Though sound art is broad in scope and hard to define, Dauby says in contrast to music, the field “just asks questions about listening — it puts the listener into a situation where he or she must ask, ‘What am I listening to? How am I listening [to this sound]?’”
For Dauby, listening — or just paying particular attention to a sound — can deepen our understanding of our surroundings. He uses the cicada as an example when teaching workshops or holding seminars. “In Taiwan, there are more than 60 species, which means there are 60 different sounds. And 60 different sounds of cicadas means 60 different ways of listening to summer in Taiwan.”
THE PLEASURE OF LISTENING
On Songs, each of the 16 species of frogs gets its own track, on which Dauby splices together (but doesn’t manipulate, mix or overlap) recordings made at different locations.
Dauby works much in the same way as biologists or enthusiasts collecting sounds of nature: He traipses through forests, microphone in hand, wearing big headphones and a backpack full of recording equipment, searching for his subject with his ears.
But his final product differs from the five-second sound bites one might find on educational or science Web sites. His tracks range from three to seven minutes long, and are not just designed to help identify each species. His selected snippets emphasize the “pleasure” of listening and “the experience of sound.”
One of the most striking recordings is of Molrecht’s Treefrog, which sounds like a wood block being struck. In the first half of the track, two frogs engage in a lively call-and-response session across a ditch. Later on, a group of males starts chirping and their voices cascade into a surreal, polyphonic chorus that sounds electronic.
But is it music? Dauby says what he hears in a chorus of frogs is not so different from the work of one of his favorite classical composers, Gyorgy Ligite (best known for the sound track to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Oydessy). “When you observe it from a distance, you have this amazing structure, which is very complicated and very well done, and very well composed.”
Dauby questions the premise of typical recordings of nature, such as the new age variety that blends environmental sounds with atmospheric music. He feels this “promotes an image of nature that is naive” and “doesn’t ask any questions.”
“This is why on the CD there is no [narration] explaining things,” he said. “So the listener is alone with the frogs. This is also why there is no music or other sounds — because we don’t really need that.”
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