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Contemplative Listening is based on engaging with questions of how sound and music inform and affect our individual and collective subjectivity. Contemplative listening leads to radical listening, which is an internal space where single-pointed concentration on sound and/or music creates an immersive sound-world. Based on exclusive concentration through the hearing sense consciousness, one enters into another “way of knowing”- a sonic depiction of a reality governed by the ontogenesis of harmonic intensities and resonance. What may a sonic ontology be like, and how can we discover new ways of becoming based on sonic ways of knowing?

We are posting becoming as problematic in sonic space by:

• privileging sound to operate as an ontological way of knowing.
• epistemologically allowing the meaning of sound to arrive through sound in-itself
• elevating the philosophical value of sound/music/art to be constructed through sound in-itself.

Modernity, since the European enlightenment, has colonized and globalized itself based on a regime of rational epistemology – rationality as the highest measure of humankind – which has tried to order and classify the elements of the cosmos for anthropocentric (capitalist) interests. The sense of sight has been co-opted by the rationalizing drive of modernity, as sight has a natural tendency to specialize time. This has resulted in the flattening of space-time into commodifiable bytes of consumption. How have our other senses been co-opted by this hegemonic agenda of modernity? How has sound and music been flattened to serve the production and consumption of capitalism?

Based on these questions, we can challenge the regime of modernity by reframing questions of our becoming through a re-engagement of our senses. This can give us the ability to reclaim our subjectivity from the desire production of capitalistic machines, and on our own terms exploring alternative modalities of becoming.

Contemplative listening is an individual or collective practice that aims to re-engage, reimagine and re-enchant our sonic worlds. This practice can be done by entering into a self-reflexive state of inward contemplation by simply experiencing- to the fullest conscious fidelity, one’s relationship and engagement with sound.

Listen to your immediate surroundings no matter what they happen to be. Open your field of awareness and allow your sonic horizon to encompass a broader bandwidth/range. Simply be present to sound in your sound environment as-it-is. Try not to analyze, rationalize or intellectualize what you are hearing. Try to avoid conceptualizing the sound into mental categories or classifications such as good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant. Just be with the sound as-it-is. Be with the sensations of the sound in-themselves.

How do you experience movement within this sound-space? As you sink more deeply into single-pointed identification with your sound-world, how does your experience of time change? What sensations develop? What moods or feelings develop? What does the atmosphere of this soundscape lead you to hear/feel/see? What can you learn from this soundscape?

Contemplative Listening can be practiced in any environment. Here are some ideas:

• Urban soundscapes
• Rural/Natural soundscapes
• Sound Art
• Art Music (classical music)
• Popular music
• Ambient music
• Meditative music