Metaphonics
Metaphonics is an expansive hardcover book and 7-album box set we designed, edited and produced in collaboration with Stuart Hyatt. Published by Jap Sam Books and Temporary Residence.
The 265-page book, Metaphonics: The Field Works Listener's Guide, includes original essays by experts and academics from around the world, inspired by naturalist Bernie Krause’s taxonomy of soundscapes: geophony, biophony, and anthropophony. For this project, we added a fourth soundscape ecology, cosmophony. Each soundscape is illustrated by Manuja Waldia. The second half of the book is a track-by-track guide with photographs by Stuart Hyatt. Peter Liversidge created a series of proposals that appear throughout the text.
The book is distributed in the US by Idea Books and available at Printed Matter, Skylight Books, McNally Jackson, Rizzoli, and others.
The project launched in Indianapolis, followed by a tour with stops in Brussels (launch event at Wiels), Berlin, London (a performance including special guests Jez Riley French and Peter Liversidge), Amsterdam (including a series of presentations at the Stedelijk), Rotterdam, Riga, and Bucharest.
The book is part of a 7-album box set we designed for Team Records and Temporary Residence. Inspired by Hyatt’s audio field recordings, musicians from around the world have contributed complex sonic narratives under the Field Works banner.
Book Essays:
Field Recording Composition as Hierophony by Yiorgis Sakellariou
Listening to the Anthropocene by Gustavo Valdivia
A Muse to Music by Cheryl Tipp
Artistic and Scientific Explorations in Biophony by Leah Barclay
The Noise Made by People: Anthropophony, Cities, and Memory by Stuart Fowkes
Anthropogenic Soundscapes by Sarah Laskow
Cosmic Resonance: Sounding Outside, Listening Within by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Foreword by Bernie Krause; Introduction by Enrique Ramirez
Box Set Musicians
Stuart Hyatt, Dan Deacon, Juana Molina, The Field, Pantha du Prince, Eluvium, Dntel, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Gazelle Twin, Visible Cloaks, The Album Leaf, Loscil, Matmos, Rafiq Bhatia, Paul de Jong, Julien Marchal, Mary Lattimore, Lali Puna, Lusine, B. Fleischmann, William Tyler, Nick Zammuto, Lullatone, Benoit Pioulard, Luke Abbott, Marcus Fischer, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Greg Davis, Player Piano, Prototokyo, Daring Ear, Enrique Ramirez, and Forrest Lewinger.