Abstract

Desertsoundlore: Deep Listening to Aura in the Mojave Desert
By Lorrie Edmonds

This thesis engages with the notion of Walter Benjamin’s ‘aura’ through impressions of sonic aura as discovered within the soundscapes of a kilometre of rural desert situated in North Joshua Tree, California. By employing a methodology of immersive listening techniques and a Harawayan lens of ‘making-kin’, explorations involved focused aural attention to ephemeral soundscape moments, soundwalking into wild protected land and prioritization of respect-laden empathy in the reception of sound events onsite. This paper discusses overbearing constraints imposed by desert climates, the ubiquity of technological reproductions of subjective auratic experience in our contemporary world and the potential for the withering of sonic aura once its recorded atmospheric sounds have been decontextualized from their original site. This paper also discusses the struggle to represent the authenticity of an immersive listening experience at a site of aura through electroacoustic sound works when the recordist’s memory of perceived auratic moments become unstable through cracks in post-site information, understanding and reflection over time.

Keywords: research-creation, aura, sonic aura, immersive listening, authenticity, Mojave Desert.