This set of exercises explores speculative listening as a methodological and conceptual device to work through sound materials present in archives. What are the ways in which the sonic can be read, engaged with, and responded to in an archive? How can the practice of sounding, voicing, and listening creatively annotate the archive? Through the use of text scores that incorporate deep listening practices, speculation, and reconstructions, we will examine the many sensorial and generative possibilities of listening to an archive.

Below are brief explanations of some concepts, terms, and keywords that inform the different parts of the exercise.  

Deep Listening  

A practice developed and termed by artist and composer Pauline Oliveros1 as one that involves setting apart the act of hearing from the practice of listening and going below the surface of what is heard to listen deep and wide. In their words, “Deep Listening comes from noticing my listening or listening to my listening.”2 A range of exercises and sonic meditations have been documented by Pauline Oliveros which I will be referring to in the context of “deep listening to the archive.”  

Listening vs Hearing 

While hearing refers to the physical means by which sounds are perceived, listening is to give attention to what is perceived not only in acoustic terms but also socially, psychologically, culturally. While hearing can be considered a perceptual and involuntary act, listening involves degrees of intentionality. 

Sample/Sampling 

The process of taking a section of an audio track and reworking it as a part of another audio piece through the processes of cutting, looping, splicing, and manipulating the section.  

Sonification 

Translation of material that is visual, textual, numerical, or other non-sound data into sound. 

Sound Documents 

Any kind of archival material or media that is primarily sonic in its format. This could be an audio track, recording, song, found sound, audio sample, soundscape, conversation, interview, composition, audio essay, voice note, documentation of sound artworks, etc.  

Text Score 

A short guide or set of instructions to interpret, compose, or perform a sound piece. In the context of this artist exercise, a text score refers to the guideline section of each exercise. It doesn’t require specialist knowledge of conventional or classical systems of notation. 

• To propose listening as a mode of artistic research in archives 

• To generate a sense of curiosity and interest in sonic materials 

• To sharpen and reflect on one’s own practice and language of listening  

• To explore and unpack some key concepts of sound and experiment with ways of applying them creatively to archival practices 

Intended Audience 

This artist exercise is designed for a wide range of audiences from art students, educators, artists, writers, and practitioners across disciplines who are either currently working with archives or are interested in exploring them through artistic research. 

Archival References Used 

The exercises draw on materials from the Lee Wen Archive. The experimental and multimedia practice of Lee Wen constitutes a large and diverse collection of sound documents from improvised live jams to produced tracks, conversations, ambient soundscapes, sound documentation of performances, and recordings of background sound. A mix of solo and collaborative works, Lee Wen’s vast oeuvre reflects his many adventures and explorations of sound in his creative processes and performance works. This material becomes a rich and layered field for exploring forms of archival and speculative listening.  

Other Possible Sources 

In order to extend to other relatable possibilities, students may bring in their own sound materials from other sources. A sound document can be borrowed from a diverse range of sources such as art collections, family archives, public and institutional archives, scientific archives, and field recordings, among others.   

Materials Required  

• Pen and paper for making the field notes. Digital note taking or mind mapping applications can also be used. 

• Headphones or speakers. For a group, the activity would benefit from listeners alternating between the two.  

• Sound documents either selected by participants or chosen by the facilitator. 

• A simple audio recording and playback app. 

• A basic computer application for joining and merging audio clips and performing other elementary audio operations (e.g., Online Converter is an easy and accessible browser-based application that can be used for this). 

Duration 

10–20 minutes. 

Background and Intent 

The warm-up exercises include material from the works of two artists–Haytham El-Wardany’s artist monograph, How to Disappear, and Pauline Oliveros’ anthology of text scores that emerged from her deep listening practice. 

Both warm-ups are geared towards drawing attention to one’s sonic environment while encouraging open-ended observations and reflections on the ways in which one listens. These warm-ups become a way to ease into the imaginative and speculative realms of listening while becoming aware of the subjective and embodied experience of the practice.  

Warm Up 1 

The artist monograph by Haytham El-Wardany begins with a preliminary exercise titled “How to Disappear.” This becomes the first warm-up to ease into the subsequent listening exercises.  

Adjustments can be made based on the participant’s setting.  

For example: “Sit alone in a public space like a cafe, garden, or public square” can be simply replaced with “Sit, by yourself, wherever you are at.” 

The monograph can be accessed and read here: https://aaa.org.hk/archive/334045 

Image: Haytham El-Wardany, "How to Disappear" (Kayfa ta, 2013), 14–15.

Warm Up 2  

Written in 1979, Imaginary Meditations is one of the many scores developed by Pauline Oliveros that focus on directing attention to listening and to the perceptions that shape the act of listening.  

What is important about this chosen piece is that it gently guides the listener or reader into the space of philosophical reflections on how they might be listening. This can pave the path for moving into Exercise 1.

Image: Pauline Oliveros, "Anthology of Text Scores" (Deep Listening Publications, 2013), 51.

Notes/Questions for Discussion after Warm Ups 

The facilitator can use some of these prompts to aid discussion after the warm ups and then transition into the main exercise sections.  

1. Was there any specific sound that you heard or kept hearing?  
2. Were you aware of sounds you produced in the process? 
3. How are the sounds you produced different from the ones in the environment around you?  
4. Were there any moments when the environmental sounds and your own became indistinguishable?  
5. Did you start noticing more sonic detail over time? 
6. What are all the different scales of sound that you encountered in both the warm ups? 
7. What did your own resonance in the second warm-up sound like?  
8. How far ahead and back in time could you go in the two warm-ups?  
9. Do you feel any shift in your listening? 
10. Can you sense the difference between hearing and listening? 

Digging in the Field

Image: Suvani Suri, "Digging in the Field overviews," 2024.

Intent

This exercise focuses on exploration as a primary ingredient of listening to archives. It follows from the methodology of deep listening. Sound documents are framed as a field for the participants and listeners to navigate. The attempt is to listen to the scene captured in the recording, to explore freely and observe for details as if one were inhabiting the scene.  

This process of listening as digging can be practiced on any kind of sound document. Through a process of individual and collective listening, annotating, zooming in, focusing, moving around the recording like one would scan a photograph, details of the field can then be dug out. As the sound document is scanned, three layers of frequencies are excavated. Details of these will be described in the exercise below. 

Duration 

Sound documents can be replayed several times to dig for deeper intricacies. For this exercise, the suggested timestamp has been provided along with the link to the sample exercise. 

Text Scores 

Audio clip: Exercise 1-Audio Instructions.wav 

Select a sound document.  

Give it a name. The act of naming the document is unique to the way you decide to enter into it as a reader-listener. 

Make a note of its duration in brackets next to the name. 

Pay close attention to the sound document. Imagine the recording as a field that you are digging into. 

Layer 1 

Move through the space of the recording. Shift your attention and awareness to different spaces in the field that you are hearing, or not hearing. 

As you slowly scan the field, listen to everyone and everything in the field.  

Pay close attention to the sounds you can immediately catch. These could be sounds and voices that can be heard clearly over and above all else. 

Pluck the sounds out of the field and drop them into the first cluster. 

Draw a shape that you feel represents the field. You can also modify the shape as you continue to listen to the document. 

Layer 2 

Move through the space of the recording. Shift your attention and awareness to different spaces in the field that you are hearing, or not hearing. 

Shift your attention and awareness to different spaces in the field you are hearing and pay attention to the sounds that are harder to catch immediately. 

What is the farthest and closest sound? 

What sound feels familiar, what doesn’t?  

Are there sounds whose source you can identify?  

Are there those you cannot trace back to a source? 

Attend to the familiar sounds. Then shift your attention to the unfamiliar ones.  

What do you hear? What do you observe?  

Pluck these sounds out of the field and ask yourself where they might be coming from. 

Add them to the second cluster. 

Layer 3  

Move through the space of the recording. Shift your attention and awareness to different spaces in the field you are hearing, or not hearing. 

Listen to your own body located in the field.  

How are you listening? Imagine you are walking around in the field.  

Notice the shift in sounds when you move.  

Keep penning down your notes and reflections in the third cluster.  

Is there something in the sound field that you keep returning to?  

Is there something interrupting or blocking your movement in the field?  

Keep plotting your observations as notes, sketches, or a map with timecodes if you like. 

Additional Prompts  

Here are more prompts to help you dig into the field of the sound document while you listen:  

• What can you listen to in the field?  

• Can you zoom into one part of the recording and draw out what is hidden from your field of view? Write or sketch to bring it out. 

• Does listening to the recording in this way make you want to know more about something in the scene? 

• What more would you like to find out about from this scene? 

• How would you describe this scene visually? 

• Are there any trails you started following after scanning the field? Where did it take you? 

• Return to the prompts in the warm-up exercises to help dig out the field further.  

As you assemble all your field notes and reflections for this sound document, highlight the key observations excavated from the field. You could also draw out the visual representations of these key elements in the form of letters, words, basic shapes, squiggles, images, and colours. 

Post-activity questions for discussion and reflection 

Individual 

• What are observations from the field that strike you as the most significant?  

• Did the listening generate contradictory observations about the same moments? 

• What could this form of digging yield? Where does it run into a dead end?  

• Would you like to try it out in a group? 

Group 

• What are observations from the field that were commonly shared by the group?  

• Did the different listenings generate counter-observations about the same moments? 

• What could this collective digging yield? Where does it run into a dead end?  

Collecting Sound and Un-sound

Image: Suvani Suri, "Collecting Sound/Unsound overviews," 2024.

Intent 

This exercise focuses on the associative and extrapolative aspects of listening.  

The intention of this exercise is to attempt to expand the archival field. For this expansion to take place, participants will be listening for clues, traces, and resonances in the sound document produced through the listener’s encounters with the archival material. 

Detailed descriptions and narratives will activate findings or questions from the earlier exercise and begin the speculative movement in and around the field. 

By thinking of the field of the sound document as a physical terrain with niches, cracks, crackles and crevices that constitute the recording, participants can draw out possible questions and connections to what the archive holds beyond that which is in the audible range. 

Duration 

20–25 minutes.  

Text Scores 

Audio clip: Exercise 2-Audio Instructions.wav 

Keep the clusters of notes and findings from the first exercise in front of you. 

Two kinds of movements will be enacted as a part of the second exercise—a movement inwards and a movement outwards.  

As you scan the field again, begin with the inwards movement. 

Listen to yourself for your own sound. 

Describe it in words and/or draw it out.  

Now return your attention to listen to the sound or voice in the track you are hearing. 

Ask yourself: 

• What does it evoke in you? 
• Is there a memory that it brings, an association that it releases, or a thought that it provokes?  
• How do you feel about the tone in which it speaks to you? Is it warm or cold? Does it have a colour to it? Does it feel pleasant or unpleasant? Is it soft or harsh? 

Make a note at every step. 

Now, listen to the crackles, hisses, and artifacts in the sound document you are playing. 

What do you hear in them?  

Continue with the inward movement, drawing out associations from your own experiences. 

Make the shift outwards.  

Listen for the spaces and environment captured in the crackles. 

What do you hear in them?  

The outward movement involves drawing out connections from the field to other possible fields. 

Look through other documents in the archival collection. These could be sound or non-sound.  

Can you trace any connections from other documents to the sound document that is the key field of your investigation? 

Can you find other experiences that echo in this one? 

Come back to the crackles, hisses, and artifacts in the sound document that you are playing. 

When you find something you want to hold onto in the artifacts, keep listening for a while.  

Keep shifting between the inwards to the outwards and back again. 

As you continue listening to the field of the sound document, keep browsing through other parts of the archive. Ask yourself: 

• Are there any silences in the field? 
• Are there any gaps in the recording? 
• Are there any rhythms or patterns you can locate within the field or outside of it? 

If yes, separate them out in the form of a note. 

Annotate per the timecodes.  

Lay them out and see if they can be mapped to other field notes.   

Listen to the characters and voices hidden in the crackles. Map them out to the field notes. 

What does the lspace in the recording look like? 

Can you try and imagine what kind of recording apparatus was used?  

How does it change the sound of the room or the sound of the speaking voice?  

What else are you straining to hear? 

Imagine what you cannot hear in these layers of sound. 

What do you want to know about what you cannot hear?  

Make a note again. 

Invite someone else in the group to listen to what you have found in the field that cannot be heard. 

Listen to their findings as well.  

Can you collect and render the unsound in the form of a description?  

What are questions that were raised during this process?  

Additional Prompts  

• Generate five possibilities of what might be happening in the scene as you give it a listen. 

• What could be the possible sources generating the sounds in the field? 

• Is there anything you don’t comprehend the source of? Can you generate speculations about what that might be? 

• Can you map the different sounds you hear to other places, objects, or environments?  

Post-activity questions for discussion and reflection (individual & group) 

• How would you describe your relationship with the sound document after this exercise? 

• Are participants more drawn to sharing responses via text or speech?  

Resounding

Image: Suvani Suri, "Resounding overviews," 2024.

Intent 

This score focuses on reconstructing the sound document based on what has been collected. The intention of this exercise is not only to hold sound, but to reproduce it in one’s voice. It uses individual and collective listening for the purpose of rearranging, reconfiguring, and remixing the archive. Here the reframing of what is heard draws out the inner resonances and various lives in the sound documents. 

Duration 

20–25 minutes.  

Text Scores 

Audio clip: Exercise 3-Audio Instructions.wav 

This exercise begins with laying out all your field notes and descriptions collected in the process of listening to the sound document. Keep these notes handy to browse through.  

Revisit the associations collected as part of the inwards and outwards movements in Exercise 2. 

Select field notes to insert into the sound document.  

Collect the corresponding timecodes for these field notes. 

Based on the selected timecodes, make a sample library of clips from the sound document. To do this, you can simply play that timestamp and re-record it on your phone. 

The next step is to vocalise and create another library from your field notes. This will be used to remix the archive. 

Place a recorder next to you. 

Narrate your encounter with the archive, in the form of short clips. 

To do this, you could voice out your notes, questions, and describe your observations and findings. 

You could also speak aloud the connections you have traced in the earlier two exercises. 

Be aware of how you are positioned in the room when recording. 

Observe your own breathing.  

All these observations can be voiced aloud and be a part of the clips you are recording. 

Once this library is assembled, you can select a few to remix the sound document with. 

Use a basic audio merger application to string together the samples and selected clips into one file, which is your own resound document now.  

Stack both the sound and resound documents and play them together to see what emerges when they connect. 

What you have is a very first version of your speculative listening remix of the sound document. 

Replay. 

Post-activity questions for discussion and reflection (individual & group) 

• What did you find the most challenging about this exercise? 

• How do you feel after replaying the sound document with your insertions?  

• What would you want to do differently in another attempt?  

The sample exercise is based on the sound document of Lee Wen’s Ghost Stories. (34 min, 8 sec) 

Field Notes 

• Sample exercise: Field Notes .pdf

Resound Document 

• Resound Sample-Ghost Stories.wav

Reflections

• Trusting one’s own instincts is an important part of research and speculative inquiry. When listening to the archival field, your own intuitions, interests, and curiosities can often become orientating instruments and offer clues to navigate the field.  

• Don’t be afraid to spot connections that may not be immediately evident on the surface. The search for cross-connections that link up the field of the sound document with what is outside of it is at the heart of this process. 

• There is immense value in performing these exercises collectively as it can yield a rich collection of listening perspectives and creative observations. This can in turn augment one’s own capacity to observe, extrapolate, and develop questions informing research processes and speculative methods. 

• To listen is to re-listen. The more time that is spent listening over and over again, the deeper one can dig into the field. 

Way Forward/ Possible Outcomes

• A collection of questions, speculations, and counter-speculations in the form of notes, annotations, and drawings can be compiled into an auxiliary journal of readings and listenings. 

• The participants can further expand on this exercise by writing their own guidelines or text scores to research the archival field.  

• This exercise could also be applied to other material, textual or visual, through the act of sounding out what is in an archival document. 

• An extension of this exercise could look at scores to translate drawings and visuals in archival collections into sonic ephemera, in a way “hearing what’s been drawn” and exploring how listening to the archive can go beyond sound documents into opening up realms of the visual and textual materials as well.  

Suvani Suri is an artist based in New Delhi. She works with sound, text, and intermedia assemblages that think through modes of listening and voicing. Her practice plumbs the gaps, cracks, absurdities, and excesses embedded within the technological processes of production, mediation, and perception of sound. This often takes the form of podcasts, objects, installations, mixtapes, workshops, curatorial propositions, publications, live and/or discursive sessions, and collective interventions. Additionally, Suvani composes sound for video and performance works, and has been teaching at several educational spaces where her pedagogical interests overlap with a sustained inquiry into the digital and sonic sensorium. 

Suri’s works have been exhibited at Serendipity Arts Festival (2023), Kunsthalle Bern (2022), Five Million Incidents (2020), Khoj Curatorial Intensive South Asia (2019), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), Mumbai Art Room (2018), and Sound Reasons Festival VI (2018). As part of a collective inquiry, she co-conceived the telephonic project, Out of Line (2019), which received the FICA Public Art Grant (2021). She was one of the curators for the Students’ Biennale at Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2022, and is an artist and curator with the programme Capture All: A Sonic Investigation, developed by Sarai (Delhi) and Liquid Architecture (Melbourne).