‘Listening’ to materials -to co-design in the anthropocene

Why do we need to ‘listen’ to materials? What does ‘listening’ mean – is it merely understanding vibrations on our eardrums? Or can our perception of sound have a wider scope, can designers attend to a material’s resonance through their feet or hands, or perhaps through their knowledge and understanding? Is there always a difference between a literal sense of ‘listening’ and its more metaphorical use that also encompasses caring about? Might material resonance travel both ways, given our embeddedness in the material world? This article considers the Western Enlightenment role in separating sound from its material body and the consequences of this. It explores how our changing relationship to sound has distanced the designer from materials and how we might identify fresh tactics for collaborative design by ‘co-listening’ and ‘conversing’ with materials. Through shifting our position to consider ‘materials-as-co-performers’ in the practice of design, both literal and metaphorical approaches to ‘listening’ are explored, together with the dangers inherent in our figurative deafness to materials. Methodologies such as sonic fictional design, and material ‘conversations’ are proposed as a way to explore decolonial, posthuman approaches to co-making in the Anthropocene.