For many people listening is often equated with being a passive process — our anatomy bears this out. Unlike our eyes, which we actively and subconsciously move across the visual field, or our skin, which we move into proximity with an object to enable touch, our ears neither require (nor make) any actively visible movement to receive sound, even though anatomically the human process of hearing involves much physical and sensational/vibrational movement in the middle and inner ear. Metaphorically we “perk up our ears” when we hear or learn of something that piques our curiosity, and symbolically this denotes a move from a more passive type of observational, reflective, or “field” listening to a more attentive and consciously active mode of listening.
In connecting sound to an array of vital human relationships with place, the Listen(n) project advances a concept of aurality which links practices of listening to practices of placemaking inherent to community-based participation and the creation of shared value. As a process that functions both proximally and distally to the physical body, listening engages simultaneous modes of encounter through which the listening subject actively responds to the sounds being heard and critically reflects upon the connections they detect within them. An aural attunement to place requires understanding how these two modes of encounter work together to both pinpoint opportunities for shared value within each of the local communities, and to promote shared dialogue about the deeper relationships between sound and the environment on a global level (Lisbeth Lipari, Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement 2014).
When the National Parks Service asks you to “Know/Find Your Park,” they are asking you to connect all those dots between the various ways that you understand your park to exist — what emotional value does your park provide to you, and evoke within you? what layers of memory about your park come rising to the surface through a particular smell, sound, or physical experience? If you’ve never been to a National Park, how might the way you imagine a National Park to be have a hand in your larger understanding and connection to these outdoor spaces? In many respects, the questions my colleague Sabine Feisst asks in her post “Listen to Your Park” are very much about this process of attunement, and its role in connecting the practices of listening to the practices of placemaking. How do your sound-based memories of a particular place make that place meaningful and identifiable to you?