In “Nature, Sound Art and the Sacred,” David Dunn shows how various sounds can be combined to create an aural experience. Music presents itself in two forms, art and entertainment. Music as an art form is often experienced through intentional focus and meaningful takeaways. On the other hand, music as a form of entertainment requires little attention and generally has fewer long term impacts. Dunn introduced a form of meditation which focuses on listening to the sounds of an environment and allows an individual to absorb the surrounding details through sound. All of the components of the interconnected sounds in an environment are individually beautiful when looked at on their own. However, it is difficult to isolate individual sounds in nature. Dunn’s work focuses on how sound and nature interact. Sound and language overlap in many ways. Animals, such as mockingbirds or lions, use sounds to communicate. These sounds can be observed during attentive listening meditation.
Dunn discusses how the documentation of an environment’s sounds can be used to capture the essence of a place. For example, Dunn studied in Zimbabwe and was unable to capture the fantasized representation of Zimbabwe. Instead, he recorded the sounds of reality. In order to grasp the full essence of a place through sound, one must record all the sounds in the environment, not just the aesthetic sounds. Dunn emphasizes how different cultures perceive and value the same sounds in different ways when he references the relationship between African people and the sounds of animals. I found it interesting how Dunn was able to view the sounds that animals use for communication as a form of music. If animal sounds are able to be viewed as music, then human sounds can also be music. John Cage was able to incorporate the sounds from the audience in 4’33”, which is a song without deliberate use of sound, and is still viewed as music.
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