1.1. Why we listen to what we are not meant to hear

Much of consumer research tends to listen for voices. It tunes in to what people say, what brands communicate and how meaning circulates through speech, text and image. Even in sonic research, listening tends to focus on experiences that are emotionally expressive, semantically rich or socially shared. This includes the acoustic branding of retail spaces, the music of everyday life and the affective atmospheres of consumption. These are sounds we are meant to hear, designed to be noticed, interpreted and enjoyed.

But every system also produces signals it does not intend for us. These may be functional, residual or entirely indifferent to human perception. In consumer environments, this includes the buzzing of electronic interfaces, the electromagnetic chatter of networked devices or the sub-audible hum of energy infrastructure. These sounds are not part of the consumer’s experience in any designed sense. They are not expressive, nor are they communicative. They are simply there, active, infrastructural and operating beneath the threshold of cultural attention.

To listen to what we are not meant to hear, then, is to engage in a practice of epistemic disalignment (an intentional non-alignment with the setting’s normative listening cues). It is to occupy a methodological stance that refuses to follow the logic of insight, meaning or message. The point is to acknowledge that consumption depends on systems that do not speak, but still shape what is possible: what can be bought, accessed or interacted with.

The electromagnetic soundwalk is a way of listening that embraces this disalignment. Using inductive microphones to convert electromagnetic emissions into audible sound, the soundwalk brings attention to the inaudible workings of the consumer environment. It invites us to hear not the message of the market, but its murmur, its indifference, its ongoing, infrastructural presence. In doing so, it challenges the assumption that research must always listen for insight, revelation, or meaning. It proposes, instead, that there is value in listening poorly, or rather, listening in a way that lets the failure to understand become the method itself. Where many soundwalks aim to activate awareness and invite participatory engagement with space, this walk turns away from spatial relation and towards infrastructural friction.

Such listening is compositional, not passive. Here, the term composition is not used in the musical sense of harmony or arrangement, but to describe the process of assembling sound, space and movement into a form that draws attention to the underlying systems of consumption. In this sense, composition is a method: a way of making infrastructural presence perceptible through listening and movement. It is a practice of arranging attention, of dwelling with noise, of refusing to reduce the sonic to the symbolic. It tunes into the dissonance between what consumer systems produce and what consumer research is prepared to hear. And in doing so, it asks us to consider: What else have we not been listening to, not because it is silent, but because it does not speak in the right key?

This is not a call to uncover hidden meanings or extract latent insights. It unsettles the very assumption that research must listen for something. It leaves us suspended in an awareness that what we call listening is shaped by what systems are permitted to say, and what we are trained to hear.

To listen without reward, without narrative, without data, represents a recalibration of what research is allowed to register. In consumer research, intelligibility is often measured by legibility: a consumer speaks, expresses and reveals something interpretable. Even when the subject is affect or atmosphere, we are trained to draw meaning from it, to resolve its ambiguity into insight.

But what if we resist that resolution?

What if we listen to remain inside the ambient operation of systems that are too infrastructural, too indifferent or too ordinary to speak? What if we listen without pondering meaning? The electromagnetic soundwalk exposes consumer infrastructure, the signal beneath the platform interface, the electrical murmur that makes the touchpoint possible.

This is literal, an epistemic confrontation. It is a practice of dwelling in the inaudible realm of the market, the circuits, protocols and vibrations that do not ask to be heard, but which nonetheless compose the very conditions under which hearing becomes possible.

In this sense, listening becomes a form of methodological sabotage. It breaks the implicit contract of consumer research: that we will attend to what is said, shown or felt in recognisable terms. The electromagnetic soundwalk tunes instead into the residues and emissions of systems that are not for us, but that condition our possibilities.

It stages a non-consensual intimacy with the infrastructure of consumption.

This intimacy is with systems, not individuals.

No conversations are recorded, no subjects observed.

And it is this intimacy – awkward, opaque, unresolved – that becomes the method.

Yet, to remain with this unresolved proximity, this listening that yields no findings is a deliberate stance. The electromagnetic soundwalk refuses the demand for insight. It resists the imperative that research must always produce results that are communicable, useful or actionable. It moves away from research as extraction and towards research as estranged composition.

This is what we call an anti-method.

Anti-method is not the absence of method. It is a method that operates against the grain of methodological expectation. It is a refusal of resolution, of legibility, of interpretive capture. In place of coding, it offers ambience. In place of data, residue. In place of clarity, hum.

The anti-method attends to infrastructures of consumption that neither express nor persuade. It hears the market as a system of operation, an environment of signals, flows and circuits that persist beneath attention.

This is an argument for listening beyond meaning’s limits. It’s about staying open to other experiences or sensations that sound might offer, things that are not easily put into words or neatly explained.

The anti-method acknowledges that much of consumption now unfolds in non-narrative zones: in interfaces that register our presence without speaking to us, in networks that modulate our access without announcing their terms, in systems that structure behaviour while remaining acoustically, semantically and visually passive.

Listening to these systems and letting their refusal to speak shape the practice of inquiry is itself a form of inquiry. It is method. Just not the kind we are accustomed to. It operates outside the conventions of research-as-explanation.

The anti-method is lived, not applied.

It emerges through attunement, not through direction.

It lingers near sense without demanding it.

The electromagnetic soundwalk becomes both instrument and interruption: a rupture in what consumer research allows itself to notice.

And what it hears, finally, is not the consumer.

It is the system continuing, humming, indifferent.

3.1. The electromagnetic soundwalk

By ‘soundwalk’, we refer to a practice of listening-in-motion, where movement through space becomes a method for attending to acoustic or inaudible phenomena (Drever, Reference Drever2020; Westerkamp, Reference Westerkamp, Batchelor and Angus2007). Informed by the work of Westerkamp, the World Soundscape Project and recent expansions of the practice into interdisciplinary contexts (Adams and Bruce, Reference Adams and Bruce2008; Martin, Reference Martin2018), the soundwalk in this project treats movement as a compositional gesture and attention as a mode of attunement. It draws on approaches that use soundwalking to engage with sociopolitical and infrastructural conditions (Aletta et al., Reference Aletta, Guattari, Evangelisti, Asdrubali, Oberman and Kang2019; Carras, Reference Carras2019; Deluca and Hausknecht, Reference Deluca and Hausknecht2023), and extends beyond the mapping of acoustic environments. Our walk is spatially improvised, guided by bodily orientation and electromagnetic density. In this sense, soundwalking here participates in a lineage of work that views walking as an embodied epistemic encounter with place, atmosphere and the inaudible operations of consumer systems (Findlay-Walsh, Reference Findlay-Walsh2018; Norman, Reference Norman2012; O’Keeffe, Reference O’Keeffe2015). As Eadie (Reference Eadie2021) notes, such improvisational soundwalks foreground listening as an active, affective and situated practice, one that attends to both absence and presence, noise and silence. This emphasis on lived, participatory listening aligns with Schafer’s original proposition that soundwalking could recalibrate our relationship to the sonic environment (Truax, Reference Truax2021).

Electromagnetic soundwalking has an established place in sound art. Christina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks, developed since the early 2000s, invite listeners to explore the hidden emissions of urban systems, surveillance cameras, neon signage and wireless routers, through inductive headphones that convert electromagnetic fields into audible frequencies (Kubisch’s, Reference Kubisch’sn.d.). Her practice foregrounds discovery, immersion and the musical potential of electromagnetic space. Other artists working in the tradition of spatialised radio and spectrum-based composition have similarly treated electromagnetic fields as material for aesthetic intervention (Black, Reference Black2010). This project draws on that technique, but with a different orientation. Where Kubisch invites interpretive listening, the present work, as noted, remains with signals that do not speak. It listens to infrastructure to dwell within its refusal.

The walk was conducted in a Sephora retail store in central Barcelona, a hyper-designed retail environment calibrated for affective coherence and sensory control. Sephora, as a retail site, is undeniably shaped by gendered spatial dynamics. Studies in consumer culture have shown how retail atmospheres are often designed to reflect, reinforce or contest gendered expectations through visual, spatial and affective cues (Borghini et al., Reference Borghini, Diamond, Kozinets, McGrath, Muñiz and Sherry2009; Filice et al., Reference Filice, Neiterman and Meyer2019; Petersson McIntyre, Reference Petersson McIntyre2018). While this essay does not focus on gender directly, it is worth noting that Sephora is not a neutral retail environment. Spaces like this are coded through aesthetic, affective and commercial logics that shape who is addressed, and how. Listening to the space’s electromagnetic emissions disrupts this sensorial choreography, bringing to the surface what the environment excludes or renders inaudible.

Like many high-density retail spaces, Sephora contains a dense layering of electromagnetic emissions: security gates, digital price displays, illuminated shelving, mobile scanners, tablet screens, in-store Wi-Fi routers and LED signage, all emitting electromagnetic waves continuously, without notice. The specific site was selected following a series of preliminary soundwalks in various commercial locations across Barcelona. Sephora stood out as particularly dense in terms of electromagnetic emissions, making the site sonically rich for our soundwalk. It also resonated conceptually: Sephora’s sensory saturation, its immersive visual and affective environment, coexists with an infrastructure of signals not intended for perception. This disjunction between visibility and audibility, chatter and silence, made Sephora a compelling environment in which to develop a soundwalk concerned with inaudible influence.

While the project has involved similar walks in other locations, this account focuses on a single site. It is a compositional demonstration of method. It used a compact electromagnetic receiver known as ETHER. Unlike narrow-band inductive sniffers that require close proximity to low-frequency emissions, ETHER captures a wide range of electromagnetic interference without tuning or filtration. Its designers describe it as an ‘anti-radio’, a device built to receive what traditional radios suppress: ambient signals, operational residue and infrastructural noise. While not designed for research, its capacity to render unintended emissions audible proved well suited to a method concerned with exposure rather than clarity.

The presence of the recordist is embedded in the conditions of the walk, expressed through orientation, hesitation and bodily attunement to electromagnetic presence. This was a solitary drift through a commercial environment, guided less by layout or signage than by the density of inaudible signal. Movement was shaped by contingencies, pauses when signal activity intensified, subtle shifts to avoid individuals or devices likely to introduce interference and efforts to remain discreet and unobtrusive. The walk unfolded through embodied discernment rather than formal method. Such practice aligns with Pink’s (Reference Pink2009) account of the body as a site of sensory knowing, and with Haanpää et al.’s (Reference Haanpää, García-Rosell and Hakkarainen2022) understanding of walking as both an epistemic and affective practice. Murphy (Reference Murphy2022) emphasises embodiment as emergent, situated and affectively charged, less a static position than a relational process of becoming. In this sense, the soundwalk is an improvised navigation through atmospheres and thresholds. The body of the recordist is not foregrounded but remains present through what Manning (Reference Manning2016) describes as a ‘minor gesture’, a compositional sensitivity that operates below the threshold of performance or deliberate intervention.

No formal permission was sought. The listening focused on device emissions rather than persons, and it was carried out quietly, in situ, without engaging staff or customers or altering the space. We treated this as minimal-risk, non-human-subjects work: no intelligible speech, images or identifiers were recorded, and the researcher kept clear of point-of-sale interactions. The ethical decision was assumed directly by the researcher, whose task was to remain near the system’s operations while avoiding implication of individuals.

Two recordings were produced. One track (Audio track 1 https://lecliche.bandcamp.com/track/anti-radio-sephora-no-ambient-sound) captured only electromagnetic emissions, the other (Audio track 2 https://lecliche.bandcamp.com/track/anti-radio-soundscape-sephora) combined those emissions with ambient sound from the store. Neither version is treated as data. Instead, both are held as compositional artefacts, registrations of systems that continue regardless. Soundwalk traditions often emphasise sensitivity, relationality or immersion, whether in acoustic ecology (Westerkamp, Reference Westerkamp, Batchelor and Angus2007), feminist situatedness (Mccartney, Reference Mccartney2002) or compositional ethnography (Drever, Reference Drever2002). Westerkamp’s work, particularly in Kits Beach Soundwalk, seeks to rebalance the listener’s relationship with urban space, restoring the ‘tiny sounds’ drowned out by infrastructural and authoritarian noise (Kolber, Reference Kolber2002). Carras (Reference Carras2019) likewise frames soundwalking as an experiential path towards participatory engagement and aesthetic attention to place. This project diverges from those aims. The walk is not attentive in the sense of tuning in; it is attentive in the sense of staying near what cannot be absorbed. It does not map space, narrate experience or produce insight. It converts emissions into sound, then refuses to decode them. That is the work. That is the anti-method.

The electromagnetic emissions we attend to are not neutral by-products of consumer activity. They are signals produced by devices whose very presence forms part of a system designed to influence. From LED displays and interactive tablets to in-store Wi-Fi routers and contactless payment terminals, these infrastructures are not merely responsive to consumer demand; they are instruments of persuasion. As Packard (Reference Packard1957) famously argued, the environments of consumer life are saturated with techniques of ‘hidden persuasion’, designed not only to reflect desire but to manufacture it. These systems do not passively follow consumer preferences; they actively shape them.

We understand consumer infrastructure as a persuasive ensemble, an array of signals, devices and interfaces configured to capture attention, shape spatial practice and guide behaviour, not merely as functional support. These technologies condition the terms of consumption through affective cues, architectural control and encoded rhythms of interaction (Berlant, Reference Berlant2016; Larkin, Reference Larkin2013). The logics of these systems (visibility, access and legibility) are never neutral. As Star (Reference Star1999) reminds us, infrastructures determine what actions are possible, by whom and under what conditions. Even the seemingly silent emissions captured in our soundwalk – buzzes, pulses and flickers – are traces of a broader orchestration of desire. This aligns with longstanding critiques of consumer culture as shaped by strategic efforts to induce compliance and docility (Herman and Chomsky, Reference Herman and Chomsky2012). Consumption is not the sole driver of infrastructure; rather, infrastructure and consumption are co-constitutive. Therefore, what we listen to in the soundwalk is not incidental emissions. They are the ambient signals of a system designed to modulate behaviour through aesthetics, atmosphere and the quiet imperatives of embedded technology.

3.2. A practice of anti-method

Although this project offers no steps, no analytic framework and no promise of insight, this is deliberate. But neither is it without structure. The walk enacted here is governed by a compositional logic: to remain close to systems that are active but non-communicative, present but not expressive. This is what is meant by anti-method, a refusal of method’s conventional ambition to produce knowledge. Where practice-based research typically emphasises situated creativity, experiential reflection or emergent understanding (Haseman, Reference Haseman2006; Nelson, Reference Nelson2013), anti-method withholds these aims. It listens without leaning forward. It composes without seeking resolution. It accepts that what surrounds us may remain unresponsive, because it was never designed to address us. As Zećo (Reference Zećo2021) observes, listening and recording are always entangled in the sociopolitical and material conditions of place. This project remains with that entanglement, refusing to translate exposure into explanation. In this respect, the electromagnetic soundwalk is a way of walking with indifference, to record without interpreting, to remain proximate without narrating and to let method become a kind of exposure rather than an instrument of explanation.

The provocation is to work with what is there, even if it does not speak back. It is an attempt to make the invisible visible, but not the inaudible meaningful. It does not follow a fixed set of research steps. It does not aim to produce clear insights, though they might arise nevertheless. We choose to listen, we stay close. We accept that some systems operate without addressing us. We walk and listen simply to be present with what is normally ignored.

3.3. Composing with indifference

The term composition is used here in a broad, performative and epistemic sense. Following Bolt (Reference Bolt2004, Reference Bolt2007), composition is understood as a form of thinking-in-action, an emergent process through which knowledge is generated by engaging with materials, spaces and affects in situ. The soundwalk described here aims to compose with and through the infrastructural signals it encounters, as a situated articulation. This is what LaBelle (Reference LaBelle2006) might call an ‘acoustic territory’, shaped by the technologies, architectures and movements of consumer space. Drawing also on Haseman’s (Reference Haseman2006) account of performative research, composition here becomes a method for staging inquiry through practice, rather than reporting findings after the fact. It is not detached from the body but intimately linked to the situated listening of the recordist, whose movements and sensorium co-produce the resulting trace. This resonates with Findlay-Walsh’s (Reference Findlay-Walsh2018) notion of compositional listening, in which perception becomes already entangled with composition, a process of listening that configures how sound, place and subjectivity are woven together. It also aligns with Rodgers’ (Reference Rodgers2010) feminist accounts of composition as responsive, embodied and materially entangled. What is composed, then, is more than a sonic artefact; it is a relation, a mode of proximity to systems that resist conventional forms of knowing.

The two recordings made during the walk in Sephora are meant as compositional traces. What they record is infrastructural presence: emissions, interference, digital residue, not ambience in the aesthetic sense. The electromagnetic-only recording renders the store as circuitry, without footsteps, music or voices. What remains is a kind of tonal debris: pulsing, crackling and oscillating signals without context. These sounds are unexpressive. They are functional artefacts, bystanders to systems in operation. The recording offers no sense of space, no spatial cues and no atmosphere. It listens in a register outside address. The second recording, captured with ambient microphones simultaneously, produces something stranger. Here, the electromagnetic emissions are folded into the store’s designed sonic environment. Music plays, promotional videos loop and customers move in and out of the frame. Yet the electromagnetic signals do not integrate. They sit alongside the ambience, tonally incompatible, a second system made audible but not communicable. The recording does not cohere. It holds its elements in unresolved relation.

This is the compositional condition of the walk. It is a sonic friction, not a unified field recording, not a soundscape composition, not an immersion in place. It is a doubling of presence. One channel addresses the consumer. The other does not. One is shaped to be heard. The other leaks.

To compose in this way is to hold in parallel two modes of sonic life, only one of which is sanctioned, recognised or designed to make sense. The recordings are interruptions. They remain entangled with the space, unable to smooth over their own dissonance.

This stance aligns loosely with existing non-representational and performative approaches to research. Haseman (Reference Haseman2006) argues that practice can function as research without explanation, communicating directly through form. Thrift (Reference Thrift2008) proposes a non-representational theory in which affect, movement and atmosphere replace structures of meaning. But where such work often retains the hope that something might emerge or be felt, anti-method pulls more gently away. It belongs less to methodology than to gesture. Its closest companions may be found in the slow, atmospheric writing of Berlant (Reference Berlant2011), Stewart (Reference Stewart2007) or Blackman (Reference Blackman2012): work that composes with affect and interruption, without resolving either. It is refusal as compositional stance.