ALI(E/A)NSI Conversations 03: Samuel Johnstone

The ALI(E/A)NSI conversations are part of the exhibition’s curatorial process, connecting with participating artists through their practices, the works they bring into the exhibition, and their relationships to NOVILLA and Schöneweide.

Samuel Johnstone is a member of Moving Poets, a friend and collaborator within the sōydivision constellation, and a resident of Niederschöneweide, the neighbourhood surrounding NOVILLA. Last year, he also participated in LANDSLIDE, our first group exhibition developed together with Moving Poets Berlin.

In this third conversation, Sam speaks about field recording as a form of research and about listening to the distinct ecologies of the Teutoburger Wald through soil, moss, plants and trees. He reflects on how recording technologies create an acoustic world that does not otherwise exist in the same form, raising questions about what we are actually hearing and how the act of listening shapes what becomes perceptible.

The conversation also considers the presence of the recorder, microphone and listener within an ecology. Rather than imagining field recording as a neutral or purely documentary act, Sam asks what kinds of intimacy, distance, influence and responsibility emerge when we enter an environment and begin to listen.

His work sub/Wald brings recordings from the Teutoburger Wald into NOVILLA. Through this geographical transposition, the recordings become part of an extended field site where another place can be encountered, reconstructed and understood from afar.

Listening practice

1. What initially made field recording more than documentation for you and turned it into a way of researching?

My approach to field recording is informed by my experiences experimenting with different forms of microphoning, especially contact microphoning, listening to the different acoustic properties of materials. I began to understand microphoning as a way of turning one thing into another: transforming vibrations, either through the air or through materials, into electrical signals.

When I started working with organic matter, recording soil, trees, plants and mosses, I began to appreciate that when we are supposedly listening to the sounds of organic matter, we are not listening to an acoustic world perceived as such by any other organism. It is a completely unique acoustic experience that does not otherwise exist. No insects, animals, plants or trees listen to the sounds of soil in the way that humans do.

Through these technologies, we gain a unique acoustic perspective, but we are also listening to a world that only exists within this technological frame. These vibrations have been transformed by microphones into electrical signals and then into an acoustic image that humans can hear. This soundscape does not exist in the same form for any other organism.

For me, recording the sounds of soil, trees and plants does not really serve a documentary function. Instead, it poses further questions, especially: What are we listening to? What criteria and faculties do we have for understanding what we hear?

Two forest ecologies

2. The recordings come from two distinct forest ecologies, including soil, moss and trees. What differences became audible before they became intellectually clear?

The field recordings I made as part of the sub/Wald research project took place in two different forest ecologies situated within the same geographical area: the Teutoburger Wald in the Ostwestfalen Lippe region. All the recordings were made during an expedition to climb the Grotenburg near Detmold.

During this expedition, I encountered two very distinct forest ecologies that, for me, are representative of contemporary forestry in Germany. One was a mature beech forest, while the other consisted of plantations of Norway spruce. This reflects a common pattern within German forestry: older, mature beech forests existing alongside more recent spruce plantations. Although coniferous forests have existed in Germany for perhaps two or three hundred years, these plantations typically date from roughly the past century, which is relatively recent in forestry terms.

The two ecologies have very different sensory profiles. Their smells, light and colours are completely different. However, I do not think it is as simple as listening to the recordings and immediately knowing which ecology each recording belongs to.

In these recordings, I am looking for a subtle, almost microscopic level of acoustic detail that could theoretically exist in either ecology. One might be surprised by how much acoustic activity can be found in the relatively young spruce plantations. Their acidic soil creates, somewhat paradoxically, fertile conditions for mosses, and moss is always fascinating to listen to. In the mature beech forests, there are older and grander trees with their own distinct acoustic signatures, which I suspect some listeners might be able to identify.

Beyond certain hallmarks, such as mosses or mature trees, there are many sounds in these recordings that cannot easily be categorised or quantified. That is what fascinates me and what I try to focus on: a sense of interconnectedness, life and entanglement. You cannot necessarily tell where one life form ends, where human influence begins, where the recorder’s influence is present, or whether listeners are hearing something that exists in the recording or constructing it themselves through the act of listening.

Position of the listener

3. Does recording a forest create intimacy, distance, extraction or responsibility? How do you negotiate the microphone’s presence?

One of the strongest realisations I have had while conducting field recordings is that the first thing you hear after pressing record is yourself. The second thing you hear is your equipment. Only after a while do you gradually begin to hear the ecology you are trying to record.

This becomes particularly obvious when working with contact microphones. You often have to position the microphone quite invasively, using a metal spike or pushing its surface into soil or moss. What you hear after that point is the sound of the ecology adapting to your presence.

The recordings presented in the exhibition share this dramaturgy. They allow us to hear the consequences of a field recorder standing within an ecological space and pressing record. You hear yourself and your equipment influencing the environment, as well as the environment adapting to your presence.

I have been strongly influenced by the idea of the “noisy non self,” a term coined by Mark Wright. It refers to the sonic consequences of a recorder being present in a space: all the noise, static and residual traces generated when a field recorder enters a space and presses record.

This idea affects my entire field recording practice. I try to make this element perceptible and bring it to the foreground. Rather than attempting to remove themselves from the recording, the field recorder must deal with the consequences of their presence.

This also applies to the listener. I hope listeners reflect on their own process of listening and on what it means to press play, put on headphones or enter a space and begin listening to an ecology from which they are physically separated, but to which they may nevertheless have a relationship. I want them to pay attention to the process of tuning into an acoustic space and to consider the consequences of this process, both for themselves and for the ecological space to which they are listening.

Translation

4. What changes when a forest recording moves from the Teutoburger Wald into a greenhouse in Schöneweide? Does it remain a document of one place or become part of a new ecology?

The question of geographical transposition is something I think about a lot in my practice: taking recordings from one ecological space and transposing them into another space for an act of active listening. What happens when we take something from one place, put it somewhere else and audition it there?

I find this process very interesting because it generates many meanings, both intentional and accidental.

Forests and nature reserves in Germany are much less natural than we might like to believe. They are shaped by intense human activity, including logging, traffic and their relationships to cities and other urban spaces. These influences are present in all the field recordings I made. When the recordings are placed within an urban environment, these relationships become more evident and certain parallels begin to move into the foreground.

In my practice, I am interested in the idea that fieldwork does not end when you press stop on the recording device and leave the geographical field. I think about the possibility of an extended field site and how we can continue doing fieldwork when we take recordings elsewhere and listen to them.

Can we reconstruct a field space in another geographical location and continue researching and understanding it from afar? Many interesting observations and realisations only occur when you listen in a different space.

This is what I am interested in creating within the exhibition: a space that allows listeners to enter a kind of field imaginary and arrive at their own conclusions, understandings and realisations.

ALI(E/A)NSI takes place from 28 August to 13 September 2026 at NOVILLA, Berlin Schöneweide.

Funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, Präsentationen zeitgenössischer Bildender Kunst 2026.