My approach towards making media has progressed in the past few months, specifically due to one passage that I read in Phillip Hammond’s text Climate Change and Post-Political Communication: Media, Emotion, and Environmental Advocacy. In this text are comments made by Anabela Carvalho, who talks about the dismissive language that is used when climate action is communicated to the public. Carvalho refers to this as being “passive” and “childlike”. I didn’t want my practise to pander to these same dismissive notions, and this thinking became a major part of my guidance in constructing my media artefact.
The topic of my hyperobject is food production. I chose to represent this topic through a soundscape that documents the history of farming practises from the pre-industrial era, through to the modern era. The idea for this topic came from reading the Vice article ‘The Climate Change Paper So Depressing It’s Sending People to Therapy’ by Zing Tsjeng. In the article Jem Bendell talks about the desperation that will haunt people if there is no food security, stating that, ‘You will depend on your neighbours for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won’t know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death’ (Tsjeng, 2019). This got me thinking about the flaws in the food production model that we currently use. At the beginning of the media artefact we can hear light and organic sounds. There is wind blowing softly, crude tools being used to chip away at rock, and a shovel digging into dirt. This peaceful scene morphs into a cacophony of industrial noises. As we hear a tractor engine start up (documenting a step into the industrial era) the sounds of animals in distress, machines in constant operation, and the lurching of a deep mechanical bass noise begin to create a sense of dread and intensity. This progression of tension and stress is alleviated by the return of natural sounds, suggesting that there is another means to provide food security and distribution without the need for such impactful measures. I wanted to use the tension and stress as to play on the idea of hyperobjects existing with viscosity (Morton, 2013). Through the use of a narrative that speeds towards a dramatic climax, the soundscape echoes the panic and containment that Morton describes in hyperobjects.
The constraints I chose to impose on this project were:
- No voiceover/no use of human voices
- No use of news footage / news media
- No use of content intended for/corporate/commercial/ advertising purposes
I chose not to use human voices or voiceover, as I didn’t want the subjectivity of my work to be undermined by the narration of events. There are many ways to interpret the soundscape and each person who hears it will create their own images to accompany the sounds. The restriction on news media and commercial content was chosen so that I would be forced to create my own imagery from scattered materials. I felt that if I was using pre-existing sounds and materials that had already been heavily edited and constructed to form a story, then the work would have already been done for me. I’m happy with the ways in which I was able to work around these constraints. I was encouraged to be original and focus on the arrangement and layering of the materials to effectively communicate my message.
I hope that the outcome of my project excites an idea in the listener that there can be a more respectful and resourceful way to achieve effective food production. My soundscape shares the idea that we are currently situated in the horrific industrial section of the narrative, but there is an opportunity to break through into the natural resolve at the end. There are three distinct parts to the piece, each with their own unique associated feelings. I hope that we can look at our current situation with as much clarity and recognise our feelings about the methods we choose to enact.
References
Hammond, P 2017, ‘Introduction: ‘Post-political’ climate change’, Climate Change and Post-Political Communication: Media, Emotion, and Environmental Advocacy, Routledge, pp. 1-17.
Morton, T., 2013. Poisoned Ground. symplokē, [online] 21(1-2), p.37. Available at: <https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/article/532809>.
Tsjeng, Z 2019, ‘The Climate Change Paper So Depressing It’s Sending People to Therapy’, VICE 28 Feb, accessed online: <https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-paper-so-depressing-its-sending-people-to-therapy>