Vibrant Environmentality: Sonic Agentivity in the Anthropocene

Ziel

How do humans listen their world into being? Modern science tells us consciousness has a role in molding reality: physical objects do not appear as having definitive values until there is an interaction between an observer and the object. VibE understands that similarly to the connection between observers and quantum systems that is essential to creating a definite reality, sound is a key force in the birthing of lived realities. To a significant but underexplored extent, human beings derive their capacity to act from somatically knowing and cocreating their environments through sound. VibE frames this as sonic agentivity and argues that in the face of Anthropocenic climate change, sonic onto-epistemologies deepen human imaginations of novel pathways and potentially pathbreaking collaborations beyond the visible and sayable. Bringing together case studies from across Asia and the Pacific Island world that focus on the ecological wisdom inherent in music-making, VibE aspires to better understand how human beings know how to mold their environment through sound-based practices. We explore ethnographically how music-making aids human beings in identifying potential responses to the existential crises that characterize the epoch during which human presence on Earth has become a dominant, and in many ways destructive, force of change. VibE traces the operating procedures of sonic agentivity to identify novel possibilities of ecological coexistence for an ailing planet, thus securing a better future. The project thinks through the intellectual implications of sound-based onto-epistemologies of the environment because they harbor important insights for human well-being and survival in the face of Anthropocenic changes. We inquire into this unexploited potential of music-making to deliver new answers to existential urgencies of our times and make their implications conceptually accessible for wider use both practically and intellectually.