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Can Sound Be Used to Challenge the Colonial Legacies of Silent Archival Film?

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In 2017 I spent time at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) in Canberra reviewing colonial expeditionary films shot in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century, films that could only have been shot silent as a result of the technical limitations at the time. My goal was to produce a soundtrack for selected footage, an experiment using sound to recontextualise and re-conceptualise previously encoded images. In this chapter, I will discuss my methodology, the selection of a case study, and the practice of acoustically re-enacting the non-human soundscape. I discuss the potential benefits of this approach, from highlighting the role of environmental sound in the creation of place and identities both past and present, to how adding a sound layer can challenge colonizer narratives by providing alternative perspectives.

Keywords: acoustic re-enactment ; colonial gaze ; coloniser narrative ; cumulative palimpsest ; Dambimangari ; environmental sound ; ethnographic film ; film archives ; Indigenous ; Kimberleys ; North West Australia ; re-conceptualise ; re-contextualise ; silent-era expeditionary film ; sonic methodology

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Can Sound Be Used to Challenge the Colonial Legacies of Silent Archival Film?
Intellect , 117 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789387438_13
/content/books/9781789387438.c10
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References

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References

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    [Google Scholar]
  2. Bailey, G. . ( 2007;). Time perspectives, palimpsests and the archaeology of time. . Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 26 (2), 198–223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2006.08.002
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Baron, J. . ( 2007;). Contemporary documentary film and ‘Archive Fever’: History, the fragment, the joke. . The Velvet Light Trap, 60 (1), 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1353/vlt.2007.0010
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Baron, J. . ( 2012;). The archive effect: Archival footage as an experience of reception. . Projections, 6 (2). https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2012.060207
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Baron, J. . ( 2020). Reuse, misuse, abuse: The ethics of audiovisual appropriation in the digital era. Rutgers University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Burgoyne, R. . ( 2021). Film Seminar. University of Southampton;.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Chion, M. . ( 1994). Audio-vision: Sound on screen. Columbia University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Grieveson, L. ,, & MacCabe, C. . (Eds.). ( 2011). Empire and film: Cultural histories of cinema (, 1st. ed., Vol. 49, Issue 10) (pp. 73–114). Bloomsbury Publishing;.127
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Groo, K. . ( 2019). Bad film histories: Ethnography and the early archive. University of Minnesota Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Hardy, T. . ( 1873). Under the greenwood tree: A rural painting of the dutch school. (Vol. 53) Asher:.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Holloway, B. . ( 2011;). The tree and its voices: What the Casuarina says. . Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, 1 (Summer), 27–37. http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-131836-20120507-0833-www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/aslec-anz/article/view/2233/2732.html
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Howard, D. M. ,, Schofield, J. ,, Fletcher, J. ,, Baxter, K. ,, Iball, G. R. ,, & Buckley, S. A. . ( 2020;). Synthesis of a vocal sound from the 3,000 year old Mummy, Nesyamun ‘True of Voice. .’ Scientific Reports, 10 (1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56316-y
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Jackson, P. . (Director). ( 2018). They Shall Not Grow Old [Film]. House Productions/Trustees of the Imperial War Museum/Wingnut Films.
  14. Johnson, B. . ( 2016). Sound studies today: Where are we going?. In P. Damousi , & J. Hamilton . (Eds.), A cultural history of sound, memory, and the senses (1st ed., pp. 7–22). Taylor & Francis;. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315445328
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Krause, B. L. . ( 2012). The great animal orchestra: Finding the origins of music in the world's wild places (, 1st. ed.). Little Brown;.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Lane, C. ,, & Carlyle, A. . ( 2013). In the field: The art of field recording. Uniformbooks (6 June 2011).
  17. Low, T. . ( 2016). Where song began: Australia's birds and how they changed the world. Yale University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Marks, L. U. . ( 2000). The Skin of the Film. . Duke University Press;.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Massey, D. . ( 2005). For Space (, 1st. ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd;.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Oobagooma, J. ,, Woolagoodja, D. ,, Blundell, V. ,, Doohan, K. ,, Vachon, D. ,, Allbrook, M. ,, Jebb, M. A. ,, Bornman, J. ,, & Corporation, D. A. . ( 2017). Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee: We're telling all of you: The creation, history and people of Dambeemangaddee country. Dambimangari Aboriginal Corporation;.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Rose, D. B. . ( 1996). Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission;.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Smith, B. R. . ( 2004). Listening to the wild blue yonder: The challenges of acoustic ecology. . In V. Erlmann . (Ed.), Hearing cultures: Essays on sound, listening, and modernity (pp. 21–42). Routledge;.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Stanner, W. E. . ( 2016). The dreaming. . In J. Rothenberg , & D. Rothenberg . (Eds.), Symposium of the whole (pp. 201–205). University of California Press;. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520966345-042
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Stuart, E. J. ,, & Norman, M. . ( 1923). A land of opportunities: Being an account of the author's recent expedition to explore the northern territories of Australia. J. Lane, the Bodley Head;.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Wylie, D. . (Producer). ( 1926). The Wonderland of North West Australia [Film]. Sovereign Productions.
  26. Wylie, D. S. . ( 1928;). The wonderland of north-west Australia.. Australian Geographer, 1 (1), 78–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182808702047
    [Google Scholar]

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