Illness, Isolation, and Perceptions of Bells in Bissingen
What does it mean to experience a place from a single point of listening? During a field trip to Bissingen, Germany, illness confined me to my room — and offered an unexpected perspective on church bells, isolation, and the fragile rhythms of time. This personal reflection explores how soundscapes are not only heard but embodied, manifesting through the listener’s states of body-mind and creating shifting relations to community and place.
Listening to the Memory on the Street
Text: Carolin Müller Walking may be just as important to scholars of sonic environments as the sounds encountered in motion. Central to this is the relationship between the human body and the ground it touches while moving through space. Frauke Berendt (2018, 251) notes that soundwalks represent a specific form of human mobility, characterized by […]
On Silences
Text: Heikki Uimonen Having started the SOMECO fieldwork, it is gratifying to note two recent publications on village environments. The one dealing with Lapland, Finland shows how experienced silences indicate the lack of vitality of the village, and how sounds considered meaningful by the community and individuals have disappeared. Another publication presents the abandoned mine […]
50 years is a long time
Text: Meri Kytö & Kaj Ahlsved Rhythmanalysis in soundscape studies has dominantly meant looking into circadian, daily rhythms. This project opens up a much longer span of time, practically of two generations. Last Sunday happened to be “Goldene Konfirmation”, that is, the 50th anniversary of the confirmation of the Spring 1975. The mass started with […]
Signals of Change and Continuity: Coahoma County and Bissingen
Text: Heikki Uimonen Twenty years ago, in my ethnomusicological dissertation on sonic environments, I quoted Alan Lomax. Lomax writes that the musical history of Coahoma County, Mississippi had three periods, each signalled by a characteristic sound: a steamboat blowing for a landing, a locomotive whistling on a three-mile grade, and a Greyhound bus blaring down […]
Sensory Experience of Glass and Brass
Text: Heikki Uimonen Sensing individuals are affected by their culture and personal history. Nevertheless, cultures are not just filters of sensory experience, as anthropologist Tim Ingold concludes. People are informed by their senses as they move through particular cultures, which themselves have particular materialities. (Bijsterveld 2000, 14.) So, what is then the cultural study of sound […]
Human soundscape, strange weather, and methodologies
Text: Heikki Uimonen, Anne Tarvainen & Kaj Ahlsved On Friday morning, the Someco research team sat down for a coffee at the Peppes Café in Lessebo to wait for the train to come and to reflect on the field work. The first thing we noticed was how friendly the people were and how positive they […]
Småland Acoustemology
Text: Heikki Uimonen Steven Feld was interviewed by Tom Rice in the article “Questioning Acoustemology”. A highly recommended read on acoustemology, culture and individuals’ specific ways of relating to the sensory environment. Their discussion provided food for thought for the SOMECO pre-fieldwork reflections that took place online at the end of 2014: how anthropologists of […]
Music for millions
Text: Heikki Uimonen There is an antique shop on the north side of the railway line through the village of Skruv. The shop covers an area of five hundred square metres. It sells second-hand furniture and household items: tools, bolts, crockery, textiles, and so on. In the far corner is a section filled with books […]
Someco interviewed in Sveriges Radio
Click to listen to our chat with journalist Tova Klinthäll (report & photo). https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/sa-later-skruv-finska-forskare-dokumenterar