There is a study conducted by John Gaspard Itard on how humans process sound differently based on their experiences. His subject was a boy who had been lost and raised in a forest or jungle. The boy didn’t respond to speech or auditory stimuli like clapping or even gunshots. However, when a fruit (or something similar) dropped to the ground, he responded immediately. Taking this to a broader context, this demonstrates how we hear sound based on relevance to our lived experience. For instance, when we hear a police car behind us, we instinctively decide whether to move aside or stay in its path—perhaps to annoy it if we perceive the police as corrupt. In either case, experience plays a vital role in how we listen and respond to sound.
The same applies to music, which evokes memories, feelings, moods, and ambiance. When we watch a film, the place where it was produced or how it was made is often audible through its sound design. Films from Indonesia and several other Asian countries tend to have a warmer sound, while Hollywood films sound bold and bright. I was deceived when I watched the opening scene of The Shadow Strays (2024). The dialogue, ambience, sound effects—everything—did not evoke my memories of Indonesian films until the actor spoke Bahasa and mentioned familiar places like Jakarta. In contrast, watching Home Sweet Loan (2024) was a completely different experience. From the beginning, I knew it was an Indonesian film; its sound immediately felt familiar.
The key difference lies in the timbre and quality of the sound. This doesn’t mean one approach is better than the other, but rather that each recalls different aspects and memories to help us comprehend and contextualize a film. The same applies to field-recorded sounds, but the way we interpret them is different. When we listen to music or watch a movie, the cultural context we draw from includes our broader experiences with music and film. However, when listening to a field recording, we tend to compare it to the everyday sounds we hear with our own ears. Field recordings often feel strange and out of place because they don’t evoke our daily lives in the same way.
Here’s an example of a field recording I made a few months ago at a nearby Warkop (a traditional coffee stall). At first, I felt the recording reflected my own shyness as a recordist. The sound was unfocused: overpowering music, kitchen noises, and conversations blending into a blur. But when I finally opened the session and listened to it again, I realized my initial impressions were wrong. The recording revealed fine details I hadn’t noticed before: the lyrics of the music, the quiet conversations, even the subtle noises from the kitchen. The recording was much more intricate than I had remembered.
It evoked how and why I recorded it, as well as the feelings I experienced before deciding to go there. However, it didn’t evoke a grander context. It didn’t remind me of my experiences with walla sounds or background ambiences for film. It simply captured that night as it was—a fragment of time. When I attach language to it, the recording becomes clearer: I can understand what people were saying or identify the music playing. But even then, that’s all it offers—a record of that specific moment, no more, no less.
This leads me to reflect on the nature of field recordings. In both physical and metaphysical contexts, they cannot be directly compared to carefully designed or purposefully recorded sounds. Field recordings are a distinct form: they are not walla or ambience but rather snapshots of specific moments in time, with their own identity. They are highly subjective objects, minor narratives, wild artifacts that gain a life of their own when played back.
Here I am in my room, opening Pro Tools, listening to the recording in a way that’s entirely different from the experience of being there. The recording carries some elements of the original moment but leaves others behind. It is present yet absent, familiar yet distant. A field recording can become a memento, or it can transform into something entirely new.
Perhaps, in a broader sense, all sound is like this. Sound presents itself to us and lets us listen—to hear what may happen, to find meaning in what is left unsaid, and to discover what is waiting to be revealed.
