Ecologically Sound

Ecologically Sound

Ecologically Sound is a research group built around field recording, being in a field, and being between fields, considering experimental forms of pedagogy that are emerging in the space between disciplines, between distant realities and radical forms of localism. A research group for exploring where we go next with making creative practice in response to a world in transition:   

Transition from the stability of the Holocene into the instability of the Anthropocene,   

Transition from needing to speak out about climate change to having to work with its realities, 

Transition from an objective reality to subjective ones, from singular forms of crises to interconnected poly-crisis, from a human-centric subjectivity to an ecological form of subjectivity where culture is a composition of being that is always a form of being with…   

Ecologically Sound takes as its founding presence the installation of a live stream microphone on Woodlane Campus that is part of the Locus Sonus network of ecological soundscapes network of ecological soundscapes. Bram Thomas Arnold has been working with this technology for 10 years streaming the dawn chorus as part of a global initiative led by Soundtent, an arts collective working from Stave Hill Ecological Park in South London. 

“Ecology must stop being associated with the image of a small nature-loving minority or with qualified specialists.”  

- The Three Ecologies, Felix Guattari

“The idea of nature is getting in the way of properly ecological forms of culture, philosophy, politics and art.”  

- Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton

_____________

Lead image: Swearing an Oath to a Scottish Glen, performance still, Bram Thomas Arnold. 2015.  

_____________

External links

    Project details

    Project lead Bram Arnold
    Strategic alignment Falmouth School of Art

    Ecologically Sound takes as its founding presence the installation of a live stream microphone on Woodlane Campus that is part of the Locus Sonus network of ecological soundscapes network of ecological soundscapes. Bram Thomas Arnold has been working with this technology for 10 years streaming the dawn chorus as part of a global initiative led by Soundtent, an arts collective working from Stave Hill Ecological Park in South London.   

    The Research Group will initiate an iterative research group guided by a Divination Cluster of academics and practitioners, with conversation that takes place at the Woodlane Allotment and online via the Locus Sonus website. Using the microphone and allotment as a form of genius-loci the research group is for anyone interested in low impact, digitally engaged, critical conversations that form cultural propositions for making, being and living in an age of transition.   

    We will spend time in fields, between our relative fields, and between this reality and our online one. Emergent workshops include building Raspberry Pi’s for live streaming, building solar panels out of scrap, Bibliotherapy for the Anthropocene, tarot readings with Suzanne Treister’s Hexen 5.0 project.    

    Project team

    Bram

    Project lead - Dr Bram Arnold

    Dr Bram Thomas Arnold is an artist who started with walking and kept going into performance, drawing, installation, writing, academia and broadcasting. He studied the world’s first MA in Arts & Ecology at Dartington College of Arts, and in 2017 finished his PhD with University of the Arts London. A practice-based study into walking, writing and performance, developing an ecological form of subjectivity: a way of being in the world whereby an individual exists within and amongst places: ones social, geographic and political contexts. This philosophy expresses itself through a practice, Romantic in its outcomes and Conceptual in its methods, that does not restrict itself to traditional boundaries, mediums or modes of practice, a responsive way of being and making that is composed of and by its present context.

    Read more

    Additional team members

    Soundcamp 2025-26

    Dr. Bram Thomas Arnold & Trail Mix[ED] present: Soundcamp 2025

    • 03-04 May 2025  
    • Funded by Research England and Falmouth University

    Celebrating International Dawn Chorus Day  

    An evening of activity centred around live streaming the dawn chorus via Resonance FM in London as the world wakes up on International Dawn Chorus Day. Hundreds of globally dispersed live microphones, including one at Kestle Barton and one at Falmouth’s Woodlane Campus will be blended together to broadcast a 24-hour long stream of the dawn chorus in real time as the world turns.  

    The studio at Kestle will host a permanent live feed of the stream via Resonance, a reading room, and a listening station where audience can choose which livestream to listen to in the space and document these moments on the wall.  

    We are currently developing plans for Soundcamp 2026 so do get in touch if you are interested to be involved beyond attending the event.

    BramImage above: Dawn at End of the World Garden, Soundcamp 2016. © Bram Thomas Arnold.  

    BramImage above: Soundcamp Poster, Kestle Barton, 2025.  

    With Kestle Barton Bram is coordinating the #RememberNature event on the Lizard in Cornwall as part of a national day of activity coordinated by the Metzger Foundation. 

    Find out more

    __________

    In collaboration with Grant Smith of Soundtent.org we are building a proposal for a publication to emerge from Soundcamp 2026 around the streaming of ecological soundscapes, lightweight digital interventions and blended realities and how these developments impact on creative practice and pedagogy.  

    Get in touch with Bram if you want to join online or in real time.   

    Research outputs