A collector of these soundscapes for 25 years is 73-year-old Englishman Peter Annear, who hopes his recordings will encourage people to discover sounds they may never have noticed or heard before, to be excited and stimulated by them. .
On the occasion of his participation in the exhibition, which is hosted at the Folklore & Ethnological Museum of Macedonia – Thrace and is based on the publication “The Trees of our land. Inspiration in the shade of the trees!” (Arteon Publishing, 2021), Mr. Anir, in an interview with the Athenian/Macedonian News Agency, talks about his journey into soundscapes, mainly after the partial hearing loss related to age (presbycusis).
He says he started recording when he was given a portable tape recorder for his 19th birthday. “I started out recording music and voices, but slowly]I became more and more interested in field recording. I often wanted to record a natural sound that would enhance and deepen a song. And so I became aware of the soundscape and discovered that when I was writing sounds, I was listening on a much more conscious level.”
“It was so exciting to listen with intention and not just be passively in the world of sound. And that’s how I realized “immersive listening”” he describes.
After visits to Zagoria in the 1980s, Mr Anir bought, with his wife Frances, a small farmhouse on the edge of Mikro Papigo and began nature excursions, exploring the sounds of a “wonderfully remote place, at the edge of the world , which was full of natural and man-made sounds.”
Thessaloniki: Working with deaf children and the perception of sound
His interest in sound, hearing and listening in general from an early age led him first to teaching theater and English, then he specialized as a teacher of the deaf and later became an educational audiologist.
“It was a huge privilege to work with deaf children and I learned so much from them in terms of their experiences in the worlds of sound and silence. Their experiences, along with my own changing hearing, have made me appreciate more what I used to hear and fully appreciate what I can still hear.”
As he explains, he has age-related hearing loss (presbycusis). Usually this affects high frequency (treble) sounds more. In spoken language, these high pitches help us distinguish what is being said and prevent words from sounding muffled or indistinct.
“Presbycusis is a progressive condition, so my high frequencies gradually become harder to detect. For example, cicadas and grasshoppers sound quieter and quieter to me as the years go by.’
According to Mr. Anir, hearing aids help to some extent as they are programmed to make the high-frequency sounds that “disappear” a little louder. In addition, his recordings with high-quality, specialized microphones and headphones enable him to be able to hear much more when recording than in everyday listening situations.
Thessaloniki: The sound of rain on the leaves
But what is it that makes the sound environment that Mr. Anir highlights through his work, which “entraps” natural sounds and makes them “visible” important? He says there are very few places we can go in the world where we are free from anthropophony.
“We are in danger of losing our ability to appreciate the subtleties of hearing, we are in danger of losing our knowledge of nature’s quiet but extraordinarily rich musical sounds. The tadpole turns into a frog, the sounds of a falling leaf, the aural subtleties of a trickling stream. We are in danger of losing our emotional and primordial connection with natural sounds,” he notes.
For the sound ‘collector’, if we can find pleasure, release, well-being and mental health in endangered sounds, and begin to realize that we need to place our soundscapes in the context of natural soundscapes, then there is an opportunity to rebalance the our sound ecosystems.
Thessaloniki: Papigos Sound Library
As a resident for at least three months a year in Papigo, Mr. Anir has for the past 25 years been documenting village life around Papigo with the voices, sounds of work, ecosystems, music and the natural world.
In the summer of 2022 he met BBC producer Clara Nissen on holiday in Papigo and they decided to collaborate on a production called The Last Shepherds in Papigo, which is still in the planning stages.
In England he is working with the charity The Somerset Eel Recovery Program to use underwater microphones to record where eels are most active and where they can no longer reach their destinations due to man-made barriers.
Finally, they collaborate with the photographer Adam Clutterbuck on the project “Nether Wood” which combines sound and image.
It is noted that his sounds and compositions have been presented on BBC radio, on independent radio stations and in sound installations in Ioannina, Newcastle and London. They have also been used in theatrical and visual performances such as ROOTS at the Athens-Epidavros Festival (2018).
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