Abstract
This article traces the making of a pastoral landscape in sound in Chris Watson’s Inside the Circle of Fire: A Sheffield Sound Map, a temporary sound installation commissioned by Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery in 2013. In accordance with pastoral tropes, Watson forges a liminal space for retreat where figurations of nature, traditional labour practices and civic rituals help to celebrate the local sonic scene. This article finds in Watson’s work not a sentimental pastoral but a critical and complex pastoral, which speaks to the pressures and anxieties of the present, in this case to environmental pressures in their ecological and sonorous manifestations. The pastoral offers a mode of critique for unpacking a sonic imagination made up of particular historic and situated sonic engagements with sound and sound technology, brought to bear on Watson’s ways of hearing and handling both sound and landscape. The article answers recent calls to situate celebratory discourses surrounding environmental field recording practices within their cultural, historical and technological contexts. Detailed contextual and critical interpretation also build a broader argument concerning the ongoing need for field-based discussions to supplement the now expansive work on sound’s affectivities in cultural geography and beyond.
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