Topologies: From Field Recording to Phonography and the Virtual, Paulo Dantas

Dantas' research reflects on two interconnected problems rooted in the author's experience as a composer and field recordist. The first concerns the traditional pursuit of 'unity' in Western music composition and analysis—a desire to justify every sound through a foundational logic or structure, often reducing the richness of sound to notated parameters like pitch and duration. This approach, exemplified by figures from Schenker to Schoenberg, relies on a 'reduction' of sound into manageable abstract units. However, during the creation of an electroacoustic piece using field recordings, the author found that such unitary logic fractured; referential and abstract listening modes refused to coalesce, introducing a productive 'noise' into the system and challenging the very notion of a single governing material.

The second problem involves field recording as both a boundary and a nexus activity, focusing on what it reveals about our listening patterns. It is framed as a phenomenological encounter between a recordist, a Field, and a device, which produces a recording as a trace. This trace then forms a new nexus when played back, connecting a listener, a (dis)location, and a playback device. A central artistic question emerges: how can playing and listening to such recordings transmit the specific "histories of listening" that generated them? This leads back to the first problem, suggesting that instead of a single reductive logic, we might need designed metaphors—like that of a city—to generously contain sound's diversity.

The city metaphor is proposed as an open, additive framework for both listening and composition, capable of holding multiple logics and sonic histories. Inspired by urban theorists, artists, and works like Invisible Cities or New Babylon, it mirrors the author's urban field recording experiences in places like Tokyo. The process becomes a loop: recording influences listening, which may compel (re)visits to the source location, generating new listening histories. Ultimately, the author sees their practice as a Baradian apparatus where music composition, field recording, technology, and text coexist—distinct yet inseparable—continuously defining and redefining each other.