Killruddery: Listening to the archive. Sonic hauntings in a Big House

Through listening, this thesis explores an historic private archive which is housed at the Killruddery estate in Bray, County Wicklow, in order to develop new ways of telling the story of an Irish aristocratic dynasty, the Brabazons, who have lived and worked on the estate since 1618. Its purpose is to contribute to a sonified understanding of the Big House in Irish cultural and social history. From conversations with the family, investigation of the written archives, and recordings of the architecture and surrounding landscape, the research examines the idea that the archive is haunted by its own past and that by summoning the sonic spectres of archive through technological intervention, via so-called 'Stone Tape Theory', the mythologies of its role as a heritage space in contemporary Ireland can be brought to audition. The primary field of knowledge is located within the discipline of Sound Studies. The cognate fields are Sonic hauntology, Soundwalking, Binaural Phonography, Mobile Media Art and Sonic Agency. The research utilises the practice-based methodology of an Artist-in-Residence to produce a critical construct entitled haunting the archive, drawing on a notion of hauntology initially developed by Derrida (2006), both as a means to investigate the archive and expressed in the creation of a public artwork, The Ancestors, made in response. Specifically, the principal research methods are soundwalking, field recording, interviews, studio composition, and performance leading to the creation of interactive soundscapes, historical re-enactments and audio essays, geo-fenced within the grounds of the Killruddery estate. The thesis and the practice together constitute an original and substantial contribution to knowledge by extending Labelle’s notion of 'sonic agency' (2018) through connecting elements of Critical Theory with related studies by Eshun, Voegelin and Schulze which explore ideas and practices of 'sonic fiction', to show how the creation of a hauntological sound trail informed by a critically engaged sonic arts praxis, can challenge our understanding of official narratives at a significant Irish heritage site.