PhD Oral Exam - Angus Tarnawsky, Communication

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

This PhD is the result of asking: “What do I hear?” and “How do I listen?” on the Lachine Canal in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada, and the Lee Navigation in London, England. In response, culturally-produced “ways of hearing” are detailed as shaping our various habits of listening. Sonic encounters are suggested as situated and embodied moments of unexpected, intimate, and instructive listening, that “unsettle” something within you, and that allow for the refinement of anti-colonial “ways of hearing.” This logic is used to critically examine sonic (inter)actions documented at two colonially-produced urban heritage sites. The process asserts the importance of research practices that embody non-extractive ethics by attending closely and carefully to the human, nonhuman and more-than-human “voices” of urban spaces. In doing so, I encourage further place-responsive sonic research practices nurturing openness, uncertainty and experimentation, while providing methods and techniques to challenge unexamined habits of listening. I discuss my research-creation practice, developed in dialogue with anti-colonial theories of sonic resistance (Chacon, 2023; Daughtry, 2013; Kanngieser, 2015; Robinson, 2020), and use technologically-mediated practices of sonic-inquiry to “unsettle” my settler colonial ways of hearing and listening. Instructions and examples summarizing this work introduces multiple methods and techniques: sensing-in-motion, amplifying (a) place (via listening), sound fishing and contact reception. I then take a significant and important detour, informed by my methodology of creation-as-research (Chapman and Sawchuk 2012, 2015), combining my methods and techniques with an analysis of dub audio (re)mixing and instantaneous disc cutting to incorporate kindred modes of sonic resistance—dub and dubplates—emerging from Jamaican sound system practices into my research. This facilitates the development and realization of Dub Navigation (no. 1): a public-facing sonic encounter that expands on sound system re-processing and re-presentation practices (Henriques, 2011). I conclude with the assertion that asking “What do I hear?” and “How do I listen?” is a necessary and ongoing process (for any and all listeners).