The Singing Planet

Quotation

«The singing, vocal planet that we inhabit today is, from the perspective of animal evolution, a recent emergence, one strangely, gloriously lush with living sound.»

The quotation is taken from the sonic journey «When the Earth Started to Sing» published 2022 in Emergence Magazin. Last accessed May 24, 2022.

Biography

David George Haskell is author of «The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors», winner of the 2020 Iris Book Award, the 2018 John Burroughs Medal, and named one of the Best Science Books of 2017 by NPR’s Science Friday. His first book, «The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature», was winner of the National Academies’ Best Book Award for 2013, finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award, and winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature. His latest book is «Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction». He is a professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook, X.

Published on July 28, 2021

Last updated on June 27, 2022

Topics

Soundscape

Nature

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Wartime London

Mix

by Minuit De Lacroix

Musician, actor, and art director Minuit De Lacroix sent us a mix, recorded at a live performance in 2008 and now recovered from an old hard drive. The mix combines soundscape recordings from Paris with live improvisation and spoken word phrases about an orphan character during wartime London.

The world was a much simpler place in 2008 and I was doing what musically seemed to me most interesting at that time.

After starting the year in Paris working on an interactive installation for an architecture firm, I took a couple of weeks off kicking the can around in England; purchasing rare British books in public libraries and toys that make noise in thrift stores near the station road of Beaconsfield (a lovely small market town about an hour West Northwest of central London).

I decided then to spontaneously visit Berlin to perform what I had been composing: a very short polyphonic concert, presented in 4.1 sound yet recorded in stereo, with different musical practices including a mosaic of analogue synthesizer improvisations mixed with field recordings on tape sprinkled with live spoken word phrases about an orphan character during wartime London.

The audio file was buried in an old external hard disc for many years until May 2021.

Credits Recording

das kleine field recordings festival DKFRF presents:
Minuit De Lacroix & La Idra (Héctor Sánchez)
Concert @ Total Artspace, Lenaustrasse 5, Neukölln, 12047 Berlin, Germany
February 28, 2008

Biography

Minuit De Lacroix is a Mexican composer and multimedia producer, active since 1994. He develops sound and music for dance, education, film and other visual arts. When he travels, he always does it well prepared by carrying various microphones, portable electronic music devices, and a digital audio recorder. The first time he went to Berlin, in summer 2005, he was so attracted by the playground energy of the city that he became a frequent visitor. Eluding the contemporary formula for pop by incorporating many sonic elements, his music has been described as a global fusion of diverse influences. Follow him on Instagram, Youtube, or Facebook.

Published on September 28, 2021

Last updated on November 12, 2021

Topic

Soundscape

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Reasoning with Inner City Rhythms

Podcast

by Carla J. Maier,

Manmeet Kaur

The first episode of the podcast series «Modes of Listening & Sound Practices» explores the modes of listening that sound researcher Carla J. Maier and rapper Manmeet Kaur adopted on their sound walks through Berlin. Together with the city’s architectures they unfold a unique sonic narrative.

This episode is a co-produced interaction of Manmeet Kaur (rapper, beatmaker) and Carla J. Maier (researcher in sound cultures and auditory research practices). In their words, reasoning with inner-city rhythms is a manifestation of listening experiences that they shared while doing a number of sound walks in the city of Berlin between March and November, 2020. Throughout these documented adventures, they engaged with the city through listening and recording, and had conversations based on that. They explored how interacting with the city’s materialities and sonic adaptability amplifies it’s sonic fictional thinking.

This podcast progresses through three different localities, each emphasizing a particular sonic engagement with the urban environment. The first locality is a response to the «concavity of sounds contained in objects» by performing upon public sculptures to later compose out of. The second locality takes the listener to their listening in transit and panning impulsive realities of motion. The third locality is a refractive and emotional engagement with a monument of historical injustice.

The sonic material consists of recordings that were taken during sound walks, using field recorders and a contact microphone, as well as additional recordings and samples. The intro features some of the sounds the listener will encounter during the audio piece and includes a short verbal intro for the episode. The three parts take the listener on a journey through the city, in which the listener experiences the different localities through a close listening to each locality’s specific sonic materialities and unfolding sonic fictions, which never simply reveals an actual place, but rather is constructed by Maier and Kaur’s perceptual respondings and sonic imaginations. This also includes poetic and musical expressions which were inspired by their listening interventions and further conversations that were continued during the editing process of the audio piece, such as the rap part which concludes the episode.

A podcast by Carla J. Maier featuring Manmeet Kaur in collaboration with Norient
Location Berlin, March to November 2020
Conceptual direction by Carla J. Maier
Musical direction by Manmeet Kaur
Field recordings and vocals performed by Carla J. Maier and Manmeet Kaur
Mix and Master Toma Sound Factory

An essay by Carla J. Maier with the title «the here and now of listening» – written on the episode «reasoning with inner city rhythms» for the LISTENING BIENNIAL READER (2021) – can be read and downloaded here.

Manmeet Kaur’s debut self produced rap album, «The Groundwaters are Connected» made during her art residency in Berlin (Dec 2019 – Feb 2021) can be bought and listened to here.

Biography

Carla J. Maier is researcher of multimodal anthropology at the Centre for Urban Studies at the Institute for European Ethnology. Prior to this she was Visiting Professor of cultural studies at the Department of English and American Studies (Potsdam University). Her focus is on sound and listening, particularly in relation to questions of decolonization in academic and artistic theory and practice. Follow her on Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Biography

Manmeet Kaur (India’s pioneer femcee) creates and performs poetry on rhythms, voicing her hope-full social perception as a stoic explorer of sounds to materialize harmony, challenging the often ignored, self-destructive social aspirations hailing in today’s hyper-competitive digital world of materialistic humanmind.

Published on July 19, 2021

Last updated on April 01, 2024

Topics

City

Listening

Soundscape

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