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Festival of radical soundwalks in Cukrarna

O)pot, a festival of soundwalks, concerts, and reflections, brings together artists, theorists, and curious walkers to connect with spaces and more-than-human entities, transforming walking and listening into a spatial realisation of location. As a practice of grounding and attuning to the environment, walking becomes a radical attempt to decelerate the everyday pace of life.

Held during a unique time of the year, when the atmosphere clears and migratory birds change territories, the noisy starlings – now common city dwellers – fall silent, and plants enter their mature period. Amidst this backdrop, the festival offers, through selected artworks, a tapping into urban spaces and paths, highlighting their multi-temporality and thus offering the possibility of embodying space. TO)pot encourages a deeper reflection of how to live-with-spaces, encompassing all beings and entities.

Participants:

Augenmas • a l l j a • Colin Black • Maja Bjelica • beepblip • Nika van Berkel • Tetiana Khoroshun • Maria Magdalena Kozlowska • Rene Markovič • Spiro Mason • OR poiesis • Irena Pivka • plants • Karmen Ponikvar • Eduardo Raon • Urša Sekirnik • Jacek Smolicki • spaces • Sava šumi • urban animals • Tea Vidmar • Miloš Vojtěchovský/zvukac • Brane Zorman • Tery Žeželj.

Organized by Brane Zorman and Irena Pivka and Matej Tomažin from Cona.

Selection and introductory text: Irena Pivka Translation into Slovene, English and proofreading of festival texts: Melita Silič Cover image and design: Matej Tomažin Production: Brane Zorman, Irena Pivka, Matej Tomažin Coordination for Cukrarna: Alenka Trebušak Technical support: Brane Zorman, Andraš Šenica Pavletič, Martin Lovšin and the Cukrarna techical team, and the Cona support team Public relations: Matej Tomažin (Cona), Mojca Podlesek (Cukrarna ) Festival organised by: Cona, for the Steklenik Gallery Coproduction: Cukrarna Gallery / MGML

The pre-festival project’s Fent cua / While waiting partner is Emanat. The festival project’s If trees would cry, we would cry too and I walked for too long and I became a landscape partner is Bunker. The work gardenGOround is a part of the VITAL project. The co-producer of the premiere event Green Atrium of the City is the Museum of Architecture and Design Ljubljana. Research and paper presentation by Maja Bjelica is funded by ARIS through the research programme “Liminal Spaces” (P6-0279) and the research project “Grain of Salt, Crystallising Cohabitation” (J6-50196). The partner of the Festival Diary workshop is Radio Študent.

The programme of CONA is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana, Department for Culture.

Images courtesy of Cona - Matej Tomažin

There was as well organized a meeting about planned CENSE symposium in Ljubljana, September 2025.

www.steklenik.si

www.cona.si

News

SOUNDCAMP / REVEIL 2025

3 May, 2025 to 4 May, 2025

CENSE invites and supports the upcoming SOUNDCAMP / REVEIL

Reveil is a collaborative sound and transmission project that circles the Earth on live audio streams at daybreak every year. The last broadcast 2025 featured over 100 streams from a wide range of continents, environments and situations. You are invited to join for the next 24+1 hour loop in 2026. Starts in London, Saturday 6am

soundtent.org/reveil

  • Read more about SOUNDCAMP / REVEIL 2025

Open Call: Beyond Listening 2025: Walking-with changes

23 September, 2025 to 26 September, 2025

Open Call: BEYOND LISTENING 2025: WALKING-WITH CHANGES

23–26 SEPTEMBER 2025, LJUBLJANA

Application form

Deadline: 10 Feb 2025

Open Call PDF download

  • Read more about Open Call: Beyond Listening 2025: Walking-with changes

TO)pot - Festival of Radical Soundwalks - Ljubljana

TO)pot, a festival of soundwalks, concerts, and reflections, brings together artists, theorists, and curious walkers to connect with spaces and more-than-human entities, transforming walking and listening into a spatial realisation of location. As a practice of grounding and attuning to the environment, walking becomes a radical attempt to decelerate the everyday pace of life.

  • Read more about TO)pot - Festival of Radical Soundwalks - Ljubljana

KRAmp: Voda-La-Vida! - gathering

18 August, 2024 to 20 August, 2024

An international meeting KRAmp: Voda-La-Vida! about biodiversity through field recordings, both underwater and above. We invite you to participate in a program starting from exchanges and sharing of knowledge, techniques and equipment, to discuss advances in applied bioacoustics.

  • Read more about KRAmp: Voda-La-Vida! - gathering

SPATIAL Sommer Lab Staňkovice

5 July, 2024 to 29 July, 2024

We invite you to the second edition of the Summer Laboratory of Spatial Sound in North Bohemia!

SPATIAL sommer lab take place from 5 to 29 July 2024 at the National House in Ústí nad Labem and at the cultural and residential centre

Löblhof & Artgrund in Staňkovice.

Thanks to collaboration with OTTOsonics, Tangible Music Lab, ZiMMT, IEM Graz, spæs - Lab Berlin, FUD a FF UJEP, SVITAVA - transmedia art lab,

  • Read more about SPATIAL Sommer Lab Staňkovice

REVEIL 11 - 2024

BROADCAST starts: SATURDAY 4 MAY at 06:00 (your location UTC+2)

see soundtent.org

  • Read more about REVEIL 11 - 2024

CENSE QUESTIONNAIRE II. 2024

4 January, 2024 to 31 December, 2024

As technology develops, sound has become an increasingly important way of measuring the health and biodiversity of ecosystems: our forests, soils and oceans all produce their own acoustic signatures. Scientists who use ecoacoustics to measure habitats and species say that quiet is falling across thousands of habitats, as the planet witnesses extraordinary losses in the density and variety of species. Disappearing or losing volume along with them are many familiar sounds: the morning calls of birds, rustle of mammals through undergrowth and summer hum of insects.

Today, tuning into some ecosystems reveals a “deathly silence”, said Prof Steve Simpson from the University of Bristol. “It is that race against time – we’ve only just discovered that they make such sounds, and yet we hear the sound disappearing.”

Phoebe Westonl, The Guardian

  • Read more about CENSE QUESTIONNAIRE II. 2024

About the Beyond Listening Symposium

The aim of the Beyond Listening symposium is to provide a transdisciplinary forum for the achievements in recent years and to foster further exchanges, communication and networking during the years to come. We pay special attention to the region of Central Europe, but the geopolitical range of its subjects remains open to the broader world.

  • Read more about About the Beyond Listening Symposium

Beyond Listening Symposium: General Information

Participation in the Symposium is open to the public.

Content:

  • More about the symposium

Locations:

Film Studio of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME). Building II.

  • Read more about Beyond Listening Symposium: General Information

Open Call for Visegrad Fund Visual and Sound Artists Residencies

Artists, and everyone to whom it may concern:

As you might have seen already, the Visegrad Fund call for Visual and Sound Artists Residencies are open. The Deadline to apply is 15 October 2023. You have to apply personally as an artist for this, and come from PL, SK, HU.

  • Read more about Open Call for Visegrad Fund Visual and Sound Artists Residencies

Beyond Listening: Agency, Art and the Environment

21 November, 2023 to 25 November, 2023

International Symposium on Sonic Ecologies
21 to 25 November, 2023
Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME)

The aim of the conference is to provide a transdisciplinary forum for the achievements in recent years and to foster further exchanges, communication and networking during the years to come. We would like to pay special attention to the region of Central Europe, but the geopolitical range of its subjects remains open to the broader world.

  • Read more about Beyond Listening: Agency, Art and the Environment

The Second Life of Recorded Sounds, 2020 publication

We are happy to announce that the publication “Sensitive Sound Recordings” after our online meeting in Wroclaw from 2020 was just published (now on-line, very soon on-paper).

  • Read more about The Second Life of Recorded Sounds, 2020 publication

Twillight/Dawn: REVEIL 9 — open call for streams

30 April, 2022 to 1 May, 2022

Cense Network invites you to take part this year again in the collaborative planetary streaming and listening project REVEIL 9.

Soundcamp 2022 is a festival of the project Acoustic Commons and Full Of Noises + Locus Sonus + CONA + HMU + Cyberforest network From Saturday, 30 April 05:00 UTC+1 until Sunday, 1 May 06:00 UTC+1

Main physical space is at Stave Hill Ecological Park in London

Check the list of soundcamps around the globe

  • Read more about Twillight/Dawn: REVEIL 9 — open call for streams

CENSE on Radio Punctum – Symptoms of Evidence - Earth

Series is reflecting the current situation dealing with sound, environment and perception.

  • Read more about CENSE on Radio Punctum – Symptoms of Evidence - Earth

CENSE Collective on Radio Punctum: Elements, episode 1

This is a reminder of an upcoming broadcasting of the 2nd episode from Elements series, that Polina Katchenka is preparing together with Petra Kapš. We will also have a custom generative graphics for each episode from our Teplice-based colleague and a graphic designer Petr Hanžl.

Thanks to everyone who decided to contribute their recordings!!

we've received great content from all of you! It's an horror to work with you all.

Tune in on https://radiopunctum.cz/ at 20h CET.

or

listen to the podcast here:

  • Read more about CENSE Collective on Radio Punctum: Elements, episode 1

Sonic Turn: “Sound Studies” and the Other History

VIDEOGRAM 108 / TIM Master Class: Anna Kvíčalová
Online event autumn 2021

hml.phil.muni.cz/Play

  • Read more about Sonic Turn: “Sound Studies” and the Other History

CENSE Day — Acoustic Ecology Week Linz

CENSE Day 2 December 2021

The event is cancelled or postponed due to circumstances

We would like to invite all the CENSE members, or others to meet there and discuss the further projects in future.

If you'd like to join the meeting, register through this form until October 15, 2021.

  • Read more about CENSE Day — Acoustic Ecology Week Linz

Online Meeting – Preparation for CENSE Day during Acoustic Ecology Week Linz

Anyone who is interested in participating in the event (actively or passively), or just would like to get to know more information is welcome to join.

CENSE meeting – Monday, October 4, 2021 @ 8pm (Prague time)
us02web.zoom.us/j/84766009077
meeting ID: 847 6600 9077

You can read all the notes in here: pad.monoskop.org/p/dayofcenselinz.

More info: cense.earth/acoustic-ecology-week-linz.

  • Read more about Online Meeting – Preparation for CENSE Day during Acoustic Ecology Week Linz

CENSE Collective on Radio Punctum: Emptiness

CENSE mixtape series is focused on bringing the field of acoustic ecology closer to the local listeners and interested individuals, introducing field-recordings as a sonic tool for examining our sound environment and enabling us to gain a deeper knowledge on the consequences of environmental processes, together with possible solutions retrieval. further info on the network can be found on the webpage

Listen: https://radiopunctum.cz/shows/cense-emptiness

  • Read more about CENSE Collective on Radio Punctum: Emptiness

A Meeting about the CENSE DAY at the Linz Conference

Discussing the program for the Linz conference.

Everybody is welcomed to join the zoom gathering

at 9 am Tuesday 28, September

link will be announced here

milos vojtech is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: linz Time: Sep 28, 2021 09:00 PM Prague Bratislava

Join Zoom Meeting https://us04web.zoom.us/j/74090702466?pwd=L0ZQSG1waFFVUm5MYUdta0NTTXVsQT09

Meeting ID: 740 9070 2466 Passcode: z6zTYM

  • Read more about A Meeting about the CENSE DAY at the Linz Conference

Framework radio #769: 2021.09.19 [CENSE]

This mix was premiered by Radio resonance FM on 19.9. 2021

The recordings from this mix were made by CENSE members during the annual Reveil radio event, a 24-hour continuous live broadcasting which took place on May 3, 2021.

You will hear dawn choruses from Romania, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Slovenia and Estonia. It was raining a lot this morning.

00.00 / framework:afield intro

  • Read more about Framework radio #769: 2021.09.19 [CENSE]

B PETRIFIED, Tidal Love — OR poiesis at Sound Gallery Igloo, Jihlava

22 July, 2021 to 19 September, 2021

Sound Gallery IGLOO
Komenský Street No. 10 Jihlava

Curated by: Miloš Vojtěchovský

The prophecy for the future is hidden in the substance - we need to listen, dwell deep inside in order to understand, to predict. Seemingly deaf darkness of the substance is potent with knowing.

  • Read more about B PETRIFIED, Tidal Love — OR poiesis at Sound Gallery Igloo, Jihlava

Regular Meeting of the Board

There are the key points we'd like to discuss this time:

  1. i-portunus grant – possibility to fund residencies
  2. Punctum radio & Radio Earth – CENSE participation
  3. CENSE Almanach – preparation process
  4. Theme Week Acoustic Ecology in Linz – November 29 – December 5, 2021
  • Read more about Regular Meeting of the Board

CENSE Questionnaire — Open Call

3 August, 2021 to 31 August, 2021

We would like to ask you to fill out this
QUESTIONNAIRE.

Your answers will be included in the planned online PDF publication of the CENSE Almanac, scheduled for November, 2021.

  1. What is your personal attitude or interest in the idea and concept of Acoustic (or Sonic) Ecologies?

  • Read more about CENSE Questionnaire — Open Call

Kőszeg soundscape workshop — Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design, Budapest

23 August, 2021 to 28 August, 2021

Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design Budapest and the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg announce a summer workshop on the topic of ecological sound art, between 23rd and 28th August 2021. The aim of the workshop is to create and present soundscape etudes / compositions in the framework of the Sounding City Days 2021 Kőszeg.

  • Read more about Kőszeg soundscape workshop — Moholy-Nagy University of Arts and Design, Budapest

World Listening Day: Tu Fokan Music Summer School

Tu Fokan Music Summer School is this year from 14th till 23rd July in Pilisszentlászló village, Hungary. On the World Listening Day, (Sunday the 18th), we will focus on it with a small presentation for the 20 Hungarian and Czech young people, as part of the joint CENSE actions. The event will include a review of the existence of sonic ecology, the activities and merits of Murray Schafer, and the phenomena of geophonics, which gives the essentials of this year "Unquiet Earth" topic.

  • Read more about World Listening Day: Tu Fokan Music Summer School

World Listening Day Livestream from the Southern Apennines in Italy

On World Listening Day we will broadcast short radio stream from South Italy, Southern Apennines, from the rooftop of a small house on the top of the hill near Tortorella village.

You are welcome to join listening session and on the program are regular sound events of a very silent valley with only two functional traditional farms, you will hear the sounds of the protected area of plants, birds, owls, wolves and other forest inhabitants. Let's protect the silence, sounds and traditional ways and balanced attitude to life of such places.

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2021 Sanatorium of Sound in Sokolowsko, Poland

13 August, 2021 to 15 August, 2021

Sunday August 15th at 3 pm is scheduled the presentation of Peter Cusack and Miloš Vojtěchovský in the park

Central European Network For Sonic Ccologies - Artist Talk

  • Read more about 2021 Sanatorium of Sound in Sokolowsko, Poland

World Listening Day Events - SOA by Raquel Castro

Screening
at Display Gallery, Prague at 6PM
in the framework of the CENSUS exhibition

CENSUS

and

GAMPA Gallery Pardubice SOA – film screening & sound walk at 7pm

(in collaboration with CENSE – Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies.) after the screening there is a soundwalk in the city of Pardubice

and

  • Read more about World Listening Day Events - SOA by Raquel Castro

Regular Meeting of the Board

Program

The board is public, anybody can participate.

You are welcome to join the webmeeting here. The meeting starts at 0900 CEST.

Previously, the board agreed:

  • Read more about Regular Meeting of the Board

Reveil 24+1 Hour Broadcast 2021

Reveil is a collective production by streamers at listening points around the planet. Starting on the morning of Saturday 1 May in South London near the Greenwich Meridian, the broadcast will pick up feeds one by one, tracking the sunrise west from microphone to microphone, following the wave of intensified sound that loops the earth every 24 hours at first light.

In 2021 Reveil features new out-side streams to be announced.

  • Read more about Reveil 24+1 Hour Broadcast 2021

Regular Meeting of the Board

Technical host of the meeting will be Šárka.

Planned agenda:

  1. Responsibility and competence of Board members

  2. Setting up topic/thematic work teams

  3. The Reveil: participation, programming

  4. Finding an Austrian member to the Board

  5. Finding regular time for our open Board meetings

  6. Discuss the mailing list, and/or other communication forms regarding the Network

The agenda is open to further suggestion, within the given time frame.

  • Read more about Regular Meeting of the Board

First Annual General Constituent Assembly Meeting

Participants in attendance:

Csaba Hajnóczy, Milos Vojtechovsky, Michal Kindernay, Sarka Zahálková, Polina Katshenko, Anna Kvíčalová, Petra Kapš, Anamaria Pravicencu, Jan Krtička, Lloyd Dunn, Jonáš Gruska, Brane Zorman, Jan Kromholtz, Boris Klapal, Slawek Wieczorek, Lucie Páchová, Sara Pinheiro (17 members)

  • Read more about First Annual General Constituent Assembly Meeting

Rerouting the Trails for Soundwalking. The Art of Walking and Listening in the Context of Environmental Humanities

Jacek Smolicki
Spring Seminars 2021

Soundwalking has traditionally been problematized and exercised as an aesthetic practice that advocates deep aural attention to the here and now. A number of scholars and researchers have dealt with meditative aspects of walking and listening alongside their pragmatic application to the study of noise pollution in urban environments. In this talk, I intend to reroute the dominant paths for theorizing and practicing soundwalking by turning to perspectives from environmental humanities.

  • Read more about Rerouting the Trails for Soundwalking. The Art of Walking and Listening in the Context of Environmental Humanities

Ear Trumpets’ Afterlives in the Era of Electricity and Electronics

Magdalena Zdrodowska
Spring Seminar 2021

Throughout the 19th century ear trumpets became the most popular and in fact the only technical solution for deaf people. They merged with the behavior regarded as typical for the deaf such as misinterpretations and communicational loss, therefore ear trumpets turned into a social stigma. They became objects that were bashfully hidden by users. In the 20th century however ear trumpets’ image as well as functions changed as they were substituted with modern, electric and later electronic hearing prostheses. These acoustic hearing aids became antiquated but they did not vanish – they have relocated within the technological and cultural domains.

  • Read more about Ear Trumpets’ Afterlives in the Era of Electricity and Electronics

Artistic Research of Aspects and Potentialities of Spatial Audio Systems Application in Context of Gallery Installation and Audio Performance

Polina Khatsenka
Spring Seminars 2021

The talk introduces the author’s studies of spatial audio phenomenon in a wide range,from spatial aspects of aural perception as a basic need for locating oneself in space, to nowadays application of immersive audio formats such as Ambisonics. The presentation will contain a brief look through the development of spatial audio formats and its artistic and industrial application, followed by the short presentation of the author’s artistic projects, ranging from audio installations in a gallery to audio performance in spatial sound systems.

  • Read more about Artistic Research of Aspects and Potentialities of Spatial Audio Systems Application in Context of Gallery Installation and Audio Performance

The Ruins of the Salföld Pauline Monastery as a Soundscape

Csaba Hajnóczy, Zoltán Mizsei
Spring Seminars 2021

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME) and Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK) started a joint research and development program. Its subject is the acoustic ecology of the Transdanubia region in Western Hungary, combined with elements of the creative provincial city music development program “Sounding City” started by the music department of iASK. In our presentation we will review the regarding pathfinding activities at both institutions in the past few years: “Sounding Houses” and “Sounding City Well (iASK) – sonic ecology related courses and events (MOME). The main focus will be the recently created website “Ruins of the Salföld Pauline Monastery Soundscape”. In its current state, the Pauline monastery in Salföld is a well-kept ruin, half an hour’s walk from the village, in the forest. The place associates two sound worlds: the sacred music of the historic church practice, and the sounds of nature.

Sign into Zoom via this link.

  • Read more about The Ruins of the Salföld Pauline Monastery as a Soundscape

Chris Watson on Walking Festival of Sound

The Walking Festival of Sound invites field recordist Chris Watson for conversation about sound walking and environmental listening.

How does sound walking relate to the practice of field recording? Does walking through an environment change the way we listen to it? In this conversation, Chris Watson will share his experience of sound walking and how it relates to his long established career as a musician and sound recordist.

Register for the presentation

A Zoom link will be sent to participants shortly before the event.

  • Read more about Chris Watson on Walking Festival of Sound

Sound and Environment: New CENSE Conference Publication from 2019, 2020

The publication is a culmination of the international interdisciplinary conference Murmurans Mundus: Sonic Ecology and Beyond, which took place in October 2019 at the Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem organized in cooperation with partners from Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia. The book focuses on current matters of acoustic ecology at the intersection of fine arts, design, music, and education, and it explores the possibilities that this discipline has to offer for reflection on today’s transforming world. The book was published in both English and Czech. (From the preface.)

  • Read more about Sound and Environment: New CENSE Conference Publication from 2019, 2020

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