and engineering, engaging with any part of the world – and beyond.
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, together with the ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth (Building Arctic Futures: Transport Infrastructures and Sustainable Northern Communities) as a scientific cooperation partner, are hosting the international conference Beyond Infrastructure? (Un-)built Environments in the Anthropocene at the University of Vienna.
Echoes in the Park
Voluntary Encounters
Julian has been commissioned to make a new geolocated sound work for Greenwich Park, in South London.
Echoes in the Park is a new project by the Centre for Sound & Image at Greenwich University and will run on a custom version of the echoes platform
The app is scheduled to launch as part of SOUND/IMAGE Festival, London, UK
Autumn/Winter 2024
Bar de Água
In Autumn 2024, Julian presented Bar de Água as part of a residency at Binaural Nodar in Várzea (Viseu), Portugal. Bar de Água strictly adheres to the association's ethos which states that it
"…is important to move away from a certain anthropological sway (still very much
present in contemporary art), in which a community is considered just as a carrier of
images, stories, knowledge or experiences, and the artist just has to receive that
information and work from it." – Challenges #6, The Nodar Case.
Bar de Água then took the form of a series of conversations where interested members of the community were asked to tell us something about the local springs. Field recordings made only at locations given during the conversations, are anonymously mapped (not shown) and played in the bar.
A duplicate and initially blank map (pictured above) is presented for residents to populate using coloured pins, yarn connected to written cards under a subset of themes (Memory, Faith, Community, Springs, Agriculture,Infrastructure) that arose during the conversations.
During their work, the bar provided handmade effervescent elaborations of the communal Várzea spring water in a classic trio of tart, stinking and salt.
Nearly Present - Installation in Preston, UK
Nearly Present is installed at the Birley Artist Studios, Preston UK during November - December, 2024
Nearly Present is a configurable multichannel streaming installation where the speakers are enclosed in Wardian Cases; a 19th century metamaterial developed to facilitate the global, commercial conveyance of living plants in closed environments, and which led to global ecological cosmopolitanism
By drawing parallels between, and attention to, historical and contemporary transportations of materials within microclimates, Nearly Present provides routes into exploring the roles that the exotic, the commonplace, and the invasive, play in remote transmission and listening.
Nearly Present was commissioned by Full of Noises as part of Acoustic Commons: a Small Cooperation Project supported in part by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union - acousticommons.net.
Spring/Summer 2024
In the Field 2
In July 2024, Julian presented Being-at-work in the Field at In the Field 2: A three day event exploring the themes, issues and practices of contemporary field recording. Full details and tickets are available from the Crisap website
Outwork moves to a new location
In spring this year, the new owners at Nehaven Fort closed for restoration. Outwork, installed there for the last six years, was moved to a new location in Sussex run by The Ecomusicology Project.
Particularly exciting is the opportunity to run the acoustic tests that just weren’t possible to achieve on the windy coastline.