My current research centers sound as an essential dimension of geographical exploration. Part of the emerging field of sound studies, I explore how attention to sound and listening challenges the dominance of the visual in how we understand and relate to our world. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ call to practice ‘deep listening’, I am interested in how careful listening to the landscape invites us to engage in more embodied understanding of the ways in which we are all intertwined with the beauty and fragility of the natural world. Some current projects include:
The Vancouver Soundscapes Project
with Siobhan Wittig McPhee and Piotr Wieczorek
Sounds of Khumbu
with Pasang Sherpa, Maicen Stuart, and Declan Taylor
As part of the Sherpa Song project, in May of 2023 we traveled to the sacred Khumbu valley in the mountains of NE Nepal to record the landscapes, waterscapes and people. We created a soundscape of the intertwining of community livelihoods and sacred water, entitled Sounds of Khumbu, for the opening celebrations of the Community Digital Heritage Studio (CODHers) in October 2023.
Sound stories of the Fraser River
In the summer of 2022, I captured the acoustic journey of the Fraser River from its headwaters in the Canadian Rockies to its outlet along the working banks of Vancouver and Richmond. Some of the stories, as told by the river, have been complied in this StoryMap entitled Sounds of the Fraser.
Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change
with Susie Ibarra
Water Rhythms is an art-science collaboration with percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra, in which we created a series of sonic installations and museum/gallery pieces that tell the story of climate change through the phenomenology and experience of listening to freshwater. Water Rhythms is a story about the dualism of water, the universal connector of the Earth and its humans. It is also an intergenerational story of the rapid depletion of our freshwater sources worldwide. As glaciers and ice sheets, the world’s water towers holding 99% of the freshwater on Earth, shrink and disappear in response to climate change, these water rhythms are also shifting and fading from view.
We have been sonically mapping changes in glacier runoff from the mountains to the ocean, in some of the world’s most important water towers: the Coast Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the Indian Himalayas. Through compositions created from field recordings taken both above and below the ice and the water, including the sounds and music of the people who live along the waterways, we are listening to the sounds of climate change. We are listening to the stories the water is telling us about a world of increasing ecological precarity.
Humans are inextricably connected to the earth’s freshwater; the same rhythms of glacial meltwater that flow from the mountains to the sea flow through our bodies, our cultures, histories and our music. A world losing its flowing freshwater is hence a world losing its music, its culture and its humanity.
Listen to and read more about Water Rhythms in a Soundwork in BC Studies (2022), and in our 2020 StoryMap.
ITERATIONS OF WATER RHYTHMS
Water, for Reverberations. an online exhibition of art, science, and sound produced by the USDA Forest Service and The Nature of Cities, launched in fall 2023.
Water Rhythms at the Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA. We created an 7 channel sound installation in the Black Box Gallery at the Exploratorium, including compositions from five water towers and the San Francisco Bay. The exhibit ran from August 12 to October 23, 2022.
Water Rhythms at the Exploratorium, August 12, 2022 – October 23, 2022.
We also held a public museum talk on the creative process and the development of the exhibit on Oct. 20, 2022. Here is a recording of the talk.
Water Rhythms exhibition, Fridman Gallery, NY. We created a 14 channel sound installation, with accompanying video montage, for the Fridman Gallery in Beacon, NY. The exhibit opened on October 30, 2021. An excerpt of the piece can be seen on Vimeo here:
Water Rhythms at Fridman Gallery
Water Rhythms Archive Room, a sonic installation at the Arko Arts Center in Seoul, S. Korea, September to December 2021.
ARKO Water Rhythms Archive Lounge brochure and Arko composition MP3
Water Rhythms Listening Room, a sound installation and meditation space at the TED Countdown conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, October 12-15, 2021.
TED Countdown Summit. October 12-15, 2021, Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo: Ryan Lash / TED
Water Rhythms: Listening to climate change, a podcast exploration of the stories of ice and water as they respond to climate change, was commissioned by Counterflows At Home, a festival of arts of music based in Glasgow, Scotland, and launched April 12, 2021:
Water Rhythms: Listening to climate change, a sonic waterfall installation commissioned by the Fine Acts Foundation and TED to bring awareness to TED Countdown, was launched on 10.10.2020 at Jack Poole Plaza in downtown Vancouver, BC and at Innisfree Gardens in Millbrook, NY:
More information about the installation piece can be found at Fine Acts.
Excerpts from our collection of Water rhythms field recordings in the Himalayas (click on the pins in StoryMaps to hear the audio recordings from our field sites on the Ganges and Teesta Rivers)
Excerpts from our collection of Water rhythms field recordings on the edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet: see links on Storymaps: Greenland
Excerpts of Water Rhythms field recordings in the Pacific Northwest (including Easton Glacier on Mount Baker, Bridge Glacier in the Lilloet Icefield, and Blackcomb Glacier in BC Coast Mtns): Storymaps of Water Rhythms in the BC Coast Mountains