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El tren fantasma: arcs of sound and the acoustic spaces of landscape
Author(s) -
Revill George
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/tran.12034
Subject(s) - sound (geography) , watson , mediation , ontology , sociology , work (physics) , aesthetics , art , epistemology , philosophy , computer science , acoustics , social science , engineering , artificial intelligence , mechanical engineering , physics
Drawing on the example of Chris Watson's soundwork El tren fantasma , this paper considers how landscape is made in sound. Informed by the work of Michael Serres and Don Ihde, it argues for an understanding of landscape as mediation. Drawing on the work of Brandon LaBelle, Jean Luc Nancy, Mladen Dolar and Charles Sanders Pearce, the paper develops the concept of ‘the arc of sound’ as part of a socio‐material approach to semiosis able to recognise the ways in which sound connects and differentiates contingently across heterogeneous spaces and materials. It shows how sound participates in the production of the railway corridor as a complex, animate and deeply contoured historically and geographically specific experience of landscape. Finally, it argues for an approach to landscape as mediation that pays equal attention to ontology and epistemology.