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.)

The Murmurans Mundus program combined a two-day series of lectures, workshops, evening concerts and performances with the exhibition of several sound and video installations on the topic of the weather (Atmospheric Disturbances). The project was supported by a grant from Visegrad, and guests from Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary personally took part in the event. Thanks to the support of the University, guests also arrived from from Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Portugal, the UK and the US. Papers for a collective anthology were provided by only a few, but these nonetheless form an inspiring collection of dozen or so theoretical and practical texts. The editors Krtička and Mrkus have integrated two additional studies into the anthology, originally intended as an accompanying text for the publication of a Czech translation of The New Soundscape (1970) by Raymond Murray Schafer (essays by Sabine Breitsameter and Jozef Cseres). After the previous collective anthology Landscape in Focus (2016) devoted to the general issues of human industrial landscape and nature and ecology, also prepared by Mrkus, this stands as another example of a synthesizing effort within the milieux of interdisciplinary approaches, both in and outside of academia in the Czech Republic.

In the editorial text, published here by permission of the editors, the individual contributions are briefly outlined.

Introduction

Jan Krtička and Pavel Mrkus

In fact, try as we might to make a silence, we cannot. The above quote refers to the realization that dawned on John Cage during his visit to the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Although no sound could enter the chamber, Cage “heard two sounds, one high and one low.” We indeed cannot escape sound — even if we try to completely insulate ourselves from its source, we hear the sounds of our own body. However, while we can’t escape sound (except perhaps by going deaf), our culture is a predominantly visual one. In order to orient ourselves, not only in space, but also in relationships, situations, or pieces of information, we try to visualize them. We create visual representations to portray or complement visions, ideas, texts, and sounds. But what happens if we suppress visual perceptions and focus our attention primarily on acoustic ones? Will they simply confirm what we have already seen with our eyes, or will they convey a new quality, a new type of information, or another level of aesthetic experience?

Such questions are asked by artists, scientists, and all those who perceive their environment as a whole and pay attention to its acoustic qualities. Landscapes, cities, and interiors are made up of sounds; their shape is audible. Sound, whether natural or artificially produced by human activity, has a significant impact on our experiences, but also on our memories of places and events. Being attentive to soundscapes is part of the research in the field of sound ecology, bridging various disciplines from physics and acoustics through environmental studies and musicology to various forms of contemporary fine art. It might be interesting to note a paradox between two contrasting realities: the louder the artificial, e.g. industrial, noise gets, the more perceptive we are to natural sounds and the more we appreciate them. Nevertheless, all of these elements form a larger whole — today’s soundscape, which we learn to perceive anew.

The present collection of texts follows on from the Murmurans Mundus: Sonic Ecology and Beyond / CENSE Third Annual Conference, which took place in early October 2019 at the Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. The topics and personalities brought together at the conference inspired the creation of this anthology.

The publication consists of two parts that are largely intertwined: theoretical studies and reflections of artistic projects. Strong links are established across both sections as the texts enter into dialogue and complement each other. From our point of view, several thematic subgroups can be found in the book. However, this should not be seen as the only possible approach to the publication, as we hope that every reading will allow for new connections and meanings to be found.

Jozef Cseres offers an introduction to the subject of sound and its role in culture and the environment, based on a reflection of the thoughts of John Cage, Raymond Murray Schafer, and Jacques Attali. In fact, these three major figures largely defined the thinking about sound in our Western culture, and most of the authors of this publication refer to them in one way or another. Sabine Breitsameter looks at the ongoing transformations of our environment from a sonic perspective and critically comments on the gradual homogenization of urban soundscapes in the context of globalization, while Anna Kvíčalová questions the modern dichotomies between nature and culture against a backdrop of acoustic ecology in the Anthropocene. The clash between natural and man-made environments is also reflected in the work of Nathan Wolek, who made a series of audio field recordings at DeLeon Springs State Park in Florida, USA. In their respective projects, Peter Cusack and Tomáš Šenkyřík managed to capture audible anthropogenic changes in the environment. The Aral Sea Stories project uses sound to document the disappearance of the Aral Sea, whereas the Dawn Chorus project mirrors the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Studies and recordings of the sonic environment bring us to the question of how we actually listen and whether it is possible to develop or cultivate this capacity. Martin Flašar points out that all listening must begin in silence, or relate to it, so that we can discern and understand the soundscapes we live in. Aleksandar Vejnovic, on the other hand, takes another position and argues that it is through the use of digital technologies that we can promote a focused and conscious way of listening. A parallel to this can be found in Irena Pivka and Brane Zorman’s multimedia performance Hodi.TI/2.WALK, which stimulates the audience through walking and listening to audio recordings via headphones and a mobile application. Man influences and shapes the sonic environment by his mere existence and by his activity. If we engage in a conscious and creative interaction, it may result for example, in a series of audio events or musical compositions, as shown in Jan Trojan’s text Music for the Siren, which describes an extensive project combining specific signals from our sonic surroundings, musical composition, and radio broadcasting in order to create an exceptional, time-bound acoustic event. Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland work in similar settings (i.e. urban areas), but on different timescales and by other means: their installations transform environmental noise into a new sonic reality.

The sound medium does not exist in a void, and we tend to think about our listening experiences in wider contexts and in analogies. Július Fujak explores the question of whether certain sounds and their recordings can be assimilated to photographs — and whether there is such a thing as sonic photography — illustrating his reasoning by his own composition, Pentrophony. Miloš Vojtěchovský approaches environmental transformations from a broader perspective, choosing to focus on our understanding of weather. This topic provided the basis for the Atmospheric Disturbances exhibition, which brought together projects from the domain of sound art and beyond, and it is further developed in Vojtěchovský’s paper. (Participants in the exhibition were Zdeněk Košek, Marie Steinerová, Michal Kindernay, Jan Krombholz, Polina Katchenka and Ibra Ibrahimovič, Daniel Hanzlík, Slávek Kwi, Peter Cusack, Felix Blume, Raguel Castro and John Grzinich, note of the editor).

Although the basic texts about sound and environment, ways of listening, and acoustic ecology from R. M. Schafer, Bernie Krause, Pauline Oliveros, and others have been around for decades, these topics were long overlooked in Central Europe. Only recently did works exploring the ideas of acoustic ecology start to emerge in the field of fine art. Today more than ever, at a time when the world is undergoing rapid changes that are not easy to capture, let alone admit, listening, recording, analyzing, and approaching sounds from our environment in a creative way can contribute to a deeper understanding of what is happening around us and what our role or position is.

Although the term is only just being discussed, artistic research plays a key part here, opening up possibilities for a new perception of the environment in its entirety. We hope that our book, which offers mainly artistic insights on acoustic phenomena at the intersection of exact sciences, music, and sound art, will be a valuable contribution to the debate on sound ecology.

For further information: Sound and Environment.
Place your order at artmap.cz.

Kniha navazuje na mezinárodní mezioborovou konferenci Murmurans Mundus: Sonic Ecology and Beyond která proběhla na začátku října 2019 na Fakultě umění a designu Univerzity Jana Evangelisty Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem. Byla připravena ve spolupráci s partnery s Polska, Maďarska a Slovenska. Kniha je úvodem do zvukové ekologie perspektivou výtvarného umění, designu, hudby a vzdělávání. Jde o kolektivní monografii a autoři uplatnili osobní pohledy na danou problematiku. Kniha reflektuje aktuální dění a uvažování v kontextu zvukové ekologie. Vychází v anglickém a českém jazyce.

Obsah

• Jan Krtička & Pavel Mrkus: Editorská předmluva
• Sabine Breitsameter (D): Řazení zvuků: Homogenizace poslechu v době zvukové globalizace
• Sam Auinger + Bruce Odland (O+A) (AT): SONIC VISTA
• Anna Kvíčalová (AVČR): „Skutečně nepřirozené“: Ztráta člověka v antropocénu
• Nathan Wolek (USA): DeLeon Soundscape Project
• Martin Flašar (MU, Brno): Výchova k tichu: naslouchání předchází hudbě
• Tomáš Šenkyřík (ČR): Ranní chór v konfrontaci s civilizačním hlukem, 2019—2020
• Aleksandar Vejnovic (D): Práce s publikem v akustické ekologii: Zpřístupnění kultury a aktivizace široké veřejnosti na příkladu případové studie
• Irena Pivka & Brane Zorman (SL): Hodi.TI / 2.Walk
• Jan Trojan (HAMU): Hudba k siréně. Akustický signál artikulovaný hudebním nástrojem ve formě hudební kompozice nebo performance
• Jozef Cseres (MU, Brno): Zvuková ekologie Johna Cage a Raymonda Murrayho Schafera
• Július Fujak (Nitra): Zvuková fotografie jako otisk kairu (osobní poznámky na okraj)
• Miloš Vojtěchovský (CR): Mračna, mraky, obláčky: poznámka k fenomenologii a ekologii počasí
• Peter Cusack (UK): Příběhy Aralského jezera

Program Murmurans Mundus (Svět, který šumí) kombinoval dvoudenní sérii přednášek, dílny, večerní koncerty a performance s výstavou několika zvukových, nebo obrazově zvukových instalací na téma počasí (Atmosférické poruchy) v galerii veřejného prostoru Hraničář. Projekt konference byl podpořen grantem z Visegradu, takže se akce osobně zúčastnili hosté ze Slovenska, Polska, Maďarska, diky podpoře Univerzity i ze Slovinska, Rakouska, Německé Spolkové Republiky, Portugalska u USA. I když rámec přednesených příspěvků byl širší, než je tomu u textů v knize, jde o inspirativní a pestrou kolekci jak teoretických, tak více na praktické otázky zaměřených článků. Po předchozí kolektivní monografii Krajina v pozoru z roku 2016 věnované obecným otázkam ekologie krajiny, jde o další významný syntetizující počin v oblasti mezioborové spolupráce v akademickém i mimoakademickém prostředí v Česku. V editorském úvodu, který zde se svolením vydavatele zveřejňujeme, jsou uvedeny stručně jednotlivé příspěvky.

Ukázka

Ve skutečnosti ticho nemůžeme slyšet — ať děláš, co děláš, ticha nedocílíš. John Cage

Uvedený citát odkazuje ke zkušenosti Johna Cage, kterou učinil ve zvukotěsné komoře na Harvardově univerzitě. Přestože dovnitř komory nevnikal žádný zvuk, Cage slyšel „ke svému překvapení dva zvuky: vysoký a hluboký“. Zvuku skutečně nejsme schopni uniknout — i když se od jeho zdroje zcela izolujeme, slyšíme zvuk vlastního těla. A přestože před zvukem nelze uniknout (snad jen ztrátou sluchu), je naše kultura dominantně orientovana vizuálně. Abychom se byli schopni orientovat, a to nejen v prostoru, ale i ve vztazích, situacích či informacích, snažíme se je vizualizovat. Vytváříme obrazové reprezentace, abychom jimi ztvárnili nebo doplnili vize, myšlenky, texty i zvuky. Co se však stane, když vizuílní vjemy potlačíme a zaostříme svou pozornost především na akustické vjemy? Budou jen potvrzením toho, co jsme si již ověřili zrakem, anebo přinášejí novou kvalitu, nový typ informace či jinou úroveň estetického zážitku?

Tyto a podobné otázky si kladou umělci, vědci i všichni ti, kteří vnímají své životní prostředí v jeho celistvosti, a zejména pak v jeho akustických kvalitách. Krajina, město, či interiér se prostřednictvím zvuku dotvářejí, jejich tvar je slyšitelný. Zvuk, ať již přirozený, či uměle vytvářený lidskou činností, výrazně ovlivňuje naše prožívání, ale i paměť místa a události. Pozornost ke zvukové krajině je součástí zkoumání zvukové ekologie napříč různými obory od fyziky a akustiky přes environmentalistiku a hudební vědu až po různé formy současného výtvarného umění. Je možné si přitom povšimnout zajímavého paradoxu se zkušenosti kontrastu — čím výrazněji zní zvuk umělý, například industriální, tím zřetelněji a příznivěji si uvědomujeme zvuky přirozené. Vše ovšem patří do velkého celku současné zvukové krajiny, kterou se učíme znovu vnímat.

Soubor textů, který předkládáme, vychází z konference Murmurans Mundus, která se uskutečnila na Fakultě umění a designu Univerzity Jana Evangelisty Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem na začátku října roku 2019. Témata a osobnosti, jež se na konferenci sešly, byly inspirací pro sestavení antologie textů.

Publikace je komponována ze dvou základních celků, které se vzájemně prolínají: teoretické studie a reflexe uměleckých projektů. Ty pak vytvářejí významové vztahy napříč rozdělením, aby se navzájem doplňovaly, rozvíjely nebo vedly dialog. Z našeho pohledu lze v oblasti jednotlivých témat vysledovat v publikaci několik podskupin. Tento návrh by však neměl být vnímán jako mřížka definující čtení publikace. Každé čtení by, doufáme, mělo umožnit nalezení nových vztahů a významů.

Jozef Cseres nás uvádí do problému fenoménu zvuku a jeho role v kultuře a životním prostředí na základě reflexe uvažování tří autorů: Johna Cage, Raymonda Murrayho Schafera a Jaquese Attaliho. Ostatně zmíněné osobnosti do značné míry definovaly uvažování o zvuku v naší západní kultuře a většina autorů této publikace k nim nějakým způsobem odkazuje. V aktuální reflexi proměn prostředí, v němž žijeme, skrze zvuk si Sabine Breitsameter všímá postupné nivelizace urbánních zvukových prostředí v souvislosti s globalizací a podrobuje je určité kritice. Vedle toho Anna Kvíčalová kritickým způsobem zkoumá vztah přírodního a kulturního k akustické ekologii v době antropocénu. Střet přírodního a člověkem modifikovaného prostředí se odráží také v projektu Nathana Woleka, který pořídil sérii terénních nahrávek přírodního parku De Leon Springs na Floridě. Významnou proměnu prostředí způsobenou člověkem, již je možné akusticky zachytit, zaznamenali ve své práci Peter Cusack a Tomáš Šenkyřík. Projekt Aral Sea Stories ve zvukové podobě dokumentuje mizení Aralského jezera, zatímco v Ranním chóru se odráží vliv aktuální pandemie COVID-19. Reflexe a záznam akustického prostředí nás vede k otázce, jakým způsobem vůbec nasloucháme a zda lze tuto činnost nějak rozvíjet nebo kultivovat. Martin Flašar upozorňuje, že veškeré naslouchání musí začínat v tichu nebo se k němu vztahovat, abychom byli schopni rozlišovat a porozumět okolnímu zvukovému prostředí. Naproti tomu Aleksandar Vejnovic vychází z jiných pozic a navrhuje využití digitálních technologií k rozvoji soustředěného a vědomého naslouchání. Paralelu k tomu můžeme najít v projektu Ireny Pivky a Brana Zormana Hodi.TI/2.WALK, který publikum aktivizuje skrze chůzi a poslech zvukových nahrávek přes sluchátka a mobilní aplikaci.

Člověk sám o sobě svou existencí a činností ovlivňuje a definuje zvukové prostředí. Pokud se tato činnost stane vědomou kreativní interakcí, může vyústit například v sérii zvukových událostí či hudebních kompozic, jak o tom píše Jan Trojan v textu Hudba k siréně. Popisuje zde rozsáhlý projekt, v němž dochází k propojení specifického zvuku prostředí s komponovanou hudbou a rozhlasovým vysíláním, aby vznikla časově ohraničená a výjimečná akustická událost. V typově stejném prostředí (velkoměsto), ale v jiném časovém horizontu a jinými prostředky vytvářejí Sam Auinger a Bruce Odland instalace, jež transformují hluk prostředí do nové zvukové skutečnosti.

Médium zvuku neexistuje izolovaně a naše zkušenost i myšlení tíhne k tomu vnímat naslouchání ve vztazích či analogiích. Július Fujak si klade otázku, zda lze o určitých zvucích a jejich záznamech uvažovat podobně jako o fotografii; zda existuje něco jako zvuková (sonická) fotografie, a své uvažování o ní dokládá vlastní kompozicí Pentrofónia. V širší rovině přistupuje k reflexi proměn životního prostředí Miloš Vojtěchovský. Jako pole pro formulaci problému si zvolil způsob našeho uvažování o počasí. Na jeho základě sestavil výstavu Atmosférické poruchy zahrnující nejen zvukové projekty a v představeném textu téma dále rozvinul (výstavy se zůčastnili Zdeněk Košek, Marie Steinerová, Michal Kindernay, Jan Krombholz, Polina Katchenka a Ibra Ibrahimovič, Daniel Hanzlík, Slávek Kwi, Peter Cusack, Felix Blume, Raguel Castro a John Grzinich).

Přestože od vydání základních textů o zvuku a prostředí, způsobech naslouchání nebo akustické ekologii od R. M. Schafera, Bernieho Krauseho či Pauline Oliveros uplynula desetiletí, nebyla tato oblast ve středoevropském prostoru dosud šířeji reflektována. Teprve v poslední době se zde začínají objevovat práce čerpající z myšlenek zvukové ekologie na poli výtvarného umění. Zvláště v době, kdy svět prochází rychlými změnami, které není lehké zachytit, natož si je připustit, může naslouchání, zaznamenávání, analýza a kreativní uchopení zvuků prostředí rozšířit porozumění tomu, co se kolem nás děje a jakou roli či místo v této situaci zastáváme. Umělecký výzkum, jakkoliv je tento termín v současnosti teprve diskutován, právě zde hraje zásadní roli a otevírá možnosti nového vnímání prostředí v jeho celku. Doufáme, že naše kniha, která přináší zejména umělecká zkoumání akustických fenoménů, v nichž se protínají přístupy exaktních věd, hudby a zvukového umění, bude užitečným příspěvkem k diskusi o zvukové ekologii.

Jan Krtička a Pavel Mrkus

Další informace a objednavky na adrese: murmurans[at]gmail.com. a sound and environment.

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.

About Chris Watson

Watson was a founding member of the influential Sheffield based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Since then he has developed a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals and habitats from around the world. As a freelance composer and sound recordist Watson specialises creating spatial sound installations which feature a strong sense and spirit of place.

His installations have been commissioned by international galleries and festivals such as Sheffield Millennium Gallery, Opera North in Leeds, The National Gallery, London, The Louvre, Paris, the Aichi Triennial in Japan and Unsound in Kraków.

About the Walking Festival of Sound

Walking Festival of Sound is a transdisciplinary event exploring the role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings. It combines a number of free and public events including walking performances and walking seminars which take place in diverse public spaces. Evening events informed by walking practices take place in various event spaces (see more details in the program section). Walking Festival of Sound facilitates a meeting point for an international network of practitioners and researchers interested in sound and walking. Through diverse events we explore how walking and listening practices can augment and challenge the way we perceive, navigate through, and care for our shared environments. In 2019 the festival takes place in two cities, Stockholm and Newcastle The Walking Festival of Sound 2021 is kindly funded by the Culture of Solidarity Fund.

The program of events is organised and curated by Jacek Smolicki and Tim Shaw.

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

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.

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More information about the Pauline Monastery.

Csaba Hajnóczy is a musician, composer, musicologist, and teacher at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, living and working in Budapest. He was the main initiator and organizer of the CESSE – Conference #1. His recent artistic interest is field recording based composition and the use of spatial sound systems. Since 2013 he has given numerous talks and workshops in the field of acoustic ecology, including soundwalks, in Hungary, Poland, Belgium, Turkey. Csaba participated in the Architecture and Senses in Plasy, 2017 and in all following CENSE events.

Zoltán Mizsei graduated from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music as a professor of choral conducting and Church music. He received his DLA in 2004. Currently, he is associate professor there at the department of Church music. He teaches Renaissance church music, choral conducting and voice teaching practices. Since 2014 he has been the conductor of Schola Academica choir. He sings and plays instruments in several early music and world music ensembles, composes music for contemporary dance performances and films. He teaches improvisation for music therapists at ELTE University. He organized different festivals and workshops to combine composed music and soundscape. Recently has established the Music Laboratory at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Kőszeg (iASK) with an interdisciplinary research, sound arts, touristic and education agenda entitled ‘Sounding City’.

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. Final part of the presentation will be devoted to the author’s curatorial activities, including organisation and production of phonon ~ event series, mediating contemporary experimental electronic and electroacoustic music and sound art, based in Ústí nad Labem.

Polina Khatsenka is an audiovisual artist, sound designer and sonic curator from Minsk, Belarus, based in Usti nad Labem. She is devoting her work to various aspects of sound with a focus on audio performance, site-specific installations and composition. One of the essential aspects of her work is collaboration and group projects with/for independent institutions with a self-organised approach. Polina implies expanding the perception of both one’s and shared environment within her work, be it uncovering and operating with invisible but yet existing radiating fields or addressing existential topics on a personal level.

Follow the zoom link to attend the seminar.

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. In the presentation I will consider ear trumpets’ afterlife in the 20th and 21st century using the object oriented analysis, interviews, discourse analysis of advertisements, and documents from British National Archives and Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds.

Magdalena Zdrodowska – assistant professor in the Department of Audiovisual Arts, Jagiellonian University, Poland. She is interested in the complex and mutual relations between technology and non-hearing. Her research work is grounded in film and media studies, deaf and disability studies, and history of technology. Her book Telephone, cinema, and cyborgs. Mutual relations between technology and deafness (in Polish: Telefon, kino i cyborgi. Wzajemne relacje niesłyszenia i techniki) will be published in June 2021.

Magdalena Zdrodowska

In the second part of our seminar Matěj Frank - visual artist based in Vienna, Chudobín and Wroclaw - will describe his sound sculptures and his works with ear trumpets.

Matěj Frank (CZ) is a visual artist, usually being on the way between Vienna (AT), Chudobín (CZ) and Wroclaw (PL). In his interdisciplinary work, Frank explores the space through sculptures, spatial projects and sound installations and depicts time through processual drawings and durational performances. An important aspect of his work is capturing gradual transformations while keeping the simplicity of the form and/or process. As a member of the cultural association Bludný kámen (CZ), Frank organizes exhibitions of contemporary art and intermedia projects. Currently, he teaches at the Sculpture department at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw (PL).

In recent years, Frank realized several listening sculptures, usually titled Monologue. These interactive objects serve as acoustic amplifiers of „small sounds“ in their surroundings. Similar objects were originally used on a larger scale as acoustic locators in the pre-radar era to locate enemy aircraft, and on a smaller scale as simple hearing trumpets. Frank placed his sculptures in various contexts and environments, in nature as well as in urban areas and gallery spaces.

matejfrank.com

Join us on Zoom for the Seminar

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. I am specifically interested in exercising a vision of soundwalking as a specific discursive, empirical but also speculative modality for becoming in tune with more-than-human species, temporalities and scales. Moreover, given that many soundwalking initiatives have been pursued in alliance with Western scholarship and ontologies, in this talk I will inquire into other worldviews for which the acts of walking and listening to surrounding environments have been central.

Among other soundwalking projects, in this talk I will draw more specifically on Intertidal Room. It is a soundwalk composition developed for Vancouver’s coastline in the summer 2020. Combining elements of creative storytelling, historical research, field recordings, and soundscape composition, this soundwalk was intended to be listened to during a period of slack water, a moment when tide is at the lowest point and soon about to return. Attending to the fugitive nature of intertidal zones, this soundwalk intended to provide room for an increased aural attention to the power relationships that have affected diverse, often imperceptible layers of these complex environments. By analyzing different stages of production as well as reception of the project, I will argue that beyond more critical awareness of the present moment, soundwalks offer a particular opportunity for lending an ear to the environmental history of a given place.

Jacek Smolicki is a Krakow-born and Stockholm-based interdisciplinary artist, designer, postdoc researcher, and soundwalker. His works brings ethical, historical, and reflective dimensions to recording practices and technologies in a more-than-human context. Besides working with existing documents, Smolicki develops alternative modes of sensing, recording, archiving, and mediating stories and signals from diverse sites, scales, and temporalities. His work is manifested through soundscape compositions, soundwalks, site-responsive performances, experimental para-archives, audio-visual installations, and diverse forms of writing. He has presented his works internationally (e.g. Kraków, Madrid, Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, San Francisco, Budapest, Vienna, Sarajevo, Oxford). In 2017 he completed his PhD from the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University where he was a member of the Living Archives research project. Between 2020-2023 Smolicki pursues an international postdoc funded by the Swedish Research Council. His research explores the history and prospects of field recording and soundwalking practices from the perspective of post-digital arts, environmental humanities, and philosophy of technology. He is also an associate scholar at the Uppsala Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence at Uppsala University. From January 2020 he is a member of BioMe, a research project that investigates ethical implications of AI technologies on everyday life realms. Smolicki explores sonic capture cultures and the impact of AI technologies on (human) voice. He is a co-founder and curator of Walking Festival of Sound, a transdisciplinary event exploring the role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings.

Website: www.smolicki.com

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)

People who sent a note that they could not join: Patrick Tubin Mcginley, Barbara Benish, Tomáš Šenkyřík, Julius Fujak, Barbora Gallová.

In the board were elected the following:

Csaba Hajnóczy (HU) Miloš Vojtěchovský (CR) Jan Krtička (CR) Šárka Zahálková (CR) Anamaria Pravicencu (RO) Polina Katshenko (Belarus / CR) Slawek Wieczorek (POL) (plus one person from Austria, will be invited)

The duties of the General Assembly are written in details in the By-Laws.

During the General Assembly we decided on the following:

1. Election of Management : 8 person in total (Chair and Deputy Chair, Secretary and Deputy Secretary, Treasurer and Deputy Treasurer)

2. Admission and Dues: Yearly €30 is accepted.

3. Further program of the meeting:

- Planned CENSE projects - Periodic CENSE newsletters - Radio and / or podcast - Thematic work groups - The decision about the next conference in 2021 or 2022

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.

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:

1. Csaba will find out, where if we must open Austrian bank account for CENSE
2. The treasurer and the deputy treasurer is Šárka and Annamaria
3. If there is a tie in voting, one member of the board will volunteer not to vote
4. Board meetings agenda is prepared by the moderator
5. Meetings will be on Zoom platform (Jan or Csaba will provide a link each time)
6. There are active members of CENSE and supporting members. Active members pay the annual fee of 30Eur.

Jan Krtička suggests this agenda for the Thursday meeting:

1. Discuss and Confirm the board member roles and their duties
2. Discussion on the date, the location and the organizer of the planned 2021 CENSE Conference / Gathering

Moderator June 3rd: Miloš Vojtěchovský

Confirmed board members: Anamaria. Sárka. Csaba, Polina, Milos, absent: Jan

Discussion platform: https://discord.gg/vcVX88ZaaK

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

Tu Fokan Music Summer School in Hungary The event includes a review of sonic ecology, the activities and merits of R- Murray Schafer, geophonics, which gives the essentials of this year "Unquiet Earth" topic. Listenings and demonstrations are based on the work and art of JT Bullitt, specially the Earthsound Project. Screening of Raquel Castro's Film " SOA".

supported by The Hungarian Institute of Seismology

Tu Fokan Music Summer School

Tomáš Šenkyřík live stream from the water pool on his garden between 2 and 3 pm listen to the live stream: http://locus.creacast.com:9001/tomas_senkyrik.mp3

All events organized in the framework of the World Listening Day: A Global Community Event.

about the film:

About soundscapes, silence and noise, all sound spectra, from infra to ultrasound, frequencies and rhythm. But also about ecology, citizenship, equality and urban policies. The listening as a catalyst for transformation and sounds that are part of our everyday life places. How the soundscape affects us and how we are responsible for the sound we generate?

For several years, sound artist and documentary filmaker Raquel Castro recorded interviews with many sound artists, soundwalkers and sound theorists about the role of sound and listening in human life, about the education towards improving of aural literacy. The Soa film was premiered last year and now for the first time in Czech Republic.

"These recordings took place in Lisbon, S Miguel, London, Berlin, Glenshee, Oporto and Valparaíso, places that visually and sonically illustrate this film-essay, a simultaneously formal and narrative exercise that seeks to summon emotions from listening."

The theme for 2021 “The Unquiet Earth” is an invitation to reflect on and engage with the constant murmur of the Earth, sounds beyond the threshold of human hearing, to remind ourselves that we share this mysterious and awesome planet. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity. Listening as activism encourages us to question our attitudes as listeners as we aim to construct a more inclusive and empathetic new world. Join the unquiet revolution!

— Raquel Castro

Raquel Castro is film director, curator and sound artist, researching on communication and arts about sound, apace and acoustic Identity. Among other films, she directed the documentary Soundwalkers which was screened at various conferences of sound art and documentary film festivals. She is the founder and director of International Symposium Invisible Places and the environmental sound art festival Lisboa Soa. She is a fellow researcher at CICANT, the Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture and New Technologies.

SOA
CRIM Production 2020, Lisbon
HD, 71 min

Galerie Display cense

18 července od 18 hodin

vstup volný

připraveno v rámci Worldlisteningday.org

pořádá Display – Association for Research and Collective Practice

Paralelně probíhají další akce: Pardubice od 19:00 v GAMPA – Galerie města Pardubic, Příhrádek 5, Pardubice

(Po projekci je v Pardubcích zvuková – poslechová procházka městskou krajinou). viz: otevrenakultura.cz

a po celém světě

Zvuk je součástí každodenosti míst, kde žijeme a zvukem jsme určováni víc, než si uvědoumujeme. Máme snad zodpovědnost za hluk, který vytváříme? A může být zvuk hybatelem společenské změny? Dokumentární film se zabývá zvukovým spektrem od infra k ultrazvuku, frekvencemi a rytmy. Rozhovory jsou také o zvukové ekologii, o občanství, rovnosti a sociologii města. Portugalská zvuková umělkyně a filmová dokumentaristka Raquel Castro vedla rozhovory s různými zvukovými umělci a teoretiky v Evropě i jinde. Ptala se na význam zvuku a naslouchání v lidském životě, na jejich názory na vzdělávání a na možnosti jak posílit sluchovou gramotnost. Rozhovory proběhly v Lisbonu, S Miguel, Londýně, Berlině, Glenshee, Oportu a Valparaísu.

SOA měl premiéru v loňském roce a zde je to první příležitost jej vidět v Česku.

„Tématem letošního Světového dne poslechu je „Neklidná Země“. Planetární akce je výzvou k zaposlouchání se do těch oblastí zvukového spektra, které přesahují možnosti lidského sluchu: je to výzva poslouchat myriádám jemných, skrytých, podzemních, vzdušných, vodních, infra a ultra zvuků, jimiž k nám planeta, letící vesmírem promlouvá. Aktivní poslech může porušit návyky a stát se symbolickým krůčkem ke světu, který bude méně znečištěný, více inkluzivní a empatický.“ Raquel Castro

Raquel Castro se zabývá zvukovým uměním, prostorem a akustickou identitou. Natočila několik filmů, včetně úspěšného dokumentárního filmu Soundwalkers, který byl promítán na řadě konferencích a výstavách zvukového umění a filmových festivalech. Je iniciátorkou a ředitelkou SOA - Mezinárodního sympozia a festivalu Environmentálního zvukového umění v Lisabonu.

SOA

CRIM Production 2020

HD, 71 min

http://crim-productions.com/

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

Just beyond the birches of the Czech-Polish border around Mt. Spitzberg, the road running along the ridge turns sharply toward the Polish side, and steeply winds down through the dense mixed forest. In a short while, you are almost slipping and sliding down to the foot of the hills. Here lies Sokolowsko, in a lush, narrow valley, just 2 km from the border. A former spa town, with today only 1000 inhabitants, its name is still uttered among certain circles in Wroclaw and Warsaw. This is not a recent development, either; though in the past its name meant something different.

Sára Vybíralová
Sound Art and Experimental Music Make for a Surprising Boom in the Forest

Sanatorium of Sound is a festival devoted to experimental contemporary music and broadly understood sound art. Its main goal is to present the widest possible spectrum of phenomena related to the development of musical forms in the 20th and 21st centuries. Thus far, we have shown the works of about 200 artists from around the world, many of them were created especially in the context of the place during artist residencies in Sokołowsko.

Sanatorium of Sound is a festival whose greatest value is presenting the art of sound and all-new experimental forms in the context of its location – a spa town situated in the Central Sudetes. The landscape of the mountains surrounding Sokołowsko, the post-German 19th-century architecture and marvellous air has always been the inseparable attributes of concerts, exhibitions and any other reflection on new trends in contemporary music. This time it could not be different. Let us hope that the global crisis is behind us and that this year we shall meet again: close to nature, close to music, close to each other, responding to the post-pandemic effect of the need for an authentic experience. We’re back to normal.

Artists

Katarzyna Krakowiak Biliana Voutchkova Peter Ablinger Burkhard Beins Aleksandra Słyż Edka Jarząb Tatiana Heuman Joanna Halszka Sokołowska Hugo Esquinca Mario de Vega Gerard Lebik Miloš Vojtěchovský Peter Cusack Lubomir Grzelak Tim Shaw Katarzyna Podpora/Max Kohyt Wojciech Kucharczyk Justyna Banaszczyk/Darek Pietraszewski/Tomek Popakul

For accommodation contact us at: sanatoriumdzwieku@gmail.com

The Sanatorium Sound Festival is not only a concerts, but also a series of projects in the field of sound art, performance and projects created and dedicated especially to this event by musicians, composers, and interdisciplinary creators. The festival takes place in several places in Sokołowsko (Kinoteatr Zdrowie, Sala Multimedialna, Park Zdrojowy or the ruins of a 19th-century sanatorium). Every year, our festival gathers over 400 recipients from all over the world, we are visited by an exceptional audience, music lovers.

Sanatorium of Sound

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.

You can tune on Locus Sonus Soundmap or here: http://locus.creacast.com:9001/radio_for_owls.mp3.

Starting around 8pm (CEST), UTC +2.

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. Listenings and demonstrations will be based on the work and art of JT Bullitt, specially the Earthsound Project. We will also watch Raquel Castro's Documentary Film " SOA". "Unquiet Earth", as a concept will be present in musical activities during the camp. With the help of Hungarian Institute of Seismology we'll use waveform figures of tectonic plate motions as graphic scores for music improvisation.

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.

The participants work on the basis of field recordings made in and around Kőszeg, and their work reflects on these soundscapes. The workflow will consist of joint and individual soundwalks, sound recordings, group and individual editing/processing consultations, spatial installation. On the closing day, the finished pieces will be performed in front of an audience.

Teachers

• Polina Khatsenka (Belarus / Ústí nad Labem University CZ)
• Csaba Hajnóczy (MOME)
• Adam Krasz (MOME)
• Jacek Smolicki (Stockholm) - online consultant

Conditions

The course can accommodate up to 12 participants. Applicants are asked to provide a professional CV, and a sound work of their own. Own laptop, DAW knowledge required. Lack of your own recording device is not an obstacle.

Applications should be sent to hajnoczy.zene@gmail.com by midnight on July 27, sharing links. Decisions will be made by July 31st.

The participation fee of the course is 14,000 HUF / € 40. Accommodation, meals: self-organized.

Further infornation: hajnoczy.zene@gmail.com

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

Author: zvukac (Miloš Vojtěchovský)
Curators: Zbyněk Baladrán, Lukáš Likavčan and Display - Association for Research and Collective Practice

The key figure of the exhibition Census is Miloš Vojtěchovský (alias zvukac), who prepared for Display a processual project composed of three parts. He explores themes of dichotomies, measurements of external processes, spirituality and species extinction, and he shows us images and sounds which attempt to transcend processes often hard for us to understand and imagine. A ‘census’ means a qualified approximation, or inventory-taking, a tool of grasping and control. But how to conduct such an enumeration when everything is in constant motion? Perhaps a synthesis of techné and poésis can help us capture the geological processes of the Earth as an image of liquid matter whose addition and localization make sense for only a fraction of a moment, in order that the human might better gain a frame of reference and evaluate its own position.

more at …

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

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

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.

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

hml.phil.muni.cz/Play

It is hard to imagine scientific research without the use of pictures, graphs, and diagrams; Western culture has been repeatedly characterised as visual since the invention of the printing press; we are likely to believe what we have seen "with our own eyes". But is there knowledge that we can only gain through specific listening techniques? Does hearing have a history of its own? Can we study sound before the era of its technological reproduction? In my talk, I will introduce “sound studies” as a field of interdisciplinary historical research and explain how and why to engage with the history of sound and hearing. I will show, for example, how the study of indigenous cultures in Papua New Guinea has contributed to a better understanding of the history of European science, explain what "historical hearing" and the cultural history of the senses are, and show what the study of hearing and acoustics reveals about the formation of modern science and culture at the intersection of natural, social and artistic disciplines. I will present the history of sound as an alternative history of modernity, using examples from the context of the European Reformation, 19th century physiology, acoustic ecology, and research of "voice prints".

Anna Kvíčalová is a historian of science, religion, and the senses; in her work she deals with the history of sound and hearing. She works as a research fellow at the Centre for Theoretical Study (Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences) where she is the leader of the research project The Second Sense: Sound, Hearing and Nature in Czech Modernity. She received her MA from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin; between 2013-17 she worked as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is the author of Listening and Knowledge in Reformation Europe (Palgrave, 2019) and other texts on sound, hearing and acoustics. She is also an Assistant Professor at the Department for the Study of Religion at Masaryk University, Brno.

Link

The lecture will take place online through the ZOOM platform.
The lecture will be held in English.
https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/94113388164
Meeting ID: 941 1338 8164

The lecture is a part of the online course TIM Master Class taught within Theory of Interactive Media MUNI and also part of the series Videogram at FFA BUT under the auspices of Department of Audiovisual Technology. Further programme at www.videogram.favu.vut.cz

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:

20211228_cense

4th issue of the radio program SYMPTOMS OF EVIDENCE

EARTH is an episode in the ELEMENTS series for Punctum radio.

This time the mixtape show was put together by magnificent OR poiesis, with contributions by Slavek Kwi, Martyna Poznańska, Peter Cusack, Anamaria Pravicencu, Alëna Korolëva, Udo Noll, Milos Vojtechovsky, Lloyd Dunn, Patrick Tubin McGinley, Audrius Simkunas, OR poiesis, Michal Kindernay, Šárka Zahálková and Manja Ristić.

The fourth episode is an invitation to rethink what we have built over time and it is a poetic contribution to the fundament of us all - The Earth.

The PUNCTUM mixtape shows are co-produced by Polina Khatsenka. A visual collage for the show includes images by Martyna Poznańska, Michal Kindernay and OR poiesis.

Live please tune in on radiopunctum

No. 3 Psychogeography

Symptoms of Evidence: The third episode of Symptoms of evidence by CENSE is prepared by Polina Khatsenka and OR poiesis – Petra Kapš. Series is reflecting the current situation dealing with sound, environment and perception. Third episode will take you for a walk to explore "psychogeography".

Psychogeography, as the term suggests, is the intersection of psychology and geography. It focuses on our psychological experiences of the city, and reveals or illuminates forgotten, discarded, or marginalized aspects of the urban environment.

Both the theory and practice of psychogeography have been around since 1955, when French theorist Guy Debord coined the term. While it emerged from the Situationist International movement in France, the practice has far-reaching implications. It’s relevant, for instance, in Prague, Bucurest, Wroclaw, or Kišiněves.

Recordings by

• Šárka Zahálková
• Miloš Vojtěchovský (an aporee walk)
• Katrinem
• Udo Noll
• Peter Cusack
• Tomáš Šenkyřík
• Irena Pivka
• Yorgis Sakallariou
• Polina Katchenka
• Bálint Kiss
• Martin Marek
• Boris Klepal
• OR Poesis
• Mat Eric Hart

Cense

Thanks to everyone who decided to contribute their recordings, we've received great contributions! Thanks to all participating and listening! And big thanks to Polina Khatsenka for putting together the radio show.

orpoiesis.blogspot.com

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.

• Find this event on Facebook
• Download the Programme (pdf)

General Information about the Symposium

Programme: 21 to 25 November, 2023

Installations (ongoing)

• Bea Targosz: VIBRATIONS [Firebug - city]
• Kristine Diekman and Ben Pagac: Secret Reception
• Andrea Borbála Sinkó: un(wanted) sounds

Tuesday 21 November — Welcome

19:00–20:45 Listening session I

• Manja Ristić & Aleksandar Lazar: Dobra voda (Good Water)
• Ida Hirsenfelder: Empathic Atmospheres. Sonic stories for cohabitation
• Hugo Scurto: Deepscape: Transversal

• Eric Leonardson: Auditory Respiration

• Sign in to register

Wednesday 22 November — Presentations

10:00–11:00 Keynote: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay: Post-immersive Listening: Perspectives on the Mediation of Sonic Environments

11:00–11:30 break

11:30–12:00 Ida Hirsenfelder: Empathic Atmospheres. Sonic stories for a sensitive cohabitation

12:00–12:30 Piotr Kędziora Something fragile. Ambient listening & background musics qualia

12:30–13:00 Maja Bjelica: Experiencing Listening: Essay in Environmental Ethics of Care

13:00–14:00 lunch break

14:00-14:30 Kristine Diekman and Ben Pagac: Secret Reception

14:30–15:00 Liz K. Miller: Listening with Diagrams

15:00–15:30 Julius Fujak: Sonic Environments as the Mirror of Culture (As A Challenge for Artistic Testimony)

15:30–16:00 break

16:00–16:30 Polina Khatsenka: Elbe_Labe

16:30–19:30 break and dinner

19:00–20:45 Listening session II

• Walrus Pipe Ensemble (a 15-member acoustic band led by Bálint Szabó): The Reappearance of Ritual
• Mary Edwards: Everywhere We Are is the Farthest Place

• Dorota Blaszczak: Fields of Sound

• Sign in to register

Thursday 23 November — Presentations

10:00–11:00 Keynote: Gascia Ouzounian: Death Cities: Hearing Atmospheric and Spatial Violence

11:00–11:30 break

11:30–12:00 Martin Heslop: Sound Sanctuaries

12:00–12:30 Bálint Kiss: Sound, Noise, and Master Plans

12:30–13:00 Shluk: Noise Pollution and Sound Beyond Sound

13:00–14:00 lunch break

14:00–14:30 Jan Solčáni: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Sound Mapping: House of Culture Družba

14:30–15:00 Magdalena Manderlová: Kozmic Sounds (Bird Reserve)

15:00–15:30 Sam Auinger and Peter Cusack: Braunschweig hört sich zu

15:30–16:00 break

16:00–16:30 Ari Koivumäki: Implementing Comfortable Soundscapes in Urban Spaces

16:30–17:00 Gabi Schaffner: Datscha Radio: Radio as Experimental Ethnography

17:00–19:30 break, dinner

19:00–20:45 Listening session III (8-channel)

• OR poiesis: Furīfōru/fluvial
• Christoph Brünggel: Turbulent Currents / sound performance
• Arthur Enguehard & Lorella Abenavoli: EtreTerre

• Eva Vozárová & Fero Kiralyi: Fonendoskop | Sound Topographies

• Sign in to register

Friday 24 November

Workshops

• 10:00-13:00 Soundcamp collective: Streambox Workshop
  for 12 participants. (Bring your own laptop and headphones).

• 10:00-12:00 Henry McPherson: Towards Ecological Improvisation: Listening with the Body — 10-15 participants. See details.

Details

If participants would like to bring something to sound on/with (an instrument, an object, etc.) they are very welcome. Depending on space available, it might be nice to go outside, so I advise that people wear clothing they are comfortable in. Technically, it would be useful to have some chairs that people can sit on if needed.

• 13:00-15:30 Melissa del Carmen Ernstberger & Luka Laval: Sonic Carthography workshop
  10-12 participants. (Bring laptop or phone and headphones).

13:00–15:00 Jacek Smolicki: Soundwalking through time, space and technologies

15:00–16:00 Sam Auinger / Peter Cusack: Soundwalk

16:00–17:00 Workshop summaries for all workshops (Film Studio)

17:00–19:30 break, dinner

19:00–20:45 Listening session IV (cube 8-channel)

• Robin Parmar: Matrix for Glaciers
• Mári Mákó: Acoustic Nexus
• Danny Clark: A Sonic-Counter-Cartography of Eastern White Pine

• Ramon De Marco: Inside / Outside

• Sign in to register

Saturday 25 November — Presentations / Closing Day

10:00–11:00 Keynote: Jacek Smolicki: A walk in the forest

11:00–11:30 break

11:30–12:00 Abby Lee Tee: Beavers in the City, Their Vocalizations and Human Noise

12:00–12:30 Georgios Varoutsos: Sounding Covid-19

12:30–13:00 Hannah Kemp-Welch: Listening Pedagogies for Community-based Art

13:00–14:00 break

14:00-14:30 Hanna Grześkiewicz: Sounding Borderlessness in the Białowieża Forest

14:30–15:00 Guillaume Loizillon: Territories

15:00–15:30 Ramon De Marco: Klangweg Toggenburg

15:30–16:00 Eric Leonardson: Summary of 2023 WFAE Conference

16:00–17:00 Round table: How to Activate Ecology of Sound Beyond Listening?

• Grant Smith, Peter Cusack, Ida Hirsenfelder, Mary Edwards, Csaba Hajnóczy, Hanna Kemp-Welch, Eric Leonardson, Jacek Smolicki, Csaba Hajnóczy, Ramon De Marco, and others..moderated by Miloš Vojtěchovský
  

Support

The project is supported by the Visegrad Fund

Partners

Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Faculty of Art and Design

Institute of Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław, The Soundscape Research Studio

Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Department of Cultural Studies, Faculty of Arts

Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, Media Institute

Prohelvetia Swiss Arts Council

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.

If you are interested in coming to KRA Vysočina (Kravín Rural Arts), please send a proposal and we can provide you with the necessary documents, like a letter of acceptance etc.

We usually accept residencies for summer (June till October).

More information on our activities you can find on the website.

For 2024 we are looking for artists who are interested in bioacoustics of water soundscapes (ponds, rives, ditches, rains, etc) and species monitoring via ultrasonics (bats, crickets, mice, etc). We are setting up a program combining citizen science and creative performances. Those are big words but let's keep it simple and if you like to expand your field recordings in those areas, feel welcome and join in with or contribute to the Summer of the KRA program 2024. It is a nice depopulated area around here, in between protected natural and agricultural areas.

Something general:

KRA (kravin rural arts, https://kra.land) is installed in a historical building, or old neglected farm, or simply: a ruin. We invite artists to work experimentally with ecology and technology, from within the countryside, in a natural environment. Apart from these residencies, we host an alternative music festival (on/off) and organize presentations, performances, participations. During the korona years, we set up ButtuLab.Space as an incubator for introducing new digital skills (3D design/print, audiovisual, radio, networks, ...) as a creative collaboration between the local social and artisanal, media and co-working, biofarming, leisure and learning places. KRA participated in international art-science and media art festivals/initiatives throughout the year (Réveil, Nextfestival, World Listening Day, Cultural EU Capital Esch art radio, Art's Birthday, and more things you know better). We also have contacts with sister-initiatives throughout Europe through the PAN network, and of course: CENSE! KRA's overal mission is to establish a shared infrastructure and contribute to the development of a liveable, critical and creative, environmental 21st century countryside. Sustained nearby, and connected elsewhere around. The New Rural Development: Let's make it (DIY)!

Location and activities:

• https://kra.land
• http://maps.google.com
• http://www.openstreetmap.org

IVF CALL information:

• https://www.visegradfund.org

KRA contact: hinterland@kra.land

(photo by Matej Tomažin)

In 2021 we asked all members CENSE five open-ended questions as a way of taking the pulse of the community.The result was edited and distributed as a PDF Almanac publication, which you can download here from this site for free.

3 years later end of 2023 I sent the QUESTIONNAIRE II: What changed meanwhile and what didnt? Your answers could be included in the epublication The CENSE Almanac II - Rapyuta Thanks for your comments

Miloš Vojtěchovský

Questions II

1. What do you see as a positive development or achievement in environmental policy in general or within the community of Acoustic (or Sonic) Ecologies lately?

2. What do you consider as a common ground between the disciplines as composition, sonic ecologies, bioacoustics, environmental activism or art of listening in your field of expertise? Can you name any examples or initiatives you are currently involved in or would like to initiate?

3. Do you have opinion about the way how "de-contextualized" field recordings (or other captured sounds) are used in contemporary music scene (such as publishing recordings or doing live performances with field recordings as source material)?

4. Can you comment on the situation in your field of expertise concerning trans- or inter-disciplinary collaboration? What kind of and how much feedback is there between your acitivities, the broader community and the public?

5. What do you think could help to increase the involvement of broader public and / or policymakers to help promote positive changes in environmental consciousness and the policy of the country in which you currently live?

Answers

                                  John Grzinich                                  

1.There seems to be a growing number of people who are active in promoting sensitivity to the environment through listening. Whether this is through schools, education institutions or projects, I notice a healthy awareness about the scale of our unfolding crisis and that there are things that can be done on the ground. This awareness or willingness to engage in the issues at hand regarding the climate crisis are still not reflected widely in political discourse but there is still always time for this to change.

2. Obviously many of us are bound together in our sensory interest in sound and listening which brings us to common questions regardless of discipline, namely how can we contribute to awareness and change of perceptions and attitudes. Most recently I organized a series of events around International Dawn Chorus day, that included Listening Walks, and a Sound Camp’ for the 24hr Reveil broadcast. The participants were both from the general public and a diverse range of international students from the Estonian Academy of Arts coming from Media Art, Design, Architecture, Animation, Movement and so on. It is important not to overlook the diverse backgrounds and interests despite coming together for a rather specific niche event. What emerged was the need for such events to bring people together for a ritualized form of listening as a way to engage with the more-than-human world we share.

3. I am aware that there is an extractive element to de-contextualising sound, so I try to find a balance in recording, live streaming and contextual environmental listening to allow for diverse interpretations in what we listen to and the ways we listen.

4. My answer is similar to what I said above about ritualising listening to bring people together. I have engaged people from so many backgrounds, cultures, age groups etc in listening activities over the years, I can confidently say I have never seen any negative reactions from asking people to listen more in just about any context. This does however require a specific skill in communicating and facilitating aspects of the listening process so there is a fairly clear understanding about the intentionality behind guiding our ears toward different subjects and matters.

5. Well I intend to keep doing what I’m doing. Of course there are challenges involved in making larger impacts on policy or mainstream attitudes. We are up against some very deeply rooted colonialist habits and prejudices that feed destructive human-nature, human-human divides, threatening our very existence. There is no easy way out and unfortunately the conditions might have to get worse before they get better but let’s hope not.

South Estonia, May 2024 maaheli.ee

                                   Grant Smith

1. A move from sites to situations. Work with sound as advocacy for (legal) rights of rivers and other (complex) environmental entities.

2. I'm listening to a live stream by Dorota Blaszczak from a summer house in Nowe Zalubice, Poland. It's an extraordinarily detailed evening chorus in a place that is also used by people, with sounds of diy, aircraft etc. This is using a streambox which the artist took back with them from the meeting in Budapest. This seems a simple, and in some ways remarkable, example of the possibilities for live transmission of environmental sounds. zalubice_nowe_summer_house. On 29 June, Soundcamp are broadcasting 'War-Torn Ecologies: Resistant Worlds from The Mosaic Rooms to Radio al Hara in Palestine. This is a multidisciplinary artistic programme, taking place in London and Beirut. At the same time we continue to develop Radio With Palestine, a series of live transmissions from demonstrations, direct actions, pickets, student encampments. This seems like a useful association.

3. For Soundcamp, context is important. If sound is being used in a more abstract way (also), the situations the sounds come from can be described, acknowledged and credited in accompanying notes etc. Why not?

4. A recent collaboration with Alice Eldridge at the University of Sussex led to a long-term live stream from a wilding site with beavers in Sussex, UK. The data set is intended for scientific analysis. The sounds have been of quite wide public interest. (https://wilding.radio/).

5. We are really interested in supporting a widening community of practice, rather than in addressing policy makers or a general public. We think sound can work in support of artists and activists and extend listening to less heard human and non human communities. With the legacy of the Free Radio movements, we are interested in how sonic ecologies can work in the service of emergent struggles (Brandon LaBelle. We want to develop transmission ecologies (Anna Friz) as the hard- and soft-wares and ways of working that can do that. That includes creating a 'live archive' of everyday resistance and resilience. If our work is turned to the public, we sometimes say, it is (only) 'half turned'. The other half is for us.

Soundcamp, London, UK soundtent.org

                     Július Fujak

1. • A realistic and real ecological environmental policy – if it is not connected with the madness of s. c. Green Deal – is very needed today at any level and in different areas of our social life and culture. The agenda of acoustic, and sonic ecologies is unfortunately overshadowed by other issues, especially in Slovak public discourse. But it is changing slowly. For example, in the awareness of how important it is not to create acoustic smog in schools, parks, and certain work environments, at least. But there is not only audible noise and dangerous acoustic smog. There are also hidden, almost inaudible electromagnetic sounds emitted mostly by our digital electronic devices (smartphones, computers, Wi-Fi routers, a stand-by regime of TV, radio, etc.) that are surrounding us almost everywhere, and irritating us plus damaging our health. We do not speak about this enough here.
2. • This common, symbiotic ground of musical composition (or comprovisation), sound/audial art and bio-/eco-acoustics is one of the ways to focus and point to the significance and real need to change our approach to the environment or space we live in. I try to analyze these topics in the fields of the semiotics of contemporary music (often in various intermedia contexts), as well as cultural studies, and postmodern theories of the late phase of transmuted capitalistic society vs. environmental democracy. I am involved in some scientific projects focused on related processes and phenomena; in artistic articulation, I devoted my time to the creation of s. c. musical/sonic sculptures, and occasionally to performances/sonic walks (also appearing under the pseudonym TJ Vjuga).

3. I am a big fan of not only the “de-contextualization” of the field recordings, and their public performances, or radio broadcasting, but I also prefer their re-/cross-contextualization in the dialogic context of contemporary music, or intermedia projects. In Slovakia, I can mention the very interesting projects of Jonáš Gruska and his LOM Space, or the sonic installations of composer Peter Machajdík. I created various acousmatic compositions that appropriated the field recordings of special site-specific time spaces (available also in one of my latest albums Transparent Sculptures, 2022/23), or I borrowed some field recordings for this kind of use (e. g. the concrete environments of Adriatic Sea of Manja Ristić incorporated in my composition La Mer, 2022 with her permission). We live in an era when any sound is pregnant with meaning and therefore is proto-musical – and not only because “no sound is innocent” (E. Prévost)…! :-)

4. Trans-/interdisciplinary research is the primary condition of semiotics, aesthetics, and cultural studies in general. In the field of sonic ecologies and the poetics of contemporary unconventional intermedia music, I cooperate from time to time with environmental/ecologic philosophers, (post)psychoanalysts, linguists, sound engineers, and musicologists as well. And the feedback? It depends, sometimes a little, and sometimes – if it is promoted in media (radio, magazines) or in some specifically orientated publications – the response is more noticeable.

5. First, it is necessary to raise public awareness of the fact, who is the main polluter and destroyer of our environment on a global scale. It's fine when we separate the waste, buy bio-/eco-products and so on, but… In the conditions of a current phase of trans capitalism – which causes far-reaching all-planetary crises (ecological one is “only” one of them) and is unable to solve them at all –, it is necessary to stop as soon as the global disaster and unprecedented pollution caused by the richest class - the oligarchs and their megacorporation networks (acting behind the visible political-economic structures) who are living at the expense of the rest “99%” of human population, flora & fauna. Environmental consciousness and policy in our country must decrease these harmful influences as much as possible, it must be not campaign-like superficial, not extreme as well unprofessional (with which we are meantime confronted too often). They should seriously consider all local givens and specifics, protect them as our cultural heritage, and respect and cultivate our environment anywhere we are on the Earth as the only time-space that allows us to survive.

Nitra, Slovakia monoskop.org

                       Guy van Belle

1. This is a very complex 2-folded question: A. Environmental policy in general

I always try to see both the local and transnational context in which politics vs. social/cultural operations happen. Environmental policies are usually quite different in each country, even different according to regions. As long as we are thinking only top-down and from the national/regional perspective we will be facing continuous and increasing problems on the larger environmental scale. On one side there are the small petty policy makers we have to deal with, who are usually having different motives for making decisions and programs than the true care for the environment and the ecological situation, notwithstanding exceptions. Furthermore the ones that have to realize this are getting more and more de-synchronized from the former, and interpret/ignore it according to their own benefit as well, but don't adjust it for change. The same goes for an EU of representatives that choose for the impact of a green industry above a green environment in the first place, but carefully invest in window dressing and green washing. Let's see what soon the next EU and national elections will yield, but we don't expect a change in current pragmatic politics, which is increasingly using a public and moral disguise for safeguarding individual positions as temporary managers with a too high interest in personal gains instead of investing in a new social agenda, with the necessary ecological and environmental change. The result for what is happening now is obvious, as it leads for instance to increasing farmers' protests in each EU nation state, Czech bio food producers making their products rather available abroad, local activities dumping landfill at places where former natural lakes were, planting large areas full of the same crops and trees creating even a larger monoculture agriculture, and then we haven't started about energy yet. It is obviously all in line with legislation, but interpreting it in a specific way, aiming at a contrary output. Meantime we keep postponing environmental goals from 2025 to 2030, then to 2040 and so on and so on.

B. Within the community of Acoustic (or Sonic) Ecologies: Simply holding up a microphone, recording something, and creating an unverifiable story out of it does not make a change. Meantime my feet are sore from walking. It never did make any change for the last 50 years (as far as I can see, I am limited by age, sorry). I think we should all admit that the "community of Acoustic (or Sonic) Ecologies" is only a very small demographic percentage of the population without much impact in general, and certainly not on the environmental policies in general. Moreover we are rather in line with general art policies (only), and so with national and international policies. I'd rather believe we can longer term change these art policies, but in reality we only can divert a little. We can never change the art market for instance, which is the main driver behind the arts. Also, if we become part of the art market we will only make art for that market and not for any environmental change, logically. Maybe a reason to declare again: everyone is an artist, but it's also time to add this: let's only make environmentally friendly art. And let's tackle the next problem: how to deal with the technology we are all using for playing, recording, performing, traveling, working and living, etc. Last week we were looking with local people who were interested in recording underwater, how to help them with their equipment without forcing them to invest a lot of money in hydrophones and recorders, and other equipment for editing and sharing it. Listen, I am not a radical, I believe in diversity, contradictions and differences. But I haven't found a lot of solutions within the sub-sub-sub-..-sub sections of art called sound art. So let's work harder at it, but from within a larger community instead of an artistic niche (and we don't have to become social servants for this, as long as we maintain our experimental attitude, I see a lot of interest in general and esp. youngsters these days).

2. An interesting phenomenon in the arts is the late 20th century vocabulary for the tendency to expand the arts with technological and material innovations. Every couple of years new terms and names for the same things emerge from art critique, thematic exhibitions or festivals, statements by artists. Probably it stems from the blindness, or impossibility to understand innovation and experiment, and at the same time the denial of multidisciplinarity within the evolution of art itself. Contradictory enough, the artists seem to embrace this with pleasure, and jump at every new occasion to ride the wave of new fashion, with a new label, while their art does not change much in itself, and art in general neither. Think of all the names that were given to electronic music since the 1960s. These days almost everything in music is getting labeled sound art, and so everyone becomes a sound artist, even if one is making some jazz or pop music, as long as it is being performed in a museum or gallery (which already ran out of ideas for decades).

I don't see a fundamental difference between the above mentioned terms: composition, sonic ecologies, bioacoustics, environmental activism or art of listening... They just indicate different approaches within treating the material of sound, and show merely the diversity of the business we are dealing with. Splitting and redefining sub-sub-sub fields for what are creative expressions only leads to useless fragmentations. When Klangkunst was invented in Berlin in 1994, the idea was rather to bring the traditional fragmented art disciplines together, and add the notion of sound to the hegemony of images and objects. And so now, when we think of extending art to non-human expressivity, adding social emancipatory or environmental notions, we can still call it just art, instead of community art, ecological art, or science art. Sound and image, word and movement are an important material to work with creatively. But maybe we can still warn audiences adding the term experimental or traditional or so, though I think it isn't of any use in the long run.

Ah, my own activities. Maybe they are not so important. Over the years I decided not to make any solo contributions to art. Which means that one can concentrate better on subjective issues within collaborations, in common settings. KRA[kra.land] is situated in the countryside, and we tend to work together with alternative organizations in the small rural city and villages around: a social café, a coworking space, a school in the woods, some bio farmers, musicians and other home workers. Motivating artists to work at something together is not so difficult: they have the need to do that to stay within the profession. But working with normal people can be quite challenging, since they are certainly interested in making and doing creative things, but usually they are not so keen on performing or exhibiting it before an audience. They have different goals in life.

Oh yes and there is also ButtuLab, formed in korona times, trying to boost new skills with new techniques. The 3D printing mainly produces decorative and functional objects (Vladimir Tatlin would have been proud of us), but it was already useful in the sporadic workshops on recording, making piezo and electret microphones. For the latest Reveil (2024) we produced a collective, spatial (binaural) stream from 3 locations 7 kms apart, at sunrise. So the KRA summer plans are mainly to look further into the role/importance of water within environments, it's natural presence/disappearance, the current (mis)management, and new possible attitudes within the countryside. The interesting thing with water that it leads to discussing biodiversity in general. We try to involve the immediate surroundings, and will invite very diverse guests from art, biosciences, etc... Apart from everyone else who is interested, all CENSE members are welcome. A free program combining the exchange of skills and techniques, field recording with local guests, listening moments outdoors will be offered for the weekend of August 15th. We want to repeat this in Fall, which will be announced in time. On general request we bring back the Irregular Summer Lazy Sundays [islas], in which people visit, talk, play music, eat and drink, plan and do nothing.

3. In the light of what was written above about field recording and art, de-contextualization is a complex issue of course. It is following still what was accomplished in the 20th century, and keeping up the fashion. Like the old arts, art objects today are still put up in sterile white spaces. Often when there is a video or projection, a concert or listening session, the room is darkened during the daytime. Before and after it, everything is promoted in glossy magazines and on shiny screens. So all we seem to do is to isolate our works from life, which makes it easier for consumption and selling in the end. So de-contextualization is synonymous with art itself. On the other hand, let us not forget the nature of what we are doing. We are working with highly technological devices, only to represent sound to our ears. But recordings can never be identical to the original sound though it is still the better representation of sound and music than scores and annotations. Also the historical context is often ignored. Years ago, when asking a renowned field recordist what the impact was of the apparatus (recorders, microphones, the process of cutting and editing,...) he avoided all reflection on the evolution of the technology confusing his recordings with the real original sound. But the difference is of course obvious when you compare today's sound materials to the earliest known field recording with a wax cylinder (a Shama bird, 1889 by Ludwig Koch). Béla Bartók was using a phonograph to record and transcribe folk music. Walter Ruttman's Weekend (a radio piece) was recorded and cut on the soundtrack of an optical sound film. And now jumping almost a century, today when we are using digital recorders and even microphones (MEMS) which offer new possibilities for registrations and manipulations, we still make mere representations. A bird call hears differently when recorded and played back, than the same sound in the middle of a wood, or on an open field.

So, let's face it, we are all continuously making operations on sound, from cutting to normalizing, filtering, editing out what we don't like, spatializing it, etc.. Even if we are just trying to make the recording as similar as possible to the memory we have of what the original sound in context was. Sometimes we do it for the listener to hear this with a better quality or add contextualization. Furthermore, sometimes we want to overcome the limitations of our hearing system: we have a limited perception within the spectrum. Sometimes we want to hear what we cannot hear: infra and ultrasound. So, we have to work with algorithms and other processes - digital or analog doesn't matter here - to be able to (let) hear bats and insects, bacteria, etc... And let's be serious, if we want to understand the world better through sound, we are all embracing AI/ML: frequently I am using Chemnitz University's BirdNET or Cornell Lab's Merlin app on my phone to realtime identify birds (and subsequently look up pictures, read the bird's behavior, and listen to variations in the calls and tunes), as well as PlantNet for learning more about the surrounding vegetation. Basically we decontextualize the whole time, and isolate phenomena, maybe to model it. Don't we widen the context to understand more (but not always better). And then we are having an increasing number of tools to play around with the sounds. Using MUBU or FLUCOMA, artists can automatically splice their hours of recordings in a more meaningful way than we as humans can achieve, and include neighboring very diverse sounds according to their physical parameters. Adding newly synthesized models based on it, and relating gestural operations to it. Also using ambisonics, setting up simulations of dynamical 3D spaces offer interesting creative results with the registrations. You can call it de-contextualized but to me it looks more like creating new contexts and different environments. So let's confess: I committed all the sins described here above: recording as a purist, manipulating for the better of the sound experience, creating new inhumane environments. But only to keep diversity in, and stay critical within our small but complex tiny niche of art and culture. Maybe that is more meaningful for creativity. But maybe I am a fool and still don't know anything about the meaning of creativity. (I read somewhere that even Darwin was puzzled by it because it did not fit the rest of his assumptions and theories, could that be true?).

4. I never got a field, I was offered one in front of the house but it was too expensive, so I never acquired it. But I guess I have been working in the arts and in science, and mainly with sound, but connecting it to anything else. Connecting may be wrong even, because I see no separate thing here. Even in musicology, I worked for Prof. Marc Leman (IPEM + art science interaction lab /UGENT), who developed the concepts of systematic musicology and embodiment throughout his work. So apart from the idea that everything in music and sound does not exist without our human body, and it's movement, today they are making wide use of 3D representations, very precise motion capturing for interactions, and high definition spatial rendering for research and simulations. Basically everything I mention here breaks down the notion of purity and sound, and tries to identify the relatedness of all things without an environment. So my colleagues are technicians and bio-engineers, statisticians and mathematicians, musicologists, dancers and musicians. And it is fun to work together, across disciplines and skills. As my own artistic career ran parallel, a major switch happened end of the 1980s when I radically switched to computers and digital technology/programming. After that the gradual integration of image and data became almost as natural as the evolution of our machines. At that time some started discussions about the terminology, but to be honest, who in the arts ever cared about the ontological differences between trans-, multi- and intermedia. See above, for an explanation of the high-technological background of field-recording, and it's claim of purity. A second major change occurred for me while setting up an ecological art organization OKNO in Brussels. After 10 years working with people who were proficient in gardening, sensor and communication technology, bio arts of all kinds, we decided to disband to pursue our own different careers. Today we are still in contact, often commenting on the fun we had at the time, working together at art installations with bees and plants, running bio robotic experiments. The next phase for me was to work from a more natural location, in the countryside, as the need grew to connect with local communities and test alternative ecological visions. That is how KRA came about, and how we formed the connected band Rural Development. I think most of things we did had the attention and support it deserved, nothing more nothing less. It is not with the dogmatism of expansion and progress that impact and appreciation is made I guess.

5. • I read somewhere that moving as an artist to the countryside, you disconnect yourself from the arts. Yes, maybe from the general arts, and (again see above) its ultimate commercial and depending structural goals. Today I look at other similar groups and places across Europe, but at the same time how to involve local people. I must say there is more audience attending our rural program than there ever was before in the cities where I worked. Statistically it is better that from a demography of 20ppl/km2 20 people come, then 20 people from 500ppl/km2? It shows an honest interest bottom-up, even for experimental art, including field recording and sound art. Maybe it would be good all artists actively try to find niches where one can maintain and express their non-conformism and experimentalism. Let's connect those via a different view about what regionalism and nationalism can mean: convivial but ecological, and diversely creative.

Kravín, Czechia kra.land

                           Peter Simon

1. • Yes, we can do that. We should and must carry on and share our knowledge with the outside world. There are so many good ideas, concepts and work that need to be publicized.
2. • I see positive developments in environmental policy. However, they are not decisive and not fast enough and sometimes contradictory. There is a sensitivity for environmental issues. But there is also resistance, especially from large corporations. As far as acoustic ecology is concerned, it is still a niche topic. There is still a lot to do, because it is a part of ecology.
3. • Interdisciplinarity is the key word for me here. And also more practical experience. There are many initiatives that are active locally. The question is how this knowledge and experience can be pooled and how global exchange can be promoted. This requires financial support, which is hard to come by these days.
4. • I am pleased when such recordings are used. This definitely attracts attention. The context is important but not decisive. If only samples are used, this is a different use than if entire soundscapes are used. It's about the intention of the composition or the sound piece. Is it about sound ecology or music? Sometimes it's also interesting not to know the context, so you can engage with the sound in an unbiased way. And if I want to know something about the source material, then I simply ask.
5. • The most important thing would be to end all wars first. That would make it possible to shift the focus back to current environmental issues. And also to think impartially about consumption, knowledge transfer and science and to develop joint strategies. And to do so globally and honestly. We can see it right outside our own window. The masses of rain, for example, are a sign of the intensity and speed with which everything is changing. We see it every day in news reports from all over the world.

Cologne, Germany

p3c7.de

p3c7.bandcamp.com

de_xin

                      Tomáš Šenkyřík

1. In this area, I consider the recent developments as optimistic: scientists, politicians, artists, various communities point to the topics that are related to the situation of the environment and that ecology resonates there. I am happy that representants from government do listen to municipal politicians concerning issues of ecology. Beneficial subsidy programs emerging which can significantly help to improve conditions of landscape. For example, regarding the problem how to sustain retention of water. On the other hand, there are many areas that need deep and immediate improvement. For the time being, we do not know how to treat sewage water systems. For example, in Židlochovice, it goes directly into the Svratka river. If we want to retain it in the landscape, we are not alowed because according to the law it is polluted water. But there are shifts in this area, even very slowly. But this is exactly a topic that can be approached from various perspectives and has great interdisciplinary potential.

2. Qualified academic articles dealing with such topics are published about common ground of these disciplines. From my point of view and my own practice, I consider the act of listening as a crucial issue. Because attentive listening means an approach which leads towards diminishing superficial relationships towards environment, through sound to look for an increasing awareness. Looking back on my own listening experience, I realize that I learned all about listening from regularly listening to dawn chorus in forest. This experience for me opened rather new perspective also regarding my concept of music and sound art. I am paying more attention to acoustic qualities of my own environment where I live on a daily basis.

3. I don't mind the decontextualized appropriation of field recordings, as long as the piece sounds good and if I apprecitate the composition. This proves that the author reached a new context, for example in terms of the harmonic, rhythmical relationships inside the composition as a whole. We are happy because we live in times when the recording technology is affordable to anyone and it isn't limited anymore to big music or radio studios. Everything on this area became more liberated and relatively independent. Following artists performing live with field recordings has always been big adventure. One of first I came across was Aki Onda's performance which was an incredible experience. The existence of labels specialized on releasing of field recordings is rewarding and inspiring. My main resource for discovering new compositions is the Bandcamp, or aporee.org, where one comes across field recordings from all over the planet and at the same time it is sound database for further creative work, full of very particular material.

4. About ten years ago I started systematicaly recording and mapping the South Moravia landscapes. I did not realize that field recording approach is open, and overlaps with many different areas and social topics. It surprised me how strong communication potential the field recordings gained in galleries as an independent section of culture institutions, how visual artists can be open towards sound art, how to relate to it, usually without preconsumptions that trained musicians sometimes tend to. Field recording can be an important part of the ongoing environmental debate and I think it's because of the very nature of sound. We can exactly interpret and analyze sound and field recordings, and the same time they trigger very deep emotions. For example, a sonic inquire of biodiversity in a floodplain forest: thanks to field recordings, it is possibly precisely analyze the biodiversity and to document extent to which human-caused noise affected it. If something harmful occurs on site and degree of biodiversity is decreasing significantly, those recordings documenting that process can be very emotional.

5. Politicians often reacting to what resonates inside community, the social topic and what can adress majority. That is why it is positive, that various environmental issues are resonating in mass media. People realize more than before that so many things are influenced by ecology. Those topics becoming more tangible and concrete. I see here a great potential for the local government representatives of smaller municipalities, cities and associations who can become an excellent partners for municipalities, successfully implemented environmental projects, both small and large. People both in villages and cities can perceive them, they can use them practically, they can watch the immediate effects. At the same time, they have personal experience of what some area looked before and after the successfully implemented ecological project. When we started with the first project here in Židlochovice, planing to build new wetland, to reduce the dust polution, get more water to the landscape, to plant forest park, there were many protests and petitions against it. People found out quickly how theis homes improve. Today we completed already next project: the flooded terains and a reconstruction of the meander of the Svratka river. Without protests against this plan, even this project is ten times larger than the previous one. The citizens and not only of Židlochovice, but from of the entire region, tourists and passers-by can watch that within few months the landscape improved. We used the excavated soil to build new green embankment to reduce the noise pollution coming from busy highway. I am systematically documenting all changes in soundscapes of our location through my field recordings. (translated from Czech)

Židlochovice, Moravia

tomassenkyrik.bandcamp.com

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

see soundtent.org

REVEIL is a 24 +1 hour live radio programme, assembled and broadcast from a temporary station at Stave Hill Ecological Park in Rotherhithe. This is also the site of the longest running soundcamp. Real time streams are supplied by contributors around the world at daybreak. The primary feed is hosted by Wave Farm in the Upper Hudson Valley, New York, and aired by our UK broadcast partners Resonance FM / Extra in London UK and a collection of FM and netradio stations.

Streams come from a variety of locations and situations, at a time of day when many people are unaccustomed to be up and out, but sounds are vivid, especially in Spring. The Reveil broadcast makes room by largely avoiding speech and music, gravitating to places where human and non human communities meet and soundworlds overlap.

Each stream adds to and alters the loop.

REVEIL has become a habit and a practice of sharing sounds of places as first light arrives.

See the list of locations and streamer(s) and asociatives: streams.soundtent.org

Kozmic Meadows, Czech Republic

Streamers: Peter Cusack, Michal Kindernay, Magdaléna Manderlová, Lucie Páchová, Martin Režný, Tomáš Šenkyřík, Šárka Zahálková Broadcast time (your location UTC+2): SUN 04:40 - SUN 05:15 radio.aporee.org:8443/peterc

node9.lab Slaviky, Czech Republic

Streamers: Michal Klodner, Miloš Vojtěchovský Broadcast time (your location UTC+2): SUN 04:56 - SUN 05:32 radio.aporee.org:8443/mobilemic21

A backyard in Berlin Neukölln

Streamer(s): unosonic - udo noll URL: radio.aporee.org:8443/berlin_kreuzkoelln.mp3 Broadcast time (your location UTC+2): SUN 04:47 - SUN 05:26

Liberec-Radčice, Czech Republic

Streamer: Jan Krtička URL: liberec_v_rokli_liberec.mp3 Broadcast time (your location UTC+2): SUN 04:48 - SUN 05:25

House of Arts, Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic, Czech Republic

Streamer(s): Jan Krtička

URL: locus.creacast.com:9443 Broadcast time (your location UTC+2): SUN 04:53 - SUN 05:29

Hranice KRA Chotěboř, Czech Republic

Streamer: Guy van Belle, The New Rural Development URL: (mobile_kra.ogg) Broadcast time (your location UTC+2): SUN 04:50 - SUN 05:26

Skaftfell Art Center Seyðisfjorður, Iceland

Streamer(s): Jan Krtička URL: seyðisfjorður_skaftfell.mp3 Broadcast time (your location UTC+2):SUN 04:40 - SUN 06:01 Coordinates: +65.261608°, -13.99790°

Krater, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Streamer(s): Brane Zorman, Urška Savič, Irena Pivka, Matej Tomažin URL: [animotmuzik]animotmuzik.ogg Broadcast time (your location UTC+2):SUN 05:09 - SUN 05:41 Coordinates: +46.067547°, +14.511281°

Mooste, Estland

Streamers: John Grzinich

moks.ee

and others

BROADCAST ENDS SUN 5 MAY 07:00 (your location UTC+2)

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,

we can offer quality educational content, open network of experts and artists and bring a unique program to the participants.

The SPATIAL consists of:

♨ a three-week residency for artists selected through an open call

♨ a symposium on spatial sound open to the public

♨ ambisonic concert MELUSINES presenting the outcomes of the residency on 27.7.

𝙎𝙋𝘼𝙏𝙄𝘼𝙇 𝙨𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙙𝙪𝙡𝙚

7.7. Listening to place: Staňkovice / Magdaléna Manderlová (workshop, Staňkovice, registration required);

8.7. Crafting sound in space / Jakob Gille(workshop, National House);

9.7. Ambisonics impulse response measurement and auralization / Manu Mitterhuber (workshop, National House, registration required);

10.7. Sound in gardens / Jan Krtička (workshop, Staňkovice);

11.7. Nothing to hear / Jan Burian (workshop, National House, registration required);

12.7. Phenomenological topology of localization within sonic environments / Martin Nitsche (lecture, National House);

17.7. Grapes – 3D audio control. A tool for creative live spatializing / Felix Deufel (hands-on session,Staňkovice, registration required);

18.7. Mazetools to motion / Jakob Gruhl (hands-on session, Staňkovice, registration required);

19.7. Out of the box: sound installations in 4 landscapes / Jiří Y. Suchánek (lecture, National House);

20.7. Spatial audio instruments / Enrique Tomás (lecture, National house, registration required);

22.7. Multichannel performance with digital devices / Francesco Corvi & Daniele Fabris (hands-on session, National House);

23.7. DIY hardware quadraphonic mixing / Jan Hrubeš (hands-on session, National House);

24.7. Ontology of noise / Vít Pokorný (discussion, National House);

27.7. MELUSINES - Ambisonics concert.

Löblhof is located approximately 20 minutes by car from Ústí nad Labem, for public transport look for connections to the stop 'Staňkovice, rozcestí; district Litoměřice.

Participation in the lectures is free of charge, although registration is required for some.

You can register by sending an email with the subject line "SPATIAL registration" to

𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙣𝙤𝙣.𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙬@𝙜𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙡.𝙘𝙤𝙢, mentioning which workshops and lectures you wish to attend.

We thank the Cultural Center of the city of Ústí nad Labem and Löblhof & Artgrund for their support and cooperation. The project is financially supported by the Ústí Region, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Arts and Theatre institute within the SoundCzech program. This work was created with the financial support of the European Union.

The views expressed here can in no way be considered as the official position of the European Union.

more info:

www.phonon.cz

www.alterbauhof.at/

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.

Mezinárodní setkání o biodiverzitě, poslouchání, terénním nahrávání, jak pod vodou tak nad vodou. Přijeďte a sdílejte zkušenosti, technické znalosti a vybavení, zůčastněte se rozhovorů o nových směrech třeba v oblastech jako je bioakustika, akustická ekologie. Během víkendu v chráněné zemědělské a přírodní oblasti Vysočiny nabízíme ubytování v kempu se zázemím v budově KRA. Těšíme se na vaši přítomnost a příspěvky: společné vegetariánské jídlo, společné procházky, společné rozhovory u ohně. Neformální a klidné prostředí je ideální pro sdílení a rozvíjení vašich aktivit a zájmů… Co vzít s sebou: stan, karavan, kolo, nebo spacák. Dejte vědět jestli se zůčastníte.

Připravily ve spolupráci:

KRA

CENSE

Zastávka194

ButtuLab

KRA provides camping grounds and ruins for staying in a protected agricultural and natural area in the Czech Highlands (Vysočina). KRA team is looking forward to your visit and participation in the program. Share meals, walks, talks. There is a space for presenting, discussing, working on recordings.

Program

Sunday 18/08 - ARRIVALS

Evening: shared meal and gathering, inside or outside, according the actual weather conditions

Monday 19/08

10 - 12 AM SHARE YOUR IDEAS and SKILLS: participants explaining their approach or setups for (field) recording

13 -13 Lunch

14 - 16: Jonáš Gruska: On ultrasonic recording, listening, and DIY techniques

Jonas Gruska was born in Czechoslovakia and studied at the Institute of Sonology in Hague and at Music Academy in Cracow. His main focus is chaotic and polymetric rhythms, unconventional tunings, exploration of psychoacoustic properties of sound and field recording. He has created several site-specific sound installations, based on resonant properties of spaces and materials. Gave workshops on sonification, field recording, electromagnetic listening, and programming for artists. He is the creator of Elektrosluch – electromagnetic listening device. Long–time field recordist and lecturer. Currently interested in contrasts of biophonic and antrophonic environements in the city.

jonasgru.sk

Tuesday 20/08

9 - 11 Miloš Vojtěchovský: hands-on workshop Wellness, Hygiene and Soda Bicarbonada or: DIY washing and cleaning which does not kill your own body, your mind and your field. - revised

The most comprehensive concept of "well-being" involves four dimensions: emotional well-being (subjective well-being), psychological well-being, social well-being and ecological well-being. Unfortunately, it turned out that the well-being factors can be in contradiction to each other.

Miloš Vojtěchovský is a curator, art historian, and audiovisual artist. In 1992 he founded the Hermit Foundation, later the Center for Metamedia in Plasy Monastery. Together with Peter Cusack started up the ongoing project Favourite Sounds of Prague sonicity.cz. He curated the Czech section in the international networking project Soundexchange and co-curated the symposium and festival vs. Interpretation held in Prague, 2016 by the Agosto Foundation and the Frontiers of Solitude project - 2015 - 2017. Other projects include: Deep Space Gateway, Soundworms Ecology Gathering, 2017, and Architecture and the Senses, 2018.

sonicity.cz

11 -13 WALKS: field recordings with local guides in the (un)natural environment

13-14 Lunch

15 - 18 Joanna Wyrwa: Echoes of nature, or developing somatic and embodied relationships to audio making. "Canceled"

Joanna is PhD candidate at the University of Environmental and Life Sciences in Wrocław. The topic of her doctoral dissertation concerns the assessment of the soundscape of urban green areas in the context of spatial planning. Her research oscillates between the humanities and natural sciences, education, and social geog-raphy. I am the author of a sensory multimedia project “Sensescape of Low-er Silesia” and the president of the Foundation for Landscape.

[dolnyslask-sensescape.space](http://dolnyslask-sensescape.space/ pejzaz.space)

20.00 DISCUSSION EVENING

By the way, who is making sound art in the countryside?

CENSE: to be or not to be?

Wednesday 21/08: SLOW DEPARTURES

Questions, don't hesitate to email: hinterland@kra.land

We start the days with a collective breakfast and planning. And gather late afternoon at the salad-soup-bar for socializing and sharing experiences.

Participants / organizers:

Givan Béla (bartok) - KRA Anne Wellmer, Den Haag Lenka Dolanová - Chotěboř, KRA Jonáš Gruska - LOM, Bratislava Ester - LOM, Bratislava Miloš Vojtěchovský - zvukac, CENSE Vítězslav Homolka - Butulab Jan Polívka, Butulab Mydla - SCPTU (Sonic Canine Planetary Trade Union)

Thanks to Lucie a František Pelouchovi from Zastráň Vegetable Farm for catering!!

www.zastran.cz

Main organizer: Gívan Belá (fka Guy Van Belle was born in Belgium but moved to Central Europe after the milenium bug. Involved in experimental music since puberty, and retired from the arts since 2022, after a 22h homage to the first 20th century performing sound artist Arsenij Avraamov ('Symphony of Sirens', Baku 1922 - 100 years celebration) and Notker the Stammerer, ardent supporter of the now forgotten atekstalis genre and composer of the revolutionary polyphonic antifon Media vita in morte sumus (St. Gallen 912, 1010 years ago). Changed styles and definitions from Psycho-acoustic to Electronic to Digital to Multimedia to Interactive to Web/Network to Sound to Eko/Bio to Science to (finally) No Art. As a side hobby was organizing eko-techno-countryside residencies in Hranice/Vysočina (kra.land), running a very very local makerspace (buttulab.space), writing his memoirs calling it 'the biggest lies about the world and artists I can remember'. Was a founding member of the virtual off-grid online band Rural Development, the abstract dead metal band Digital Death & Afterlife, and the elektro-skiffle band Ostropest. Like Bela Bartok he considered field recordings the best representations of sound which is music. Because everything can then be recorded differently and still be authentic.

kra.land

KRA – Kravín Rural Arts is situated in the Vysočina region of the Czech Republic – a hilly area of Železné hory (Iron mountains) – in a small village Hranice u Malče. KRA is establishing longer term programs with artists and other organizations in the countryside, interested in an ecological reconversion of the (media) arts. Apart from its own thematic lines, KRA is welcoming individual and group initiatives that are conform with its mission, and are interested in artistic-ecological research and development with a strong multidisciplinary nature. The future is the countryside, countrywide!

KRA = “floe” or “iceberg”, an allusion to ecology and climatic changes

KRÁ = “kaw” or “kaah” relates to raven as a symbol of art, playfulness and creativity. Ravens, among the few wild animals, make their own tools to play with. Raven in mythology are often a tricksters, disobeying rules and conventional behavior.

KRAVÍN (cowshed). Because it is to cows we are indebted for this place. … for the past actions and events you can go to: Yo-Yo, home of the infamous and irreplacable RurArtMap!

KRA partners include:

Zastráň Vegetable Farm

Zastávka 194 Chotěboř

His Voice Magazine

LOM label Bratislava

Central European Network for Acoustic Ecologies - CENSE

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.

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 • zvukac • Brane Zorman • Tery Žeželj.

TO)pot event was organized by Brane Zorman / Irena Pivka / Matej Tomažin from www.cona.si.

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.

Miloš Vojtěchovský’s lecture was supported by The Arts Institute (AI) in Prague.

Images courtesy of Cona - Matej Tomažin

There was a meeting about the future of CENSE and the symposium planned in Ljubljana, September 2025 (Jacek Smolicki, Zvukac, Ida Hirsenfelder, Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman, Csaba Hajnoczy and Joanna Wyrva participated).

More info:

www.steklenik.si

and

www.cona.si

radio aporee ::: maps - Bells of Ljubljana, Slovenia

radio aporee ::: maps - Silence inside the Church

A project for the Erasmus Plus application

Objective: for young musicians, music students (cca. 15 -18 yrs) to soundscapes in the sense of sound ecology.

Task: to create soundscape compositions in small groups, using field recordings and acoustic instruments together. The use of improvisation is optional and recommended. The use of visuals is possible.

Participants: 4x5 young people aged 15 to 18 from 4 countries. We enhance the collaboration of trained instrumentalists and electronic musicians.

Each group will be accompanied and led by a mentor teacher with experience in music, sound ecology, sound recording and studio work (at least at a basic level), and an appropriate level of English. The groups are not only representative of different cultures from one country to another, but also have different soundscapes in their environment. Suggestions: nature - wetland (Szigetköz, Hungary); big city (e.g. Berlin, Vienna or Prague); seaside (e.g. Italy, Slovenia, Croatia or the Baltic Sea in Poland); mountains (e.g. Romania - Transylvania, Tatra – Slovakia or Poland, or an Alpine region.).

Schedule: 1 year, from September 2025 to August 2026.

Sessions:

1. Monthly online seminars throughout the year.

2. One week of collaborative work in autumn, winter, spring and summer in four different locations – each devided (cca) into 3 days of field recording and collection of material, plus 3 days composing, editing, rehearsals. Final day of performance, and recording for online documentation.

We are looking for partners in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, and/or Italy, Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia via the Central/Cross European Network for Sonic Ecology, WFAE, Waldorf schools, music schools etc.

We are looking for a delegated mentor teacher, or small group of mentor teachers, from each country to do all the local organisation. The mentor teachers will make joint decisions on how to run the project. The aspects and methods of the contents, both ecologically and artistically will be negotiated in details.

The application will be submitted by Tű Fokán Art Foundation, Budapest by 1st March 2025.

Our deadline to find partners is 1st December 2024.

contact: Csaba Hajnóczy

Email: hajnoczy.zene@gmail.com

tufokanalapitvany.com

Open Call: BEYOND LISTENING 2025: WALKING-WITH CHANGES

23–26 SEPTEMBER 2025, LJUBLJANA

Application form

Open Call PDF download

Building on the 2023 Beyond Listening: Agency, Art, and the Environment symposium in Budapest and the rich range of subjects discussed there, we invite you to submit a proposal in response to this open call for a follow-up event in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 2025.

How can we escape from listening paradigms that are based on expansive, colonial, violent, and extractivist approaches? What can we learn from current ethical and political applications of acoustic ecology, acoustic anthropology, and bioacoustics? What can we, as sound artists, scholars, activists, and listeners, do beyond simply witnessing another wave of reports on declining biodiversity and the ongoing collapse of our planet’s systems? How can these ever more tangible transformations taking place on a planetary scale be addressed locally and collectively, beyond the act of listening?

Addressed in Budapest, these and similar questions remain relevant. Therefore, we invite scientists, philosophers, activists, artists, and others to continue listening-with these questions, rethinking them in a manner of being-with, and reposing them through walking-with, while focusing on changes that accompany our everyday lives, but also those that are less obvious and only surface as time passes.

By walking-with and listening to the “cultural turn” toward posthumanism we contribute to a shift in understanding humanity’s place within the world, challenging human exceptionalism and dominance. By walking-with and listening we engage in embodied practices that stimulate awareness of limited planetary resources and humanity’s destructive impact, from climate change to biodiversity loss. Such practices urge us to rethink the relationships with non-human life, technology, and ecosystems, advocating for an ethical shift and interdependent approach, to inspire coexistence for more sustainable futures.

Through changes in the environment, new concepts emerge that give meaning to the way we experience tuning and adjusting to the new conditions of being in the world. One of them is solastalgia. Unlike nostalgia, which refers to sadness due to the absence of home, solastalgia refers to the distress caused by environmental changes in one’s home environment. Glenn Albrecht, the philosopher who coined the term, describes it as “the homesickness you feel even though you are still at home.” Solastalgia is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in a world facing ecological challenges, significantly impacting mental health and the sense of belonging. How does solastalgia manifest itself in acoustic environments and how can it inform sound practices and actions beyond listening?

Acoustic environments emerge through the complex activities of biological, anthropogenic, and geophysical processes. By paying attention to the practice of conscious listening (to soundscapes, but not exclusively), rather than focusing merely on the visual aspects and qualities of the environment, listeners can attain different kinds of insights and understandings of the surrounding environment. For example, through attentive listening we might be able to observe and understand more details about the relations between various actors, events, and species, and perceive how they change over time. Through embodied and situated listening we might also become more careful and critical observers of power relationships that orchestrate how we navigate our shared environments and negotiate our entanglement within them. We suggest that walking-with, as a way of being, collaborating, connecting, and co-creating with other spaces and environments, goes beyond mere physical movement—it involves presence, listening, and interacting with the stories, sounds, and textures of a place. It emphasises a collective and sensory experience, creating space for an ethical relationship with the world we live in. What modalities of listening- and walking-with can we engage with to inspire new or regenerate old but meaningful perspectives on environmental changes that affect all of us today?

The 2025 CENSE Symposium provides a transdisciplinary forum for sharing recent developments and fostering further exchange, collaboration, communication, and networking. While we pay special attention to Central Europe, the geopolitical range of topics remains open to the broader world.

We are looking for topics that address the potential of sonic ecology in these areas:

_ Walking-with changes: rethinking walking as a method of inquiry, approaching listening-with your feet, soundwalking;

_ Listening-with and beyond disciplines: employing the convergence of art, science, and technology in sonic ecosystems;

_ Staying-with solastalgia: experiencing distress induced by environmental change in our home environment;

_ Resonating-with lessons learnt from listening to the Anthropocene, addressing inequality, discrimination, and social justice;

_ Being-with other-than-human sonic environments (ecoacoustics and bioacoustics) and engagement with environmental activism;

_ Rethinking-with local and regional, historical and contemporary epistemologies and ethics of environmental awareness.

We welcome proposals for papers, presentations, peripatetic lectures, performative lectures, and other unconventional formats to be presented in person at the symposium. We especially encourage challenging, innovative—even provocative—contributions which go beyond traditional formats of papers and talks that dominate academic conferences and symposia. In the selection process, we will prioritise experimental, engaging, and hands-on proposals. We envision the symposium as a place for thorough and significant engagement with and dialogue about the issues that are in our collective interest.

We kindly invite you to submit your proposals through the application form available at this link. The description of the proposal is limited to 1300 characters with spaces. Make sure to add all the information we need to ensure all the requirements for your intervention are met (additional space is available at the end of the application form).

The deadline for applications is 10 February 2025.

Selected applicants will be notified by 15 March 2025.

Compared to the previous edition, the 2025 CENSE Symposium in Ljubljana is planned on a smaller scale. Therefore, the number of selected papers will be limited. Nonetheless, we believe that the symposium will provide a great opportunity to address pertinent themes and emerging challenges of sonic ecology and beyond, especially as it will be organised as part of the Festival of Radical Soundwalks TO)pot. 

The 2025 CENSE Symposium has no participation fee. For presenters, access to all symposium and the festival events is provided free of charge. Please note that presenting participants are responsible for covering the costs of their attendance, such as travel costs, accommodation, and meals. Presenters will be provided with an invitation letter. 

Contact: symposium@cense.earth

The CENSE Symposium Beyond Listening 2025: Walking-with Changes (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2025) is produced by CONA Institute, co-organised by the Science and Research Centre Koper, Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies, and facilitated by the Cross-European Network for Sonic Ecologies.

Symposium’s programme board:

Scientific committee: ELENA BISERNA, JACEK SMOLICKI, MAJA BJELICA

Organising committee: IRENA PIVKA, IDA HIRŠENFELDER, MAJA BJELICA

Symposium’s advisory board: Csaba Hajnóczy, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Brane Zorman, Petra Kapš

The Cross-European Network for Sonic Ecologies (CENSE) is a network of diverse voices from the fields of arts, science, and activism. The network works towards an increased awareness of developments in the social and cultural spheres of Central Europe (and beyond) with a particular focus on environmental transformations and their wide-ranging effects. CENSE was established in 2018 during an international conference in Budapest. Since then, three further conferences have taken place: in the Czech Republic Murmurans Mundus in 2019, in Poland in 2020, and in Hungary Beyond Listening: Agency, Art, and the Environment in 2023. 

CONA, Institute for Contemporary Art Processing is an NGO from Slovenia. Its main activities are the production and promotion of new media and sound art in connection with nature, the environment, and sound, with the goal of socially and ecologically responsible cultural collaboration. The Festival of Radical Soundwalks TO)pot gathers artists, theorists, and walkers to bring them closer to walking and listening as a spatial acting-out of the place and the body; as practices of reading, creating, grounding, immersing, being acted upon and acting in the environment; as ways of experiencing our myriads of entanglements and interdependencies with other human and non-human beings and the world.

The festival is produced by CONA, financed by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the City of Ljubljana, Department for Culture. It is hosted by Cukrarna, a partner of the festival TO)pot.

The Science and Research Centre Koper(ZRS Koper) works on an interdisciplinary basis, involving humanities, social and natural sciences, with special emphasis given to research in the specific environments of the Mediterranean and the Upper Adriatic region. Its Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies focuses on contemporary philosophy, social and environmental ethics, comparative religion, digital theology, and feminist studies, and engages in a variety of collaborations across the fields of philosophical and religious studies.

ZRS Koper is collaborating at the symposium within the framework of the basic research project “Grain of Salt, Crystallising Cohabitation: Salt-making as Experiential Environmental Wisdom” (J6-50196) and the research programme “Liminal Spaces: Areas of Cultural and Societal Cohabitation in the Age of Risk and Vulnerability” (P6-0279), which are financed by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS).

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