Excerpt: Douglas Robb on Listening to Landscape

Writing about the influence of the work of his mentor Karen Bakker on his own research in LA+ SENSE, the latest issue of Weitzman's interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture, Douglas Robb, who is now an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Calgary and was Weitzman’s inaugural McHarg Fellow in 2022-2023, describes how Bakker’s focus on listening to landscapes offered him a path toward a more inclusive and ethically attuned practice of landscape architecture.
 

In the summer of 2021, as I was preparing for my PhD fieldwork, my supervisor, Karen Bakker, gave me a copy of Sound and Sentiment by the American anthropologist Steven Feld.(1) At first, this book seemed like an odd choice. First published in 1982, Sound and Sentiment explores the soundscapes and acoustic life of the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea. My fieldwork, on the other hand, aimed to study the social and environmental impacts of a controversial new hydroelectric dam in northern British Columbia, Canada. For my fieldwork, I planned to conduct extensive landscape observation and documentation through drawing and photographs, utilizing my eyes rather than my ears. Karen’s gift was welcome, but also confounding: how was an acoustic ethnography based halfway around the world relevant to my research on Canadian energy landscapes? What lesson or insight was she hoping to impart by giving me this book?

In retrospect, I understand that Karen was trying to persuade me to reconsider the importance of sight in my work, and to guide me toward different ways of engaging with landscapes through my other senses—particularly my sense of hearing. At the time, the value of this approach was not apparent to me. But, since then, Karen’s wisdom has reshaped my approach to studying and engaging with landscapes. Her insights have encouraged me to explore the auditory dimensions of our environment, recognizing that sound, too, plays a crucial role in how we experience and understand the world around us.

Karen Bakker sadly passed away in the summer of 2023. This article, framed in her memory, reflects on some of the lessons she taught me. I use this space to review one of her final books, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, and to explore its relevance to design.(2) In doing so, I speculate on the transformative (and, in my view, underdeveloped) role of sound in landscape architecture

Through this exploration, I hope to honor the legacy of Karen’s work and to argue for its potential to influence the development of our discipline profoundly.

The Sounds of Life

The Sounds of Life delves into the hidden world of sonic landscapes, also known as soundscapes. We can think of soundscapes in terms of simultaneous and overlapping layers of sound from different sources: geophony, biophony, and anthrophony. Geophony encompasses the sounds of natural physical processes, such as wind, rain, and geological activity. These sounds form the acoustic backdrop against which all other sounds occur. Biophony includes the sounds produced by nonhuman biological organisms, like birdsong, insect chirps, and whale calls. These sounds are critical indicators of the health and biodiversity of ecosystems. Anthrophony, on the other hand, refers to the sounds generated by human activities, including both beneficial sounds, like music, and detrimental impacts, such as noise pollution from industrial activities.

The Sounds of Life emphasizes the importance of listening closely to our environment, including sounds that occur beyond humans’ auditory range. To access these previously inaudible soundscapes, the book investigates recent advances in the emerging field of digital bioacoustics. Using tools such as ultrasonic microphones and underwater hydrophones (among many others), bioacousticians can capture and analyze sounds that are otherwise imperceptible to the human ear. The Sounds of Life catalogs many of these innovative listening technologies—and the researchers behind them—to investigate how sound can be a powerful tool for environmental monitoring and conservation. For example, the analysis of bird songs can provide insights into the presence and abundance of certain species, offering knowledge of the biodiversity of a landscape; likewise, the monitoring of underwater sounds can reveal information about marine life, which can then be used to guide human activities, such as the reduction of shipping traffic and its associated noise in the presence of migratory whales.

The interplay among digital bioacoustics, environmental sensing technologies, and recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence holds the potential to transform the design and governance of landscapes radically. These technologies can help to enhance ecological and biodiversity values when directed toward efforts such as habitat conservation, landscape restoration, renewable energy deployment, and other pro-environmental causes. But the act of listening also carries certain practical and conceptual risks; like the predatory colonial gaze, digitally enhanced hearing can be used as a form of biopower, opening up new frontiers of passive surveillance, control, and exploitation. Digital tools can enhance humans’ listening capabilities, but they can also distance us from direct, unmediated sensory experiences. The need for digital technologies to access these soundscapes raises questions about experiential authenticity.

In exploring these complex dynamics, The Sounds of Life invites us to recognize and reflect upon the often-overlooked auditory dimensions of landscapes. This is particularly relevant for landscape architecture, in which sonic engagement with the environment has been historically overshadowed by visual approaches. Emphasizing sound challenges us to rethink our familiar research and design practices and to consider how other senses can deepen our understanding of landscapes in more ethical and inclusive ways.

Read the full article on ISSUU.
 

1) Steven Feld, Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (Duke University Press, 1982).

2) Karen Bakker, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants (Princeton University Press, 2022).