In a meeting with my supervisor Shawn Graham, he critiqued our practice in the humanities that focuses on pre-applying theory to the content of our studies. He argued that theory comes out of practice and method. This became clear to me when I listened critically to what I was saying and writing. Historians are critical, but we tend to fall into reproducing 'subconscious' scripts learned in the academy. Mine was that sound is (re)presented in space and that humans embody sound. There is a lot of truth to this idea. Yet look at how vague that statement is, regardless of how I rearrange the sentences/substitute words. Imagine if I just went out into the field, abstractedly connecting these buzzwords to my practice and then uncritically writing about them later. We throw around buzzwords and have trouble challenging their meaning. This is why we must critique theory while engaging with it. I use my phenomenological approach to critique understandings of space and sound. For however I looked at it, I could always feel distance in my project - my map felt distant; I felt historical distance from my subjects. This is why I liked Hodder's description of entanglement. The visual prompt does not imbue ideas of seamlessness. It shows how ideas, emotions, truths, falsities, and experiences are grabbed into the entangled sphere of reality, slithering around. There are spaces in this reality, in between the strings of experience. There is both distance and closeness. Experience is complex. But my inner 'script' told me abstractedly there is no distance.

I had an abstract understanding of sound as embodied, space as immersive. Helmreich argues that transduction does not fit everything. I believe the study of space fits my project. I just need to be less automatic in my use of these buzzwords and explain what exactly I mean by them. I am more explaining my own phenomenology of sound while experiencing Pembroke's 'soundscapes' than describing historical perspectives of the sonified industrial landscape.