The Rhetoric of documentary in field recordings

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the use of the term “documentary” for describing a specific segment of artistic soundworks that employ field recordings. First, I show how documentary photography and cinema was put under suspicion in the second half of the XXth century. Then, taking Carl Plantinga’s characterization of documentary cinema as a point of departure, I propose that documentation doesn’t need to subscribe to criteria such as impartiality, transparency and an ethics of non-manipulation. Finally, through a brief presentation of Ernst Karel’s Heard Laboratories (2010), I argue that recordings presented as documentary often provoke a particular effect in the way we hear and interpret these sounds.