The Rio Cavalos trio: ‘arts of noticing’ through sound in new landscapes
A reflection by Jo Scott on her three sound pieces, available now on AudioSpaces.
We’re delighted to finally launch Jo Scott’s sound pieces as our first featured Collection. As we read in her reflection here, the three separate AudioSpaces gently carry us on a journey along the shores of the Rio Cavalos, Jo’s snaking liquid neighbour in her new home near Tábua, Portugal.
This is a great example of how audio can be used to capture and intervene in the spaces around us. Jo uses recordings, her own voice and a variety of creative techniques to explore ideas such as the passing of time and the effects of activity—both human and non-human—upon the river.
What a lovely way to settle into a new area you’ve just moved to: speaking and listening back to the place itself; walking, inhabiting and getting-to-know. Attentive listening is a practice that can reveal different kinds of knowledge, hidden amongst unfamiliarity. Jo’s work here is a delightful interpretation of what we might learn when we decide to pay patient attention, ears first.
Note that at the moment the AudioSpaces can only be listened to in full where Jo has pinned them along the Cavalos. Very soon, though, the Collection will be pinned to other special locations to be listened to by those who can’t make it to central Portugal. Stay tuned right here on this post for updates.
When you move somewhere new, how do you get to know the landscapes that are now your home? I moved to central Portugal from the UK in October 2023, during a huge rainstorm – it was a tempestuous introduction to this new place. Since then, the weather has calmed down a little and I have been getting to know the shapes and contours of my new home. One of the elements of the landscape that I was immediately drawn to is the small, but feisty, River Cavalos, which is the closest waterway to our house.
Since arriving, I have been piecing together and walking along the route of the Cavalos, from near to where it rises in the hills, down to where it empties itself into the larger, lazier River Mondego. As with many rivers, it embodies any number of moods and formations, depending on where you encounter it, the immediate topography through which it runs and the amount of rain which has fallen. It crashes and roars over huge granite boulders higher in its passage - particularly in the wet winter and spring - while lower sections have a more stately flow through planted fields, terraces of olive trees and rows of vines.
One way I found to attune myself to my new watery neighbour was through sound recording and sound making. Engaging with new landscapes through sound is a process that requires what Anna Tsing calls ‘arts of noticing’.1 This links to the forms of curiosity that multispecies scholars argue we need to form ‘attunements’ to and ‘entanglements’ with our immediate environments, wherever we are in the world.2 In addition, Van Dooren et al. argue that attuning, entangling, noticing and offering attentiveness helps us ‘perhaps to understand and care a little differently’ about where we live.3 For me, sound recording and making was a perfect way to entangle myself in my new surroundings, and to find different modes of attentiveness and new arts of noticing.
In making sound pieces in response to the River Cavalos, these modes of curious noticing took different forms, all of which drew me physically and feelingly towards the river. Sometimes my attentiveness was to the sound of the river itself, which I was hearing through headphones, as I was recording. Here, I noted all sorts of patterns and variations in the ways the water moved and how it was interacting with its environment that were not immediately evident when just observing its flow. It was also interesting how that sound was meeting my equipment to create the recording, which, when I listened back, could only provide an approximation of the visceral sonic experience of being in the river environment. I also engaged in a range of field work practices, alongside recording, repeatedly walking along various sections of the river and gathering text and voice-based notes and responses. Back in my home studio, another kind of attentiveness was involved in trying to draw some of those embodied, sited experiences into vocal sound making and song – at points it felt like trying to repeatedly raise the watery spirit of the river with my voice.
I also wanted this sound-making to function as a conversation with the river – a way of introducing myself and addressing this lively, flowing presence through landscapes that were new to me. As such, it was important for me to speak directly to the Cavalos in the mixes I made. I found this shift of address from speaking about the river towards speaking directly to it allowed a relationship to emerge, which acknowledged its liveliness, subjectivity and power, celebrating the spaces it is able to reach, its ancient lifeway in this land and how it carries time and energy with it.
The short pieces I made are focused on three different points along the route of the Cavalos and share the results of my field and studio work in the form of spoken texts, field recordings and sung vocal loops. I mixed the sounds live, which is another important method in this process. Live mixing deliberately opens a precarious, flowing space, where I discover in real time how to combine the sounds I have made. Through all of these processes of experiencing, recording, responding and creating, I found new sonic ‘arts of noticing’ the Rio Cavalos, as well as a closer feeling entanglement with its presence in my new home.
I hope people enjoy listening and I look forward to more opportunities to post recordings and mixes to AudioSpaces.
References
Tsing, A.L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press
Tsing, A. L., Swanson, H. A., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet : ghosts of the anthropocene (A. L. Tsing, H. A. Swanson, E. Gan, & N. Bubandt, Eds.). University of Minnesota Press.
Van Dooren, Thom, Kirksey, Eben and Munster, Ursula. (2016). Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness. Environmental Humanities 8(1). p. 1-22.
Jo Scott (she/her) is an artist-researcher and educator based in central Portugal. Her research is conducted through a variety of creative practices including performance, installation, video art, sound walks and sonic experiences. Jo is currently exploring human relationships with changing, disturbed and damaged landscapes, as we confront the effects of the climate crisis, in the form of a warming planet, more extreme weather events, biodiversity and habitat loss. For information about projects and publications, visit www.joanneemmascott.com.
Tsing, A.L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press. p. 37.
Tsing, A. L., Swanson, H. A., Gan, E., & Bubandt, N. (2017). Arts of living on a damaged planet : ghosts of the anthropocene (A. L. Tsing, H. A. Swanson, E. Gan, & N. Bubandt, Eds.). University of Minnesota Press. G11.
Van Dooren, Thom, Kirksey, Eben and Munster, Ursula. (2016). Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness. Environmental Humanities 8(1). p. 6.