Nick Miskey

Nick Miskey (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. His doctoral research, which combines sound and media studies with political ecology and music analysis, examines how contemporary musicians and sound artists employ and write about field recordings as ecological commentary and critique in the context of anthropogenic climate change. Nick is currently supervised by Robert Hasegawa and is fortunate to have been co-supervised by Jonathan Sterne.

Nick holds an MA in Musicology (2020) and a BFA in Music and Computer Science (2016), both received from the University of Victoria. He currently lives in Ləḱwəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ territory while completing his dissertation. 

Projects 

Dissertation (ongoing): More soundmaking artists than ever before are currently incorporating field recordings into their work as a means of ecocritical commentary, yet examinations of both the musical significance and the environmental messaging of such work are still rare in music research. This dissertation combines a study of the theories, histories, and ideologies surrounding field recording with analytic interpretations of several field recording compositions to explore the material and social ramifications of these artistic responses to the climate crisis. Tracing recording technology’s deep involvement with both environmentalism and extractivism illuminates the equally complex entanglement of field recording’s political ecology with its aesthetic import, as well as how these contribute to or contravene ecological thought and action.