Listening in the Field: Recording and the Science of Birdsong

258 Pages·2018·8.916 MB·English

by  Joeri Bruyninckx

Listening in the Field
Inside Technology
edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch
A list of the series appears at the back of the book.
Listening in the Field
Recording and the Science of Birdsong
Joeri Bruyninckx
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in ITC Stone Sans Std and ITC Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set
Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bruyninckx, Joeri, author.
Title: Listening in the field : recording and the science of birdsong /
Joeri Bruyninckx.
Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2018] | Series: Inside technology |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017032849 | ISBN 9780262037624 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Birdsongs--Recording and reproducing. | Birds--Vocalizations.
Classification: LCC QL698.5 .B79 2018 | DDC 598.159/4--dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032849
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Eavesdropping in the Wild 1
2 Scientific Scores and Musical Ears: Sound Diagrams in Field
Recording 23
3 Staging Sterile Sound: Producing and Reproducing Natural Field
Recordings 57
4 Sampling Assets: Economies of Scientific Exchange at the Cornell
Library of Natural Sounds 93
5 Patterned Sound: Inscriptions and the Trained Ear in Birdsong
Analysis 123
6 Conclusion 163
Notes 173
References 193
Index 227

Acknowledgments
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
© Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyAll Rights Reserved
In researching and writing this book, I have accrued many debts of grati-
tude. My thanks go first of all to the many biologists, recordists, and archi-
vists I have met along the way. They have welcomed me into their homes,
gardens, and archives, dug up valuable documents, and taken the time to
reflect on their work. In particular, Cheryl Tipp, Richard Ranft, the late Jeffery
Boswall, Hans Slabbekoorn, Magnus Robb, Greg Budney and the staff of the
Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Randy Little, Karl-Heinz Frommolt,
the late Günter Tembrock as well as his wife Sylvia, and many other field
recordists at the British Wildlife Sound Recording Society and the Dutch
Club voor Natuurgeluid Registratie have helped guide my investigation.
The staff at the BBC Written Archives Center, the Cambridge University
Library, and the Cornell University Library have kindly helped me get
access to key sources.
Mentors, colleagues, and friends have sustained this project in its many
iterations. This book originated as a doctoral dissertation at the Faculty
of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University, where Wiebe Bijker
and the teaching staff in the Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology pro-
gram sensitized me to the many unexpected entanglements in this field.
That this project came to further fruition, however, owes much to Karin
Bijsterveld, who lent inspiration and direction to the project, but also
shaped the contours of my scholarship and continued to support my work
throughout. Dissertation committee members Jo Wachelder and Jens Lach-
mund have each shaped my thinking, both by example and with their keen
and perceptive feedback. The ideas and direction in this book were further
sharpened in exchanges with numerous peers and friends. My colleagues,
old and new, in the Maastricht University STS colloquium, Summer Harvests
(where researchers present work in progress), the FASOS Graduate School,
and in particular the members of the Sonic Skills research group, Anna Harris,
Stefan Krebs, Melissa van Drie, and Alexandra Supper, have made essential
viii Acknowledgments
contributions as interlocutors, readers, and writing partners. They, together
with Tim van der Heijden, Vincent Lagendijk, Caoilinn Hughes, Verena
Anker, Fabian de Kloe, Eefje Cleophas, Bart van Oost, Ties van de Werff,
Constance Sommerey and Koen Beumer, have offered valuable insights and
pleasant diversions. Outside Maastricht, the Netherlands Graduate Research
School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WMTC) has brought
together a wonderful network of people in STS and extended my horizons.
They, together with copanelists, discussants, and audiences at various col-
loquiums, workshops, and conferences, have impacted this work in unmis-
takable ways. I am also very grateful to Trevor Pinch, whose enthusiasm for
the field has been inspiring. He and the faculty and graduate students in the
Cornell STS department provided a most stimulating environment for me
to work in. After I finished my doctorate, during a stay at the History and
Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Society Program at MIT Rosalind
Williams, Stefan Helmreich, and the rest of its staff and students helped
me look at this project in new ways. All the while, the Maastricht Science,
Technology and Society Studies research programme, headed by Harro van
Lente, has continued to be a steady intellectual home port. In its final stages,
this book has been completed at the Max Planck Institute for the History of
Science, where Viktoria Tkaczyk brought together a wonderfully inspiring
group of fellows as part of the research group Epistemes of Modern Acous-
tics. The group and the institute as a whole have provided a vibrant forum
for exchange and the perfect place to finish this book. I am grateful for all of
their support.
Kate Sturge has been fabulous at editing the entire manuscript. She has
helped me shed unnecessary padding and own the rest. I would like to thank
the anonymous reviewers in various stages for their enthusiastic, thorough,
and thoughtful readings of the manuscript drafts. At the MIT Press, Margy
Avery, Katie Helke, Laura Keeler, Kathleen Caruso, Elizabeth Judd, and the
series editors have effectively guided this project to completion. Cynthia
Landeen produced an excellent index. Oxford University Press and Sage
Publishers kindly granted me permission to draw on arguments I devel-
oped originally in The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies and Social Studies of
Science but have reworked for this book. The Faculty of Arts and Social Sci-
ences of Maastricht University and the Netherlands Organisation for Scien-
tific Research (NWO) have generously funded part of the research that has
gone into this book. In addition, NWO and the Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science have helped to ensure that the book is appropriately
illustrated.