Daniel Gilfillan, Associate Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is lead author on Unsinging the Planet: Sonic Decomposition in Two Austrian Soundscapes, a new publication in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture.
Says Gilfillan: We often think of environmental change as something we see, but it's also something we hear. This research shows that listening to the ways human and nonhuman sounds interact can help us better understand ecological resilience and imagine new ways of living with a changing planet.
A brief summary follows:
This essay explores the concept of “unsinging” as a decompositional practice working with forms of sonic instability and ecological entanglement. Through a close reading of two Austrian sound installations—Klangatoll by alien productions and Rolling Stones by Andrea Sodomka—the essay examines how human and nonhuman agencies coproduce dynamic sonic environments that resist idealized notions of pristine soundscapes. Drawing on ecological resilience theory, materialist philosophy, and posthumanist sound studies, the analysis develops unsinging as an alternative to optimization-based compositional approaches, demonstrating how decomposition enables new forms of acoustic engagement with ecological transformation.