Vanessa Tomlinson's <em>Sonic Dreams</em>
Authors: Klotz Mathew 
Published: November 2024

Utopia is an ideal, something that should mobilize us, push us forward. Utopia is not prescriptive; it renders potential blueprints of a world not quite here, a horizon of possibility, not a fixed schema. It is productive to think about utopia as flux, a temporal disorganization, as a moment when the here and the now is transcended by a then and a there that could be and should be. (Muñoz 97, emphasis in original)
Imagine the sound of … (Tomlinson, Sonic 2)

Utopian Beginnings
One of the overall conceits of cultural theorist of colour José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia is that hope forms an ineliminable part of any critical (and queer) utopianism. As Muñoz repeatedly emphasises (drawing extensively on the work of philosopher Ernst Bloch, particularly Principle), this modality of hope relates in no way to what he identifies as “banal optimism” (Muñoz 3), or optimism that pays heed to overworked ideas. Rather, hope, in Muñoz’s sense, emerges through the politics of the everyday and, in particular, the actions of its most minoritised participants: queer and trans peoples, peoples of colour, Indigenous peoples, and disabled peoples, among others. These actions are “the hopes of a collective, an emergent group, or even the solitary oddball who is the one who dreams for many” (Muñoz 3).
Importantly, Muñoz characterises hope as “both a critical affect and a methodology” (4). To engage in the doing of hope—that is, in the work of hoping (something that Joshua Chambers-Letson, Tavia Nyong’o, and Ann Pellegrini remind us of in the Foreword to the tenth-anniversary edition of Cruising Utopia ix)—involves “a backward glance that enacts a future vision” (Muñoz 4). So, as a methodology, hope can become a tool for critical speculation. To feel hope, then, is commensurate with the perception of this future vision, or what Muñoz also calls the not-yet-conscious, many versions of which are invoked in the epigraph to this paper (e.g. “potential blueprints of a world not quite here”).
The ongoing and escalating precarities of both the climate crisis and mass environmental destruction animate Muñoz’s formulation by foregrounding the need to mobilise in ways that counteract at once “the force of political pessimism” (Muñoz 4; e.g. the world-ending streak endemic to colonial climate narratives) and the prevalence of banal optimism (e.g. belief in elitist solutions, such as travelling to and colonising another planet). So too are the other bodies who are caught in these temporalities—for instance, nonhuman animals, geological formations, and the tiniest subatomic structures—present in Muñoz’s thinking, even if he does not explicitly mention them. Like their queer and Indigenous kin (among others), they hope in a particular way and, at other times, are the reasons for its manifestation. Ultimately, Muñoz’s call, which he reiterates in his later essay “Hope in the Face of Heartbreak”, is for us to hope—to practice it, feel it, share it, work at it, catalyse it, and struggle with both it and its antonym of disappointment—“in the face of obstacles that so often feel insurmountable … [and] in the face of an often heartbreaking reality” (207).
The particular instantiation of hope in which I’m interested is what Muñoz (following Bloch; see Utopian) beautifully describes as the anticipatory illumination of art: “certain properties that can be detected in representational practices helping us to see the not-yet-conscious” (Muñoz 3). I locate such properties in Australian percussionist and improvisor Vanessa Tomlinson’s work Sonic Dreams—a structured improvisation (i.e. the musicians improvise according to a set of guidelines) in which performers are tasked with imagining the “lost and unknown sounds” of extinct and critically endangered species (Tomlinson, Sonic 1). My argument is that, against the grain of the supposedly knowable extinctive futures instantiated by colonial pessimism, Sonic Dreams entails a process of world-making that is “epistemologically and ontologically humble” (Muñoz 28, emphasis in original), insofar as it “strain[s] to activate the no-longer-conscious” (28) in order to glimpse (or speculate) a different and better futurity.
In doing so, Sonic Dreams intervenes in the (hetero)normative framing of time as linear and beholden to the present and of the past as out of reach. This framework is what Muñoz (after cultural theorist Jack Halberstam) deems straight time, which “tells us that there is no future but the here and now of our everyday life” (Muñoz 22). In this temporal regime, legitimacy and what we might call a legitimate futurity are therefore crafted through “the spectacle of the state refurbishing its ranks through overt and subsidized acts of reproduction” (Muñoz 22; see also literary theorist Lee Edelman’s book-length critique of this spectacle). Put another way, for something to be valued as legitimate within this framework, it must accede to these narrow heteronormative criteria, which service a potently consumerist and forward-facing present. The past—and, for that matter, any alternative temporality—holds little currency in this neoliberal state of affairs.
Sonic Dreams, then, is couched in questions of what counts as artificial. Not least is the question of whether the sounds co-produced by the performers and their instruments might be figured as artificial likenesses of the species in question. To be clear, I am not attempting to make any qualitative claims about artificiality, and indeed, we might altogether avoid ascribing the notion of the artificial in all its forms with a negative or positive valence. My suggestion is a different one entirely. I want to trouble the artificial/legitimate binary that can be overlaid onto Tomlinson’s work given its explicit turn towards the past, teasing out how the related ideas of artificiality and speculation are central to the work’s production of hope.
Sonic Dreams
Much of Tomlinson’s artistry comprises site-specific work (e.g. Beacons by Tomlinson and Australian composer Lawrence English). The descriptor “site-specific” indicates not just that the performance or composition is intended for a certain site but more so that it incorporates what composer and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer would describe as the site’s soundscape: the sounds that make up the space and the multifarious relations in which they are entangled. Other notable site-specific work includes Australian improvisor Jim Denley’s album Through Fire, Crevice and the Hidden Valley, which was recorded in the Budawang Range. Especially pertinent in Tomlinson’s body of work is the practice that she calls sounding, which she describes as “the activation of a place or space by a musician that is both investigative—information seeking—and performative” ("Intersecting" 23; e.g. Sounding the Condamine). In other words, sounding amounts to a committed and intentional orientation towards the nuances and politics of place and, overall, is focussed on producing “new knowledge, new relationships, and new experiences for performers and listeners … [along with] understanding of place” (Tomlinson, "Soundings" 35).
Sonic Dreams is a sounding of extinctions that have happened or may yet happen in various places and at various times, though this is the extent of its nature as a site-specific work—none of the versions of the work need to be realised at the places to which they correspond. The first version, which relates to the area around Boorloo (Perth), was commissioned by the contemporary music ensemble GreyWing, whom Tomlinson calls “sonic investigators” (Sonic 1). This description serves as an important hint in terms of the speculative nature of the work: in this case, imagining (much like hoping) is a kind of work—not a case of untethered daydreaming, but a situated and critical romp through eight no-longer-conscious sound worlds (more on these soon). As Tomlinson writes in the preparation notes, “practice for this piece may include improvising with the given sound worlds, research about the species in the piece, site visits/recordings, rehearsing how to move from one sonic state to the next. Or it may include going on stage and spontaneously playing from the instruction cards” (Sonic 1; each card details a sound world). This list of preparatory and investigative activities can be synthesised into something like an initial effort to make kin (to use feminist philosopher of science Donna Haraway’s language) or nurture intimacy with the work and, more importantly, each of the sound worlds and their occupying species.
Tomlinson then provides an inexhaustive set of instructions for performing the work. Three points stand out. First is a general idea of how to approach each sound world: “move through the sequence of 8 imagined sound worlds in any order you like. These may last from 30 second[s] minimum per card, to as long as you like” (Tomlinson, Sonic 1). Second is a slightly more restrictive statement outlining how to approach the coda: “remember the order, and what you played. The coda is a recount of the sound worlds—5 seconds per imagination” (1). And third is what amounts to a gloss of the work: “together you are creating a series of fixed, repeatable, sonic memories—for that moment only” (1). Beyond the invocation of each sound world—all of which begin with “Imagine the sound of”—no indication is given as to what kinds of sounds might be made. After all, we are unable to know what some of these sound worlds (their pitch contents, rhythms, timbres, and so on) really are or were. Tomlinson’s method therefore aims at description, not prescription.
Importantly, the instrumentation for the piece is open and for any number of performers—anyone, no matter the instrument they play or their proficiency, can participate. Nor is there any hierarchy between performers and listeners: as sound artist Nat Grant points out in relation to the majority of Tomlinson’s artistry, “it’s not about ego; it’s about simultaneously holding the very shared and very individual experience of listening” (para. 9). This shared, non-hierarchical experience speaks to collective imagining, collective resistance.
At this point, I encourage the reader to pause their reading and view two performances of Sonic Dreams. First is a performance of the first version of the work, featuring Tomlinson, pianist Erik Griswold, and electronic musician John Ferguson. Note that the projection of images seen in this performance is not a requirement of the piece, yet it goes some way in augmenting its investigative and relational tenor. Second is a performance of Sonic Dreams (Stanthorpe), featuring Tomlinson and Griswold.
In many ways, Sonic Dreams is what could be termed both a species-specific work and a time-specific work. It orients performers and listeners towards particular species, their histories, and their habitats, at times extending the notion of a soundscape to include no-longer-conscious sounds. In the first version of the piece, two of the species are “Pseudemydura umbrina [the Western swamp tortoise] coming up for breath” and “Dasyornis broadbenti litoralis [the Western rufous bristlebird] in the dawn chorus” (Tomlinson, Sonic 2). “In the case of Pseudemydura umbrina”, Tomlinson writes, “its habitat is now the Perth airport—its sound world totally transformed” (Sonic 1). This enterprise is not so different from that of American clarinettist David Rothenberg, who improvises with nonhuman animals such as humpback whales (see “Humpback whales”; see also “Interspecies”) in an attempt to cultivate more-than-human dialogue (see also Klotz). In Sonic Dreams, such dialogue gives way to speculation.

Fig. 1: Pseudemydura umbrina, Western swamp tortoises, or yarkiny to the Noongar People. Perth Zoo.

Fig. 2: Artist’s rendition of Dasyornis broadbenti litoralis or Western rufous bristlebirds. John Gould.
This orientation to the past—or backwards-facing glance, as Muñoz would have it—amounts to something like Deep Listening to past extinctions. Composer and improvisor Pauline Oliveros’s practice of Deep Listening entails perception not only of sounds (in this case, no-longer-conscious sounds) but likewise the details of their manifold contexts. It is, above all, a process of learning. So, animating the residue of each species populating Sonic Dreams through Deep Listening in a present that is tainted by climate and environmental crises matters. What can we learn from listening to (the loss of) these species and their habitats that might inform the not-yet-conscious? To the (hetero)normative understandings of time that pervade the present and fuel its forward-facing tendencies, this past-oriented pursuit would no doubt lack legitimacy and seem far too speculative. Yet, this Deep Listening and this sounding nevertheless offer a chance to think differently about extinctions and their material possibilities.
Sonic Hopes
What, then, might we take away from Tomlinson’s Sonic Dreams? Commenting on the work of filmmaker and choreographer Jack Smith, particularly his manifesto “Capitalism of Lotusland”, Muñoz writes, “Smith’s manifesto was utopian, not so much because he dreamed of Xanadu but, more nearly, because he performed alternate realities. These realities were loosely based on fantasies of glimmering lost cityscapes like Atlantis. … And this conjured reality instructs us that the ‘here and now’ is simply not enough” (170–71). Smith’s performances, which would hardly be deemed legitimate according to heteronormative standards, reconfigured the past through cheap glitter and polyester in an effort not only to glimpse a not-yet-conscious but also engage with that potential future in the present. This is what could be called hope-full world-making, and it is what galvanises Tomlinson’s piece.
Tomlinson dreams wildly; she speculates and asks us to do the same. These dreams resonate with “a critical impatience with the present”, something that Muñoz identifies in the gestures of performer Fred Herko (161), so they are not the stuff of disengaged, banal optimism. Instead, dreaming in Sonic Dreams translates to hoping, the underpinning of which is much-needed collective resistance in a time of despair. Tomlinson invites performers and audiences alike to bear witness to the emotional and political force of a no-longer-conscious: extinctions that are inextricable from the machinations of straight time but that have the potential to disrupt this logic and thus open on to a different and better not-yet-conscious. Her ultimate thesis is that listening is a crucial first step in this process. What we could call sonic hopes, then, may indeed offer new ways of thinking, approaching, and striving towards alternative futurities.
References
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