Ecologia dell’impercettibile e derive dell’ascolto: pratiche sonore in Antartide

Traversing sound environments of the contemporary era also means crossing over into the territories of the post-human. It means dealing with the critique of acoustic anthropocentrism and with the possibility of exploring political relations in their material aspects to redefine the terms of negotiation between human and beyond-human. By creating connections and associations in its presence and absence, revealing its inaccuracies as an object and form, the sound triggers the auditory imagination and produces a different, “sonorous” sense of things. In this way it pushes us towards new, unexplored territories in which it becomes possible to experience more complex relationships with the “natural” world. This article proposes a critical reflection on the theme of acoustic ecology, through the problematization of a series of categories that have traditionally oriented the practical and theoretical exploration of this area of research within the field of sound studies in recent decades. The starting point of this analysis lies in the possibility of redefining the experience of the “sense” of place through a reconsideration of the digital practices of recording, listening and remediation, as happens in the speculative and practical approach developed by sound artists Alejandra Pérez Núñez and Philip Samartzis in a series of sound investigation works developed in the Antarctic continent in recent years.