Tom Fisher, aka Action Pyramyd, is making sample-based music based on tiny sounds from his field recordings. He considers field recording and composition as a mode of thinking and experiencing the world. His experimental audio recordings have a very ecological aspect to their work, often based on the recording of water plants. How does he record plants? Firstly, he listens to the environment and examines the scale and overlaps of sound types. Then, he uses a hydrophone to capture the sound of photosynthesis.
I found it interesting how Tom Fisher can contribute to biological and ecological research by applying sound arts. For example, the mapping of the acoustic diversity of various ponds. Collecting data with a hydrophone could show him a lot about life in the pond in a non-invasive way. You can see that night is sonically dominated by the activity of aquatic insects and early afternoon, just after the solar zenith by aquatic plants due to high amounts of energy received from the sun (this is when he could listen to actual photosynthesis happening in the plants).
Tom Fisher realised in relation to hydrophones that since our ears cannot function in the underwater realm to pick up the same frequencies of sound – so what are we looking to recreate? Even conventional microphones lack the capacity to depict the soundscape in the same manner as our human ears perceive it in the situation. It is also all temporal, a construct; these moments aren’t happening simultaneously everywhere. He treats recorded material with sensitivity and reverence. He is recreating the ‘realistic’ illusion of an environment/sonic situation and acknowledging that editing and implementing his creative decisions are part of the process, but he is still trying to create an engaging narrative for the listener, raise awareness (about something undervalued like a for example pond) and break down hierarchies.