Abstract
This paper will examine the poetics of sound archiving as a means of documenting and evaluating Singapore’s cultural and political economy. It is twofold in consideration: an inquiry into sound’s significance for/in Singapore and the media/tion of archiving sound. This first concern involves an investigation of selected sound events and their relation to the cultural and political life-worlds (Lebenswelt) of Singapore/ans. The second section argues for an importance of archiving sounds in/of Singapore given the absence of any authoritative sound library or sound map. Many iconic, culturally defining sounds are now lost to time; this loss further underscores the importance of archiving for past sounds and the perception of these sounds by historical actors inform us about the changing character and identity of cities, people and cultural practices. Technology today provides the means to capture and contain sound, as ephemeral phenomena, in high fidelity and this paper will include a discussion of an ongoing research project in collaboration with the National Archives of Singapore (SoundscapeSG) which involves a web-based platform that contains Singapore soundscapes in ambisonic formats.
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Notes
- 1.
The AVA has been re-structured and renamed as the Animal and Veterinary Service (AVS) since 2019.
- 2.
- 3.
Lifeworld is used here in the Husserlian sense. See Edumud Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy—First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten, Nijhoff, The Hague (1982).
- 4.
For an overview of multiculturalism in Singapore, see Mathew Mathews, Introduction: Ethnic Diversity, Identity and Everyday Multiculturalism in Singapore, in Mathew Mathews (ed.), The Singapore Ethnic Mosaic: Many Cultures, One People, pp. xi-xxxix, Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore (2018).
- 5.
See for example, Crystal Ang, Thaipusam Drums Ban is so Racist We Can’t Even, Mustsharenews, 5 February 2015, https://mustsharenews.com/thaipusam-saga/, last accessed 2021/02/02.
- 6.
This term was first introduced in a Parliamentary speech on 17 October 2011, by Dr Amy Khor, then Minister of State for Health and Chairman of REACH, the government unit for feedback. It was made in reference to keeping a core in the workforce made up of Singaporeans and imposing a quota of foreign workers. See the parliamentary proceedings here, https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/topic?reportid=009_20111017_S0010_T0001.
- 7.
Goh Chok Tong, Speech by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the Launch of the Speak Good English Movement 2000, 10.30am, Institute of Technical Education Headquarters Auditorium, https://www.languagecouncils.sg/goodenglish/-/media/sgem/document/press-room/2000/sgem-launch-2000-goh-speech.pdf. Accessed 5 February 2021.
- 8.
See ‘Population and Population Structure’, Department of Statistics Singapore, https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/population/population-and-population-structure/latest-data.
- 9.
Otobiography is a portmanteau of autobiography and otology. Coined by Jacques Derrida, the term refers to the processes of an autobiography being constituted only by the ‘ear’ of the Other. Derrida is using the ear not as a metaphor but as a corporeal and physiological constant that listens and signs (or acknowledges) the identity of the autobiographer. It is also a call for the ear to listen for the noises in a text where the ear needs to listen to the unpredictable, the uncanny, the unheard, the heterogeneousness of differance of each utterance.
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Tan, M.C.C. (2021). Soundscape Singapore: Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage. In: Rauterberg, M. (eds) Culture and Computing. Interactive Cultural Heritage and Arts. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12794. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77411-0_9
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