Ethical-Aesthetic Convergences in Ecologically Oriented Electroacoustic Practices

This paper examines the convergence of ethical and aesthetic frameworks in electroacoustic practices shaped by ecological awareness. It begins by addressing how the semiotic richness of recorded sound—central to the interdisciplinary nature of electroacoustic music—has encouraged composers to engage with philosophical and scientific discourses on perception, environment, and alterity. Drawing on traditions such as the GRM and the World Soundscape Project, the paper traces how figures including François Bayle and Luc Ferrari, alongside more recent practitioners such as Toshiya Tsunoda, Anne F. Jacques, and Diane Barbé, have employed sound recording to articulate situated and relational perspectives. These practices reveal a perceptual ethics informed by phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) and early ecological thought (von Uexküll), challenging modernist notions of aesthetic autonomy. Instead, they reclaim aesthetics in its original sense—as aisthesis, the embodied practice of perception—proposing a compositional approach grounded in attentive listening, ecological sensitivity, and the politics of sonic engagement within an increasingly interdependent world.