Challenging Hierarchies through Minimalist Music: A Human Experience of Recording and Re-Composing Australian Wildlife Sounds

Abstract

For centuries, human survival depended on the categorisation of other-than-human animals into hierarchies of importance and value. Today, however, these human constructed hierarchies drive the degradation of the environment, the destruction of ecosystems, and the ongoing damage caused by climate change, threatening both the human species and other life on earth. Current research in the environmental humanities has sought to rethink the long-established hierarchical dynamic between humans, other animals, and landscapes, with a view towards developing more ethical, equitable, and informed understandings of environmental networks and environmental sustainability. This Doctor of Musical Arts project aims to link this environmental humanities work into human cultural practice by developing musical methods for destabilising human constructed hierarchies in compositions inspired by Australian wildlife.

Specifically, this dissertation and portfolio explores how Australian native wildlife vocalisations and behaviours, perceived through the filter of the embodied fieldworker/composer, mesh with the musical structures of minimalism. Through this practice-based methodology, the human composer, the recorded species, and the environment coalesce into acoustic compositions that communicate all three perspectives in a single, performed moment. The works I have created through this approach unsettle various ecological, social, and musical hierarchies — from humans over animals and ecosystems, to melody over texture, to narrative over scene. Although these creative works are based on Australian species and composed by an Australian composer, the method behind their compositions is conceptualised with a wider view of establishing strategies for artists around the world to challenge hierarchies and ignite cultural change through their creative practice.