ABSTRACT
Theorists of contemporary ecological crises have relied on musical, sonic, and multisensory knowledge to make sense of the disorientation of thinking, feeling, and knowing that accompanies contemporary ecological crises. Inspired by their approach, this chapter outlines how sonic creativity and multisensory autoethnography can be used to reorient pedagogies, learning spaces, and creative outcomes toward more ethical and embodied ways of relating. Within this pedagogical approach, learning spaces invite students to understand themselves as knowledge creators instantiating intra- and interpersonal change, and to understand themselves as embedded within infrastructural systems at a parapersonal scale. This chapter offers two example assignments, a triple timescale composition and an infrastructural autoethnography, that introduce these orientations into environmental humanities classrooms. Such assignments encourage students to contend with the aesthetic problem of connecting the disconnected through practices of attunement to multiple timescales. Students mobilize their attunement to recognize the systems of mediating environmental resources that govern their daily lives. To illustrate these assignments, this chapter offers the following resources on the companion website: Andrew’s own audiovisual work as well as assignment directions and excerpts from infrastructural autoethnographies completed by Davy’s urban studies students.
