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Alien intimacies: hearing science fiction narratives in Hildegard Westerkamp's Cricket Voice (or ‘I don't like the country, the crickets make me nervous’)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2002

Andra McCartney
Affiliation:
Communication Studies, Concordia University, HB 404, 7141 rue Sherbrooke O., Montréal, QC H4B 1R6, Canada E-mail: andra@vax2.concordia.ca URL: andrasound.org

Abstract

This paper discusses listener responses to a contemporary soundscape composition based on the sound of a cricket. Soundscape composers make works based on everyday sounds and sound environments, usually recorded by themselves (Truax 1984, 1996). While the composer of this piece aims to bring listeners closer to the sounds around them by creating audio pieces based on these sounds (Westerkamp 1988), some listeners feel fear and anxiety rather than the heightened closeness and understanding that she wishes listeners to experience. I compare the sound structure of Cricket Voice with close listening to excerpts of the film soundtrack of Ridley Scott's Alien as well as a short excerpt from the soundtrack of the X Files, discussing how science fiction film and television soundtracks index sonic intimacy with different intent from that of Westerkamp, and raising questions about how such approaches to intimacy might simultaneously reflect and intensify urban anxieties about the sounds of ‘alien’ species that are associated with wilderness environments.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research is generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.