Platonic and Deleuzian Analysis of Spectrograms of the “Natural”

 In the natural world, perception is not confined to a single sensory mode. For example, raccoons rely on their highly sensitive forepaws to interpret their surroundings, effectively translating tactile information into spatial understanding (Northern Woodlands, 2014). This capacity to “see” through touch suggests that knowledge of environments can emerge through the recombination of sensory modalities. Taking this as a conceptual starting point, this essay proposes that sound may be reinterpreted visually in order to rethink what is understood as the “Natural.”

This essay reconfigures the category of the “Natural” by analysing sound recordings through their spectrograms (Figures 2,5,8), visual representations of audio, and interpreting them through two contrasting philosophical frameworks: Plato and Gilles Deleuze. The spectrogram is treated as an aesthetic object through which meaning can emerge through comparison. Research in empirical aesthetics suggests that patterns perceived as aesthetically significant encode higher levels of information across multiple scales, reinforcing the idea that meaning can be generated through comparative visual analysis (Redies et al., 2021).

This essay focuses on three recordings that are deeply tied to my own lived experience. The first is taken in a rural landscape in County Roscommon known within my family as “Middle Earth.” The second captures the farmer fuel protests on O’Connell Street in Dublin, recorded as I walked home from the train station after returning from Roscommon. The third is taken outside corporate offices near the canal in South Dublin city, a space I pass through daily on my commute. Each recording is first situated through personal context, then analysed through a Platonic framework, followed by a Deleuzian one. Through this structure, this essay examines how different philosophical approaches produce divergent understandings of what constitutes “nature,” ultimately challenging the assumption that the natural is stable or self-evident.

Methodology

This study adopts a methodology grounded in sonic philosophy and spectrographic analysis. Sonic philosophy proposes that sound should be understood not as representation but as a material force and event. Cox (2011) argues that approaching the world through sound disrupts traditional distinctions between subject and object, instead foregrounding processes, relations, and intensities. Drawing on earlier thinkers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, this perspective positions sound as expressive of the world’s underlying dynamics (Herzogenrath, 2017).

Central to this approach is the concept of the sonic event, in which sound unfolds across space and time, occupying multiple positions simultaneously (Voegelin, 2018). This aligns with a materialist ontology in which reality is constituted by flows rather than discrete objects (Cox, 2018). In the upcoming cases, the event unfolding is me walking through different spaces which exist within different ideas or manifestations of “Nature” (or lack thereof). 

Spectrograms extend this approach by translating sound into a visual field. A spectrogram converts a one-dimensional waveform into a two-dimensional representation of time and frequency, allowing patterns within sound to be visually analysed (Bäckström et al., 2023). This enables the identification of structures that may not be immediately perceptible through listening alone. The following spectrograms were created in the program audacity where the more intense a sound is the more orange-white it is and fainter sounds going from blue to purple to black. The patterns follow linear time so as they are read from left to right it shows the progression of the recording (in minutes in a top time bar in each screenshot of the spectrograms). 

This methodology also draws on Schaeffer’s concept of the “sound object,” understood as a perceptual image shaped by both subjective and shared features (Godøy, 2021). Through this framework, spectrograms become sites where sound can be compared, interpreted, and reconfigured.

Middle Earth (Breeole, Roscommon) 

Figure 1, Screenshot of Waveform of Recording Taken in Breeole, Roscommon, (McCarroll, 2026). 

Figure 2, Screenshot of Spectrogram of Recording Taken in Breeole, Roscommon, (McCarroll, 2026). 

Figure 3, Enlargement of Fig.2 , Birdsong

“Middle Earth” is the name my family gives to a landscape in the Breeole townland in County Roscommon. It is a semi-karst terrain where traces of history remain physically embedded: potato ridges from the famine are still visible, while other sections have been flattened into uniform green fields for cattle. Local folklore attributes the formation of the surrounding hills to a great serpent escaping Lough Ree and burrowing beneath the land, a story that situates the landscape within a mythological as well as material history.

In my childhood, this space was experienced as wild and magical. It is a place of hedges, stone walls and hidden pathways. However, over time, it has been increasingly developed. When I mentioned recording “nature” there, my mother responded: “well it’s farmland so it’s not nature at all is it, that doesn’t exist in Ireland anymore.” This statement highlights the instability of what is considered “natural,” even within a space that appears, at first glance, to embody it.

From a Platonic perspective, this recording reflects the framework outlined in Timaeus, where the natural world is understood as an ordered reflection of eternal Forms (Plato, 2008). The spectrogram (Fig.2), with its relatively clear structures and identifiable birdsong (Fig.3), appears to exhibit a degree of harmony that aligns with this conception. However, Plato’s critique of imitation complicates this reading. In Republic Book X, he argues that representations are “a long way off the truth,” as they merely reproduce appearances (Plato, 2007). The spectrogram thus becomes a second-order imitation, further distancing the recording from any idealised notion of nature.

In contrast, a Deleuzian reading rejects this hierarchy entirely. In A Thousand Plateaus, reality is conceptualised as a rhizome, a network of relations without fixed hierarchy (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 7). The recording is not a representation of nature, but part of an ongoing process.

The birdsong visible in the spectrogram can be understood through the concept of the refrain, a rhythmic pattern that organises space through territorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, pp. 312–313). As they note, “the bird’s song is a territorial marker” (1987, p. 317). The apparent clarity of the spectrogram does not indicate purity, but rather the temporary stabilisation of space through repetition. Sound just happens to be visually and sonically quieter, not a pure indication of “Nature”. 

Thus, this landscape, regardless of its associations with “Nature” is revealed as an assemblage of agricultural, ecological, and cultural forces. The “Natural” here is not something that exists independently, but something produced through perception, memory, and interpretation.

Farmer Fuel Protest

Figure 4, Screenshot of Waveform of Recording Taken at the Farmer Furel Protest on O'Connell St, Dublin, (McCarroll, 2026). 

Figure 5, Screenshot of Spectrogram of Recording Taken at the Farmer Fuel Protest on O'Connell St, Dublin, (McCarroll, 2026). 

Figure 6, Enlargement of Fig.5, (McCarroll, 2026). 

This recording was taken while walking through the farmer fuel protests on O’Connell Street in Dublin 2026. It was the final day of the protest in that area, and later that evening it was cleared by the Gardaí. I encountered this space directly after returning from Roscommon.

The spectrogram (Fig. 5-6) reflects this ambiguity. It is more visually dense than the rural recording, yet not as saturated as the final example. From a Platonic perspective, this complexity may be interpreted as a departure from natural harmony, aligning with the idea that the polis represents a space of artifice and imitation (Plato, 2007).

However, a Deleuzian analysis reframes this entirely. The protest can be understood as an assemblage, composed of heterogeneous elements. |Voices, engines, bodies, infrastructures and trad seshes on the back of trucks, linked through relations of intensity (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, pp. 88–91).

The spectrogram reveals overlapping refrains: chants, mechanical rhythms, movement patterns as I, the recorder, walked through the protest. All interacting simultaneously. These do not form a unified structure, but a multiplicity of territorial claims coexisting within the same space.

Rather than existing outside of nature, this environment demonstrates how the “Natural” persists within the polis as a field of interactions. The recording reflects not the absence of nature, but its transformation. The rhizomic connection of those who work off the land, the machines that develop the land and their placement within a capital city (Polis) to protest the right to continue these practices. Simultaneously demanding recognition from a government of the importance of this exploitation of nature to further the systems that keep the human population of this country to prosper. 

Amazon Offices 

Figure 7, Screenshot of Waveform of Recording Taken outside the Amazon Offices in Dublin, (McCarroll, 2026). 

Figure 8, Screenshot of Spectrogram of Recording Taken outside the Amazon Offices in Dublin, (McCarroll, 2026). 

Figure 9, Enlargement of Fig.8,  (McCarroll, 2026). 

The final recording was taken outside the Amazon offices near the canal in South Dublin City, a space I pass through daily on my commute. The area is characterised by tall, flat buildings, wide roads and corporate infrastructure. Walking here often feels transitional rather than experiential as it is designed for movement rather than dwelling.

What stands out most is the wind. The configuration of the buildings creates a wind tunnel effect; at times it becomes so intense that walking is physically difficult. On one occasion, I struggled to turn a corner, only for the wind to disappear instantly once I had done so. The space seems indifferent to the body, shaped more by architectural logic than human experience.

The spectrogram (Fig.8-9) reflects this environment as a dense, continuous field, lacking the distinct structures seen in the previous recordings. From a Platonic perspective, this appears as disorder, a loss of harmony and a departure from nature.

However, from a Deleuzian perspective, this density represents intensity rather than absence. The sound can be understood as a deterritorialised field, in which stable refrains dissolve into continuous modulation. Deleuze and Guattari describe this as the moment when the refrain “launches forth into a cosmos” (1987, p. 349).

The wind here is not external to nature, but produced through the interaction of built structures and environmental forces. The spectrogram becomes a diagram of these interactions, revealing a different form of natural process. The intensity of this busy noise could be seen as the ultimate culmination of human progress in its battle to control nature, the Amazon building its monument.

Through the combination of sonic philosophy and spectrogram analysis, this essay has demonstrated that the “Natural” is not a fixed category but a construct shaped by interpretation. Plato’s framework positions nature as ordered and hierarchical, while Deleuze’s ontology understands it as dynamic and relational.

By grounding these analyses in personal experience, the essay highlights how the “Natural” is not only philosophically constructed but also lived and perceived. The spectrograms reveal differences in visual structure across environments, but these differences do not correspond to a simple distinction between natural and unnatural. Instead, they point to varying degrees of complexity, organisation, and intensity. The “Natural” is not something that disappears in urban space, but something that is continually reconfigured through the interactions that define it.

Bibliography

1. Bäckström, T., et al. (2023) ‘Spectrogram-Based Representations for Audio Analysis’, Applied Sciences, 16(2), p. 572.

2. Cox, C. (2011) ‘Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism’, Journal of Visual Culture, 10(2), pp. 145–161.

3. Cox, C. (2018) Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

4. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

5. Godøy, R.I. (2021) ‘Sound Objects and Their Features’, Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 672949.

6. Herzogenrath, B. (2017) Sonic Thinking. New York: Bloomsbury.

7. Northern Woodlands (2014) ‘Raccoons and Their Remarkable Sense of Touch’.

8. Plato (2007) Republic. London: Penguin.

9. Plato (2008) Timaeus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

10. Redies, C., et al. (2021) ‘Aesthetic Patterns and Information Theory’, Entropy, 23(3).

11. Voegelin, S. (2018) The Political Possibility of Sound. London: Bloomsbury.