Mnemosonic Topographies - Sensory Epistemology Between Sound, Space, and Memory

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In the interstice between sound, space, and memory, this article unfolds a mnemosonic topography — an embodied listening practice that traces the ephemeral contours of place through sonic resonance and sensory recall. Drawing upon field recordings and psychoacoustic reflection, it navigates the liminal terrain where sonic phenomena become mnemonic vessels, carrying sedimented histories and affective geographies. Through a trauma‑informed lens and an ethics of minute listening, the work interrogates how acoustic ecologies inscribe themselves upon the sensorium, revealing latent narratives embedded in the sonic substrata of contested landscapes, and exposing the entanglement of personal and collective memory with spatial experience.

The methodology emerges from a transdisciplinary praxis, integrating sound art, ecological awareness, and phenomenological inquiry. Listening is approached not as passive reception but as an active epistemic gesture — a way of knowing that resists ocularcentrism and privileges the vibrational intimacy of place. By mapping sonic memory across spatial thresholds, the article proposes a sensory epistemology that is both archival and generative, where the act of listening becomes a form of witnessing, healing, and reimagining.

“There is a profound sense of nostalgia embedded in my neural circuits — a residue of belonging to the last generation to spend childhood without mobile phones or the internet, a formative imprint that shapes how I remember, perceive, and inhabit space. This personal imprint frames my understanding of space as an ultimate resource in political, socio‑cultural, environmental, bodily, and spiritual terms, and demands a challenging adaptability — an ongoing process of unlearning and rewiring my perception of the world.”

Introduction

Popina Memorial, Sounding Spomenik. Photo credits: Nataša Serec

Perceiving space — and everything it contains — as an ultimate resource is today largely framed through its materiality: its capacity for exploitation, ownership, and commodification. Only with the expansion of the digital realm did we begin to grapple with the notion of other spaces. Yet the possible multidimensionality of what we call physical space may be far more complex than we can presently conceive. Central to the discourse I propose here is the way we remain directly entangled with the past — as genetic neuroscience increasingly confirms, this entanglement is not merely metaphorical but also biological.

Our neural architecture is shaped by the accumulated stressors and adaptive strategies of previous generations. The body–mind carries these imprints as part of its inherited design, influencing perception, behaviour, and even our sense of place. Alongside this deep inheritance, multiple regulatory mechanisms — from neuroplasticity to epigenetic modulation — offer potent regenerative frameworks. Put simply, the encoding of our ancestors’ experiences into our genes determines many of our characteristics, until a conscious recognition of disruption prompts an intentional act of reconfiguration.

Today, the DNA of all living organisms is encountering forms of contamination unprecedented in evolutionary history. It may take generations before the full consequences surface. Before that, however, we must reckon with the legacies already inscribed in our genetic memory: the aftershocks of industrialisation and technological acceleration, alongside the legacies of colonialism and post‑colonial extraction, and the enduring logics of global capital expansion and war. These are the most obvious, surface imprints carried from the past few centuries — the scars of systems that have severed us from nature and ecological coexistence, creating a feedback loop of interdependent genealogy, reflected directly in our attitudes toward, and treatment of, the body–mind within the environment in its broadest sense.

These inherited imprints do not exist in isolation; they are mediated by the temporal frameworks through which we live and remember. It is overwhelming to consider the unending spiral of stressors that shape and modify our DNA — how accumulated experiences and inherited traumas predispose us to both vitality and illness. An understanding of these overlapping realities adds depth and dynamism to the framework in which this continuum operates. We might call this a sociology of time — the study of how temporal structures shape individual behaviour, cultural norms, and collective perceptions of duration, pace, and shared consciousness. Rather than treating time as a neutral, objective force, this field frames it as a social construct: a symbolic system and a mechanism of regulation, shaped by historical and cultural contexts. The imprints of the past and the stressors of the present are already embedded in our biological systems and are now enfolded within this formative temporal dynamic, existing in tightly interwoven coexistence. This interplay is both consequential and generative, branching into multiple expressions at individual and collective levels.

Alongside the dense layering of genealogy and inherited experience, biological systems are sustained by — and inseparable from — the energetic matrices in which they are embedded. Emerging research in quantum biology and consciousness studies suggests that life is not solely organised through biochemical processes, but is also guided and stabilised by scale‑invariant fields that operate across molecular, organismic, and cosmic levels. This view is reinforced by recent studies in biophysics, which show that coherent electromagnetic patterns and oscillatory field structures can persist across scales, acting as organising templates for biological activity. For example, research on long‑range coherence in protein and DNA dynamics indicates that these macromolecules may function as resonant antennas, tuned to environmental and endogenous frequencies. Such findings echo the proposition that living systems are embedded in — and responsive to — a continuous informational field.

As outlined by Dirk K.F. Meijer and Henk Kieft in The Role of Humanity in a Self‑Learning Universe, reality itself can be understood as an interplay of mass, energy, information, and consciousness, with resonance mechanisms linking living systems to a universal information domain. In parallel, Biophysics of Consciousness proposes that a scale‑invariant acoustic information code, rooted in a superfluid quantum space, functions as a holofractal memory workspace — a field‑receptive interface through which biological entities both receive and imprint information. Within this framework, the body–mind is not an isolated processor of inherited traits, but a resonant participant in a self‑learning cosmos, its physiology and consciousness continually shaped by the harmonic exchange between genetic memory and the universal energetic field.

Yet we remain largely bound to a Western medical paradigm that resists viewing the body as a holistic system, while many Eastern traditions have long embraced body–mind integration, the cultivation of energy, and millennia‑old spiritual practices rooted in the essence of human experience: the existence of the soul. This returns us to an enduring question: how do we escape the repressive forces of soulless materialism? Perhaps by returning to the ultimate source — and resource — of life: the knowledge and cultivation of energy. And to begin, we must start with our own body.

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Photo credits: Matej Grgić

Ask Your Body

The human energetic body is a multi‑layered, dynamic system in which subtle and physical structures are interwoven. Across traditions, this system is described through different but often overlapping models: the chakras and nadis of Hindu and Buddhist thought; the meridians and dantian of Chinese medicine and qigong; the sephirothic tree in Kabbalistic mysticism; and the subtle bodies of Theosophy and Western esotericism. Despite cultural differences, these frameworks converge on the idea that the body is not a closed, isolated mechanism but an open, resonant field, exchanging energy and information continuously with its environment.

In contemporary metaphysical and biophysical interpretations, this field is often visualised as a torus — a self‑sustaining, doughnut‑shaped flow of energy that moves from the body’s centre outward, curves around, and re‑enters through the poles. The heart’s electromagnetic field, measurable several feet beyond the skin, is frequently cited as a physiological analogue for this toroidal structure. In this model, energy spirals through central channels (such as the sushumna nadi in yogic anatomy), radiates outward through the auric layers, and returns in a continuous loop, creating a coherent, scale‑invariant geometry seen in natural systems from atoms to galaxies.

This toroidal framework offers a unifying metaphor for the complexity of the human energetic body: it accommodates the vertical axis of consciousness (linking higher and lower centres), the horizontal exchange with the surrounding environment, and the cyclical regeneration of life force. In practice, traditions such as Reiki, qigong, and certain forms of meditation use breath, movement, and intention to strengthen and balance this flow, aiming to harmonise the body’s internal rhythms with the larger energetic field of the Earth and cosmos. Whether approached through ancient healing arts or modern biofield research, the torus serves as both a symbolic and functional map of the human and as an open, self‑organising system in constant dialogue with the universe.

To remain uninformed about the energetic potentials and dynamics of the integrated body–mind and its embeddedness within the environment is not only limiting but symptomatic of a toxic mode of being that history continues to replicate. A foundational understanding of energy exchange between body–mind and environment is not optional; it is the minimum threshold for entering the field of sound research and for becoming a practitioner of minute listening.

Within this complex, interrelated continuum, the body–mind navigates multiple forms of memory: sensory memory (iconic, echoic, haptic), which briefly retains raw impressions; short‑term and working memory, which hold and manipulate information over seconds to minutes — including rare phenomena such as eidetic recall; and long‑term memory, which divides into explicit (episodic, semantic) and implicit (procedural, priming) forms. All operate through the three fundamental stages of encoding, storage, and retrieval, orchestrated by the intricate activity of neural circuits and networks. Together, they form a spiralling system in which personal and collective histories are continually inscribed, reinterpreted, and reactivated.

Contemporary science is increasingly intent on locating where memory resides — not only within the body–mind but also within the environment. In this process, complex neural networks and extended bodily systems are gradually being acknowledged, alongside concepts such as the extended body–mind and energy‑based systems that reach into and depend upon the environment. Yet much of this knowledge remains absent from academic curricula.

To put it plainly: if you struggle to locate a certain trauma or retrieve a lost memory, the most accurate advice might be — ask your body. Only now, the definition of “body” has expanded: it encompasses complex biochemistry, scale‑invariant information fields, countless meridians, and dimensions of interconnection with the environment that make us far less independent than once imagined.

If memory is the architecture through which past, present, and imagined futures are continually negotiated, then sound is one of its most potent architects — a medium that both carries and activates memory across bodily, spatial, and energetic domains. To enter the field of sound as an energetic medium is to engage with its dual nature: at once physical and metaphysical, measurable and ineffable. Sound is vibration — pressure waves propagating through matter — yet it is also a carrier of intention, emotion, and memory. Its physical properties are defined by frequency, amplitude, and resonance, while its experiential dimensions unfold through perception, embodiment, and relationality.

Nazare, Portugal. Photo credits: Mark Vernon

Mnemosonic Topography

From a biophysical perspective, sound is both a mechanical and energetic phenomenon — a carrier of information that can entrain brain rhythms, modulate autonomic functions, and influence emotional states. In this sense, listening becomes a process in which the body’s own electromagnetic and vibrational fields interact with those of the environment. The practice of mnemosonic topography suggests that vibrational phenomena do not merely pass through us; they inscribe themselves into the body’s cellular memory, into the spatial memory of places, and into the shared energetic field that binds them, producing inseparable new memory compounds.

As I explored in Introduction to Sound and Listening as Psychoenergetic Agencies, sound operates not only within the auditory system but across the entire body, activating neural, cellular, and energetic responses. Listening becomes a mode of alignment (synchronisation) — or deliberate disruption (intervention). Here, mnemosonic topography finds its anchor: mapping how vibrational phenomena inscribe themselves upon body–mind and space, and how memory is carried not only through narrative but through resonance.

From a sensory perspective, the body’s reception of sound extends far beyond the cochlea. Vibrations travel through bone, fascia, and fluid, stimulating mechanoreceptors in the skin, proprioceptive sensors in muscles and joints, and even influencing the autonomic nervous system. Low‑frequency waves can entrain brain rhythms, modulate heart‑rate variability, and alter hormonal balance, while high‑frequency components may activate subtle somatosensory responses that shape emotional and cognitive states. In bioacoustic terms, every environment generates a complex spectrum of frequencies — a sonic fingerprint — that interacts with the listener’s physiology in real time. This interaction is not passive: the body’s own electromagnetic and vibrational fields respond to, and in turn influence, the surrounding acoustic field. Within this reciprocal exchange, listening becomes both a diagnostic and generative act, capable of revealing the energetic architecture of place and the deep entanglement between human and environmental systems.

Creative cognition is deeply shaped by the modalities of attention we cultivate. In the context of sound, attention can oscillate between diffuse, open states — where perception is panoramic and receptive to the unexpected — and focused, selective states, where the mind hones in on minute detail. Active listening is the synthesis of these modes: a deliberate, embodied act in which the listener is attuned to the whole while tracking subtle shifts in timbre, rhythm, and resonance. This is not passive reception but co‑creative engagement, where the listener’s awareness becomes part of the sonic event itself.

Within such a framework, intention becomes a shaping force. In many contemplative and energetic traditions, intention is understood not merely as a mental aim but as a directed energetic pattern — a coherent field that can be embedded into action, gesture, or sound. When sound is produced with clear, focused intention, its vibrational structure can carry this imprint, influencing the listener’s physiological, emotional, and energetic state.

This principle was central to the life’s work of Vlady Stévanovitch (1925–2005), a researcher and teacher initiated into Eastern energy practices in his youth, who spent over six decades refining a pedagogy for the Art du Chi. In 1988, Stévanovitch established the École de la Voie Intérieure, an international institution that has since expanded to more than fifteen countries. Within this framework, he adapted traditional Asian energy techniques for contemporary practitioners, emphasising direct experience of Chi in one’s own body. His method integrated posture, breath, and movement with what he called sons porteurs de Chi — sound structures richly charged with energy, designed to transmit vitality and coherence.

One of the tools developed within this lineage is the Qieko— a “live wave transmitter” that emits very low‑volume frequencies within the human audible spectrum, intended for wellness applications. Though subtle to the ear, the Qieko’s waves are conceived as carriers of living energy, their effect shaped by the operator’s state of presence and clarity of intention. In this way, the device embodies the principle that sound is not merely a mechanical vibration but a vessel for the energetic signature of its creation — a meeting point where physics, perception, and the directed will of the human mind–body system converge.

Photo credits: Manja Ristić

Sonic Dialogues

Across the living world, communication often unfolds through energy patterns and resonance rather than language alone. From the subsonic rumbles of elephants travelling vast distances through the ground, to the vibratory courtship signals of spiders transmitted along silk threads, to the harmonic choruses of cicadas synchronising their calls, nature is fluent in vibrational dialogue. These systems rely on resonance — the capacity of a structure or organism to respond most strongly to specific frequencies — enabling efficient transfer of information and energy across space. In aquatic environments, whales and dolphins use complex acoustic patterns that can propagate for hundreds of kilometres, while in forests, the rustle of leaves or the drumming of woodpeckers becomes part of a shared sensory field. Such exchanges are not merely functional; they weave organisms into a coherent, responsive network in which each participant is both transmitter and receiver.

Recent advances in biophysics and network science reveal that this vibrational dialogue is mirrored at every scale of life, from the molecular to the social. As Meijer and Brown describe, biological macromolecules such as proteins and DNA engage in rhythmic oscillations and resonant electromagnetic exchanges, enabling exquisitely precise information transfer in which frequency and phase coherence guide recognition, binding, and coordinated activity. These same principles of resonance and coherence scale upward, shaping the dynamics of larger systems. Mitchell’s work on bimodularity in neural and social networks shows that such systems are not random webs of connection, but directional architectures in which information flows between distinct communities of senders and receivers. Seen together, these findings suggest that life is organised as a nested, scale‑invariant lattice of resonance and directed exchange — a structural and energetic continuum through which meaning, influence, and memory travel, binding the smallest molecular rhythms to the broadest ecological and cultural patterns.

This interconnectedness echoes the principles of morphic resonance, as proposed by biologist Rupert Sheldrake — the idea that patterns of form and behaviour are influenced by a collective memory inherent in nature. In this view, once a pattern has been established — whether a crystal lattice, a migratory route, or a birdsong — it becomes easier for it to reappear, as if the past informs the present through a non‑local field.

Recent discussions of morphic fields emphasise their potential role as “nature’s hidden memory”, suggesting that biological inheritance may be shaped not only by genetic and epigenetic codes but also by resonance with prior members of a species. Experimental work has explored whether adaptation in one population can accelerate similar adaptation in another, even when physically separated — a phenomenon that, if validated, would imply a distributed memory system operating beyond material storage. Such ideas resonate with bioacoustic research showing that species‑specific calls, songs, and vibrational patterns can persist across generations, even in fragmented habitats, as if carried by an enduring informational field.

Resonance, in this sense, is not only a physical phenomenon but also a potential carrier of memory across time and space. Just as the Qieko can embed human intention into sound waves, natural systems may embed the “intention” of their evolutionary history into the vibrational fields they generate. In both cases, the act of transmission is inseparable from the field of memory in which it occurs — a mnemosonic exchange that binds individual expression to the larger patterns of life.

In this light, the phenomenology of sound becomes more than an account of how vibrations are perceived; it is also a description of how the body–mind can serve as an instrument for tuning into collective fields of memory. Just as resonance in nature allows information to travel invisibly yet precisely between organisms, human perception — when sensitised through active listening — can open to patterns that are not solely personal. Here, the body’s sensorium becomes a point of access to what Sheldrake describes as morphic fields: non‑local reservoirs of form and memory that link individuals to the larger systems they inhabit.

This is precisely the terrain navigated in Systemic Constellations, a therapeutic and experiential method developed by German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger in the late 20th century. Drawing on family systems theory, phenomenology, and his years living among the Zulu people of South Africa, Hellinger integrated indigenous understandings of ancestral presence with Western psychotherapeutic practice. In constellation work, participants physically represent members of a family or system, stepping into what is called the “knowing field” — a shared, embodied space where hidden relational dynamics, unresolved events, and ancestral imprints can be perceived and transformed. Seen through the lens of sound and resonance, this field can be understood as vibrational in nature: a living matrix in which each participant’s embodied awareness acts like a resonator, amplifying and revealing the patterns that seek resolution. In this way, mnemosonic topography, morphic resonance, and constellation work converge — each recognising that memory is not confined to the mind, but is distributed across bodies, relationships, and the energetic architecture of the spaces we share.

Now, with all this in mind, how do we approach the soundscape?

Photo credits: Manja Ristić

Cousin Nature

Mark Peter Wright’s work offers one of the most incisive critiques of the ethics and politics of field recording, especially the assumption that the soundscape is a neutral, ownerless resource awaiting capture. In Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice, he interrogates the historical and cultural baggage embedded in the very idea of “the field,” showing how field recording has often been framed through a Western, extractive gaze — one that positions the recordist as an invisible, neutral observer while in reality occupying a position of power. This “silence of the recordist” can erase the social, ecological, and political contexts in which recordings are made, perpetuating the same extractive logics that have shaped colonial and industrial relationships to land, water, and non‑human life.

Wright also draws attention to the entanglement of recording technologies with resource extraction — from the metals mined to build microphones, to the infrastructures that carry and store digital audio. In his framing, the act of “pressing record” is never innocent: it is a form of contact that can intrude upon, alter, or even commodify the sonic life of a place. He proposes concepts such as the Noisy Nonself — a way of acknowledging the recordist’s presence and influence — and Contact Zones, which reimagine the relationship between field and studio as a porous, ethically charged space.

In this sense, mnemosonic topography stands in deliberate contrast to the extractive tendencies Wright identifies. By acknowledging the recordist’s presence, intention, and the relational field in which every sound event occurs, it shifts the act of recording from taking to listening-with. Here, the recordist engages in an exchange that recognises the agencies of place, species, and elemental forces, treating sound not as a detached object but as part of a multidimensional living system.

This ethic resonates with the principles behind Systemic Constellations, which invite participants into a “knowing field” where hidden relational dynamics, unresolved events, and ancestral imprints can be perceived and respectfully addressed. In both practices, the work is grounded in reciprocity, transparency, and care: sound is not extracted from its context, but engaged as part of a larger, interdependent field whose memory, integrity, and vitality must be honoured.

Mnemosonic topography can thus be proposed as an ethical practice of entering the landscape in a manner akin to Systemic Constellations — not as an act of extraction, but as a participatory, relational encounter. Just as constellation work reveals and addresses hidden dynamics within human systems, mnemosonic topography approaches the land and its soundscape as a living system with its own history, memory, and unresolved traumas.

In recent years, practitioners have adapted constellation methods to ecological and sustainability contexts, creating what are sometimes called Nature Constellations or Climate Constellations. In these settings, participants physically represent elements of a socio‑ecological system — rivers, forests, species, weather patterns — and, through embodied awareness, access insights into the relationships and tensions within that system. Such processes have been shown to heighten systems awareness, foster empathy for non‑human actors, and reveal hidden leverage points for change.

The recordist or listener in mnemosonic topography steps into a similar field — not as an observer, but as a temporary participant, acknowledging the wounds of the landscape — whether ecological, cultural, or historical — and listening for the resonances of these imprints. This approach recognises that the land, like the human body, carries memory in its energetic and material layers, and that attentive, intentional listening can become a form of witnessing and integration.

Such a practice also calls for the integration of old knowledge systems — indigenous ecological wisdom, ancestral cosmologies, and pre‑industrial modes of attunement — as possible responses to the modern dissociation from nature. These knowledge systems, often marginalised or dismissed in dominant narratives, hold relational models that dissolve the human–nature divide and reframe the environment not as a resource, but as kin.

Here, eco‑feminism offers a vital impulse: by challenging patriarchal and extractive paradigms, it invites a revision of archetypes that have long shaped our relationship to the Earth and works toward dissolving biases that separate care from power, intuition from reason, and the feminine from the ecological. Eco‑feminist thought insists that environmental justice and social justice are inseparable, and that healing the land requires dismantling the same structures that oppress bodies, cultures, and ecosystems.

In contemporary arts, we can already trace the grounding of eco‑feminist thought to the early 20th century. Ithell Colquhoun lifelong fascination with water — mutable, generative, and resistant to containment — was inseparable from her profound engagement with the animating forces of the natural world. This elemental affinity was accompanied by her refusal to adhere to socially imposed gender roles, her reconfiguration of archetypes, and her embrace of symbolic and sexual fluidity. Collectively, these aspects position her work as a form of transgression: one that dismantles biases, affirms interdependence, and anticipates the theoretical foundations of eco‑feminism. In this light, her practice can be seen as laying early groundwork for a movement that recognises the intertwined oppressions of women and the natural world under extractive systems, and that reclaims the body–nature continuum as a locus of agency, resilience, and transformation.

Photo credits: Matej Grgić

Divergent Listening

In returning to the present moment, we cannot ignore the neurological crisis of the digital age — an era in which attention is fragmented, sensory engagement is flattened, and the nervous system is under constant strain. The rise in neurodivergent diagnoses, while partly a result of better recognition, also reflects the stressors of inherited genealogy as well as an environment saturated with overstimulation and disconnection from embodied experience.

Understanding the neurodivergent spectrum is essential, not to pathologise difference, but to recognise diverse sensory and cognitive modes as vital to collective resilience. Within this context, sound research — especially when grounded in practices like mnemosonic topography — offers a rapid, non‑invasive means of re‑sensitising perception and re‑establishing relational bonds with the environment. By fostering conceptual listening and intentional engagement with the vibrational field, such work can help slow the accelerating consequences of ecological and cultural entropy, supporting both human health and the shaken survival of all‑pervading Nature.

To listen is to enter a covenant with the world — to hear its wounds, remember its wisdom, and answer its call to live in harmony with the all‑pervading nature that sustains us.

Mnemosonic Topographies - Sensory Epistemology Between Sound, Space, and Memory

Written by:

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Introduction

Ask Your Body

Mnemosonic Topography

Sonic Dialogues

Cousin Nature

Divergent Listening

Further Reading:

About the Author

Manja Ristić

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THE ATTIC

Mnemosonic Topographies - Sensory Epistemology Between Sound, Space, and Memory

Written by:

Share article:

Introduction

The Attic Newsletter

Follow @theatticmag on Twitter

Ask Your Body

Follow @theatticmag on Twitter

Mnemosonic Topography

Sonic Dialogues

Cousin Nature

Divergent Listening

Further Reading:

About the Author

Manja Ristić

Share this Article

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