This is a song about self-reflection, recognition, metamorphosis. Our life is essentially a journey—we passed the mountains along the coastline and rode across one bridge and another. 

I hope you slow down with me at the end of 2021. Think about what you wanna say to your old self at the beginning of the year.

Remember this moment.
Just ride.

Ride Or ?

Sunset Sunrise (Outro)

Suitcase

Terrace Fields

那是田里的油菜 倒映着云彩  　
还有我路过溪边的倒影啊 
那是夹杂着雨露的阳光啊 
洒过窗边 还有阿婆的饭菜香呐  

我站在望不见理想的高原上 
看远方的城市和废墟的边缘
飞机飞过我也不知向何方  
让我就这样站在云端之下  

Na Se Na Se Ye…

-English Translation-
Ocean of oilseed mirrors the clouds
Reflections surface the mountain stream
Smell of rain, sunlight and Grandma 
Penetrate my window sill
Cooking

Here I am, standing on highland
Looking out from fringe city 
Airplane above 
Motionless, 
I stand underneath the clouds

云 Clouds

她说 看
远方的云彩
摊开诗 默读着
观察着 叹息着 

我的手 化作风 握成沙
爱不爱 这沧山 与“海” 
我的疤 抚作泥 泪成雨
任涟漪 编织 蓑衣

穹顶之下
泉眼 流出了云彩

-English Translation-
She said 
Look at the cloud
Opening up its poetry, reading
Observing, sighing

My hands are wind, quicksands
dark green mountains, oceans adrift
My scars painted dirt
Their ripples knit my wooden cape

Under the doom
Clouds flow from the mouth of a spring

赶街 Border Town Fair

Cabin

The third cup explores the dry stream and opens up the poetry of my soul. 
三碗搜枯肠，惟有文字五千卷。

Cup3 Dissolution

一碗喉吻润。
The first cup kisses the throat.

Cup1 Drips

"Blue Scar" is a Single of two songs in an attempt to capture the possible consequences of water-related environmental crises. The song “Thirst in the Waves”, which I recorded with World Music ensemble friends, depicts a world of dessert, and a world in which the only water source is the acid ocean. "Withering Land", as how it's titled, talks about rising sea level. It's also a song of nostalgia, with me knowing many seashore areas I love won't exist in a short time. I wish we hear the consequences now, rather than face them in the future.

"Thirst in the Waves" also came in with a Max-altered audio, which changes the partials and frequency of my singing with water consumption data. The louder or sharper the sound becomes, the more water consumption you hear on the spot. 

I also want to thank all my friends, classmates, teachers, and advisor who participated in this project or helped me along the way. I believe it's through this project, each one of us has delivered a bit more influence on this topic to the world.

Withering Land

Abstract

This paper explores how field recording practices can be impacted by concepts from the fields of energy production/efficiency (Lovins,1976) and energy ethics (Marder, 2017). 

We’ve seen greater focus on the agency of field recordists at work; from noisy non-presence (Wright, 2017), to extractivist listening (Robinson, 2020), yet attempts to capture worlds without anthropogenic noise persist (Winderen, 2019). Simultaneously, the embodied energies of recording tools have come under scrutiny (Polli, 2017, Wright 2022); where ethics of care are held close. 

But what of the field itself? From an energy perspective, we need actualisation rather than potential for fieldwork, and thus require the field to expend energy for our purposes. In this paper, I’ll look, via Michael Marder’s philosophical work, at how we have come to think of energy as a resource. How post-WWII optimism led to the energy crisis of the 1970s, and how mitigating strategies contributed to the present energy situation.

With reference to my own fieldwork: with more-than-human worlds in experimental nuclear fusion, and isostatic uplift in the Baltic, I consider the energy dynamics of human expectation and demand on the field itself and show, despite the best intentions, how we often still operate within 20C energy strategies and paradigms. 

I conclude by looking at Marder’s threefold alternative energy paradigm that reworks Aristotle’s energeia: energy as actualisation, not as potential, and how it might be applied to field recording practices in order to improve the balance going forward.




Being-at-work in the field: Rethinking field recording through energy ethics and actualisation

Haotian Wang
Sound Artist-Composer-Songwriter
Yunnan-Shanghai-NYC-Chicago-?