Audio Documentary: A Sociological Perspective

Figures

Fig. 1. Social world of Polish audio documentary

Fig. 2. Constant components in the process of defining audio documentary

Fig. 3. References to the category of truth

Fig. 4. Positional map (according to Adele Clarke’s concept) – intraspecific differentiation of the audio documentary genre.

Fig. 5. Content communicated through prosodic features of speech

Fig. 6. Responses to the question ‘How does sadness sound?’

Fig. 7. Responses to the question ‘How does anxiety sound?’

Fig. 8. Responses to the question ‘How does falsehood sound?’

Fig. 9. A process of sound socialisation

Fig. 10. The process of creating an audio documentary

Fig. 11. Audio documentary as cooperative (full) sound storytelling

Fig. 12. The impact of audio documentary

Fig. 13. Workplace location of interviewees-at the time of the interview

Tables

Table 1. Adele Clarke and Susan Leigh Star, The Social Worlds Framework: A Theory/Methods Package, (2008: 118)

Introduction

The publication that you hold in your hands is the result of a two-year-long study of Polish documentary-makers. The originating idea evolved over during meetings, debates, conversations and creative polemics at the Department of Sociology of Culture at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University (UKSW) in Warsaw. It, then, received formal support from the Ministry of Science and Education. Therefore, at the beginning, we would like to thank all the individuals and institutions, and, above all, our interviewees – documentarists for their support. Without their help and understanding for our academic investigations, this project could not succeed. Thank you very much, once again.

The exploration of this subject area was, on the one hand, a sign of appreciation for the overall output of the Polish creators, taking into consideration its richness and special characteristics. Their creations cover a wide database of documentaries, open as well as exclusive knowledge on the production of sound stories in its theoretical and practical dimensions. The debating, lively social environment of documentary-makers that reflects constantly on its work and has their designated ‘Significant Others’ i.e. generations of mentors, can also be consider a part of this output. The most comprehensive up-to-date anthology of the radio documentary authored by Jan Smyk comprises of works created between 1946 and 2017. This area, despite being at times a subject of sociologists’ interest, has never been so widely analysed. On the other hand, the Polish social world of a documentary remains in constant contact with the international world of documentary-makers, learning from their experiences, but, at the same time, contributing by serving as members of jury, debaters, creators-participants and laureates of competitions such as Prix Italia or Prix Europa. Sound in its non-verbal aspect is a universal carrier of meanings. Taking into consideration the above, this study is a valuable resource for researchers of the audio documentary, in a wider, not exclusively Polish, context.

The issues explored in the publication include problems within the hinterland of various social sciences, such as audio anthropology, acoustic ecology, sonic sociology, and other widely understood sound studies, which are the interest areas of anthropologists, musicologists, culture studies specialists, linguists and historians. A valuable review of publications from the areas of anthropology of senses and sound anthropology was created by Agata Stanisz in her study entitled ‘Audio anthropology: Practice of the discipline through sound’ (2014).

In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan predicted that emerging media would intensify the attack on the printed word, leading the printed work to evolve in the acoustic and visual form – a forewarning for an audiovisual shift in culture. The spread of new technologies in registering and playing sound had a pivotal role in the omnipresence of sound, even though, as stressed by historians, earlier factors such as industrial revolution and demographic explosion also enabled this. Almost 20 years later, Raymond Murray Schafer, together with his team, analysed the relationship between humans and their sound environment and came to interesting conclusions. Namely, whilst studying landscapes of various locations, including cities and rural areas, he created the notion of the soundscape, recognised the specifics and the quality of sounds there, but, most of all, he noticed noise pollution and to combat that he advocated so-called ear cleaning i.e. a systematic programme aiming at developing a greater audio-aural sensitivity, especially in relation to the sounds of environment (1977: 272). He was also instrumental in the development of the acoustic ecology. Schafer introduced a series of concepts, such as keynote sound (1977: 9), sound event (1977, 131) sound signal (1977: 10), sound sentiment (1977: 7, 47), soundmark (1977: 9, 239), sacred noise (1977: 51), or symbol/sonic archetype (1977: 169, 191). A soundscape, according to Schafer, may appear in a hi-fi form denoting readable, non-overlapping sounds and a mellow environment, or a lo-fi form, where acoustic signals are obscured and overcrowded (1977: 43). Schafer described the meaning of sounds as follows: ‘The sounds of the environment have referential meanings. For the soundscape researcher they are not merely abstract acoustical events, but must be investigated as acoustic signs, signals and symbols. A sign is any representation of a physical reality (the note C in a musical score, the on or off switch on a radio, etc.). A sign does not sound but merely indicates. A signal is a sound with a specific meaning, and it often stimulates a direct response (telephone bell, siren, etc.). A symbol, however, has richer connotations’ (1977: 169).

Audial signs, signals and symbols acquire a special composition in the radio documentary (or, indeed, in the audio documentary; terminology is discussed later in the Introduction). Yet, the categories originating in the soundscape concept are not sufficient for describing all the processes occurring whilst creating a documentary. Paulina Czarnek-Wnuk (2020) questioned the relation and the difference between soundscape recordings and a form of a radio documentary, noticing that, in the former, the most important is the documenting quality and not the storytelling. About the latter, she said: ‘A radio documentary emphasises the narrative, registered sounds are intensified through the appropriate composition of scenes, composition devices, enriching the overall message in music etc’ (2020: 66). One of the definitions of a radio documentary provided by the ‘Popular encyclopaedia of mass-media’ (1999: 468) distinguished its foundations which include: an authentic event, a person in a real, a dramatic dimension, a dramatised world of sounds as material, and the reality coverage. Differences between recordings of a soundscape (already highly conceptualised) and a radio documentary are palpable: therefore, we felt the need to create a series of categories relating to the latter notion.