Taiwanese experimental composer Yang Cheng describes abandoning a conventional field-recording setup while travelling around Taiwan. Instead, he attached microphones to his palms and listened through his hands.
That small technical decision completely changes the idea of recording a place for me.
A normal field recorder encourages distance. Point the microphones toward an environment, remain quiet and collect what happens.
A microphone attached to the body cannot pretend the recorder is absent.
Movement becomes part of the recording. Touch becomes part of it. The distance between body and object keeps changing.
Yang also works with radio, Bluetooth speakers, electromagnetic fields, found objects and environmental recordings. But the microphones on the palms are the detail I keep returning to because they turn listening into a physical action.
We usually describe microphones as devices that capture sound.
Here they behave almost like sensory organs.
Perhaps field recording becomes more interesting when it stops asking, “What does this place sound like?” and starts asking, “What does my presence inside this place sound like?”
