Bat/Man: echolocation, experimentation, and the question of the human

Abstract

Sound studies research has demonstrated that hearing and listening are culturally constructed and historically contextual. Yet the construction of normative perceptual states has historically relied on interspecies comparison, particularly in the laboratory. In this article Iconsider the ways that scientific imagining constructs more than human subjects, particularly the entanglement of bats and humansin the violent history of echolocation research. Beginning with the notion of “sonic sight”, I examine early echolocation experiments as well as the biomimetic application of echolocation by humans who are blind or visually impaired. I conclude with an analysis of “Bat/Man”, an experimental piece by Austin-area composer Steve Parker, whose work suggests that human-animal relations are a product of anthropomorphic imaginaries. Drawing from recent work in critical animal studies, I argue that biomimetic practices in the laboratory and in music are central to the production of a perceptual normate that constitutes the category of the human. At the same time, I invoke Thom van Dooren’s concept of a “multispecies ethics” to consider the violent asymmetries that are implicit in such forms of knowledge production (Van Dooren Citation2019, 11).

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