A group of twenty people. Different backgrounds, a shared interest in sound, water and creative experimentation. Three days of discovering, trying things out and creating together.
Curiosity.
Water flows, both independently and influenced by external factors. Where does water come from? Where does it go? Where do we encounter water? It is a give and take, a constant exchange.
Equipped with hydrophones, contact microphones and electromagnetic microphones we search for sounds within this cycle. From the freshwater water source to the sewage plant. From snowfields to kelp forests. We are amazed, intrigued, disgusted, surprised. We fluctuate between discomfort and fascination. We attempt to share our auditory experience and put it into words. It is movement that we perceive. We feel vibrations with our bodies. We try to make connections, to recognize relationships. An in-between. Rhythmic beats. Invisible humming. If we cannot see, hear of feel it without the aid of technical devices, does it exist?
We think about space. How do sounds spread? Where are we in this space? Exploring perspectives. Seemingly clear boundaries between spaces. What sounds can be heard underwater and how do they travel through water? What does the transition between different aggregate states of water sound like?
We collect ideas, thoughts, sound recordings, photos and videos. These are collaged into a one-hour collective audio work, a polyphonic assemblage[1].
A collection of experiences,
a space to dive into.
[1] Tsing, A. L. (2017). The mushroom at the end of the world : on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Photos by Anders Eriksen
During these three days, we listened closely to the waters that flow in and out of Tromsø/Romsa, responding to the streams that enable our daily existence and infrastructure. The programme included soundwalks, a sound meditation, a guided tour of local wastewater treatment facilities, a reading group and an editing session.
The resulting collectively improvised audio zine was streamed live on the last day of the workshop. It will additionally be broadcast on Resonance FM’s Clear Spot and published in partnership with Radio Arctic.
Resonance FM https://www.resonancefm.com/ – broadcast on Monday 16th June 8-9pm, repeating the next morning 10-11am
Flowing, flushing, freezing, streaming: Listening at the intersection of human interference.
How do we attune to our surroundings and care for the lives in it? How do we negotiate with beings that communicate in other languages?
Through exercises in improvisation, relational listening and sounding, the 3-day workshop invites participants to develop experimental sonic assemblages through listening closely to the waters that flow in and out of Tromsø/Romsa and responding to the streams that enable our daily existence and infrastructure.
What is the memory of the water that gushes into our sinks, warms pathways, drains through tubes and gutters, shifts from icy lakes to artificial snow? How have the currents witnessed the change in life around them, the waters always already listening? And what does it take to sustain a city like Tromsø in a warming sub-arctic environment?
Thinking through the prism of water, the workshop will engage with the concept of ‘listening at the bundling of trajectories’ through intersectional methodologies and the writings of Dylan Robinson, Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Anna Tsing, Pauline Oliveros, and Susan Schuppli.
Participants will work individually and in groups with a recording device, various microphones, a vibrotactile feedback setup, and a computer with audio editing and effects processing software. Please bring your preferred headphones (with wire) as we have only a few sets available. You’ll decide whether your focus for the audio zine will be on sound collage or writing and reciting in your language(s) of choice. We’ll conduct soundwalks and visit local heating and wastewater handling facilities. The resulting sound works will be shared as a live collective broadcast on the last day at Tromsø Kunstforening.
*There are no stipends available for travel and accommodation, unfortunately. However, participation in the workshop is for free for all.
About us
In our collaborative practice creating storytelling experiences from transdisciplinary assemblages, sound artist Andreas Kühne and artist, filmmaker Polina Medvedeva engage ways of listening-with landscapes and its agents to produce a feedback of the patchwork of historical, geopolitical and socio-economic layers.
Arctic Auditories
This workshop is part of Arctic Auditories, a collaborative project engaging scholarship and methods from feminism, sound arts, human geography and applied ethnomusicology to develop strategies for understanding environmental change through sound. Focusing on water environments, the ultimate aim of the project is to deliver innovative inter-disciplinary, empowering, and democratic listening strategies to help individuals and society cultivate radical imaginations of futures beyond environmental anxiety.
Our programme includes internationally recognised artists and new, emerging artists, giving special attention to projects that are rooted in the region. We strive to collaborate with, support and give space to other local independent arts initiatives.
On 30 April 2025, Arctic Auditories organized the online workshop “Merging with Waters” together with the Environmental Humanities Research Group (UiT). The aim of this workshop was to provide information about the current research processes and invite participants to reflect critically on them. There were presentations and discussions on three working packages as well as a joint listening to our sound stream.
Although the working packages consist of individual parts, there are various connections and overlaps between them. The diverse backgrounds of the researchers in the Arctic Auditories project team enabled each member to view their own working package from new, inspiring perspectives and learn from each other.
Making these mergings visible, and audible, were the focus of this afternoon.
Mapping Arctic Waters
In the first part, Britta Sweers talked about the soundwalks conducted in collaboration with diverse groups in and around Tromsø/Romsa which serve as a basis for many further processes of the project, in particular a multi-layered detailed soundmap. The evaluation of the huge amount of qualitative data collected, ranging from interview to photographs to recordings, is still in progress.
This working package is full of interdisciplinary aspects which, as became clear in the subsequent discussion, were found to be challenging but above all highly enriching. Which methodologies and methods do we consider to be scientifically valid? Generosity, curiosity and openness to learning from the perspective of others enable us to expand our own expert knowledge.
At the same time, this working package has shown how complex listening is, but also how much we know through bodily sensory experiences. To learn from this knowledge, we need dialogue and interpretation.
Sound Archives
The second presentation focused mainly on sound maps. How can you organise sound recordings and merge them into a system that others can access? Angus Carlyle presented different formats of sound maps, and presented the various layers that informs the Arctic Auditories soundmap. In the workshop, we listened to some sound recordings made at the locations where the soundwalks had taken place.
An important aspect that was discussed is the connection between sound and text. Text itself can be a possible form of listening and sounding. Regarding the sound map – when is a textual description of a sound recording a useful guide, and when is it a limiting restriction? The question of how much textual description one wants to offer also arose during the planning and the realization of the soundwalks. The conductors were free to decide how much information they wanted to provide in advance, such as about the location or specific sounds.
Another point that was discussed is the visual representation of sound maps. A sound map is always just one possible way of representation and never displays actual reality. What do we want to convey to the listener? And what decision do we therefore make about what and how we filter, or what and how we represent it on the map?
Part of working package two is also the three-day “Experimental Audio Zine Workshop”, which will take place from 23 to 25 May 2025 at Tromsø Kunstforening in collaboration with the artists Andreas Kühne and Polina Medvedeva. The workshop is open to researchers, writers, artists, musicians, creators, students and anyone interested in storytelling, sound poetry and experimental publishing. Further information about the workshop and the sign up form can be found via this link: https://uit.no/tavla/artikkel/878919/arctic_auditories_experimental_audio_zine_works
Listening to the Soundstream
In the middle of the workshop, we immersed ourselves for a few minutes in the soundscape of Tromsø through our sound stream, which streams live from the roof of a building at the University of Tromsø. Pleasant sounds, such as birds heralding the arrival of spring, but also annoying sounds, such as an indefinable deep drone, moved us as listeners.
The stream transmits what the microphone picks up directly without any further sound manipulation. But as with the sound recordings, the stream does not reproduce reality, but rather translates the sound environment through technical processes. Every listening situation, whether listening in the physical space around us or listening to sounds from loudspeakers, is a unique bodily experience in its own way.
Online Writing League
In the last part of the workshop, Elizabeth Barron and Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen talked about the Online Writing League, which is part of working package three. In the Online Writing League, participants in two groups, one English-speaking and one Scandinavian-speaking, met digitally once a month over half a year. Based on the concept of emplacement (Barron et al., 2020) and inspired by prompts, key questions and keywords, the participants created artistic works in a wide variety of formats, from poetry to video to audio, and in various languages.
As demonstrated by the OWLs symposium the day before and the few works presented in the workshop, the intensive engagement with place, water and sound from different perspectives gave rise to an infinite variety of works that inspire further rich reflection and exchange. Based on these artistic explorations and further research on text and language, a glossary will be compiled, collecting ideas and thoughts on terms that have proven essential in all working packages throughout the project.
Connections, the focus of our workshop, emerged at various levels throughout the afternoon. Together, we were able to trace connections within the project between the individual working packages and recognize that each task is related to and influences the others. By listening together and to each other, we were able to establish connections between us that enabled a rich exchange. By listening to sound recordings and the sound stream, we were able to create connections to places, to our imaginations and to our bodies. By listening to our thoughts and perceptions, we were able to connect different water identities conceptually and think about how they are related and what role we play in this.
And what role can this project play? How can looking at climate and other environmental crises through a feminist lens and using the methods of our project lead to new, actionable changes?
Thank you to all participants for this inspiring afternoon!
Some links to resources shared by participants during the workshop:
I first encountered live online sound streams around the same time I started to explore the many forms of online soundmaps (that are discussed in the previous blog).
In 2006, I hung a microphone out of the window of what was then the offices of Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) on the 13th floor of a 1960s tower block in the area of London called Elephant & Castle. I remember dialling into that online stream from my home in Brighton at the same time as Jérôme Joy, a researcher at Locus Sonus who was living in Aix-en-Provence and who had helped me get the stream up and running (technical matters, especially those involving cables and mixers, never being my forte). As we both heard the window frame rattle, rain spatter the glass, rolling rumbles of thunder and a sky torn by lightning, we exchanged emails about our experiences of this strange triangulation of a listening between the microphone in London, headphones in Aix and loudspeakers in Brighton. In 2020, two months into the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown, as part of the launch of Night Blooms, a poetry and photography collection published by Makina Books, I ran through the woods that were the book’s inspiration live streaming my breath, the swish of my feet through grass, bird calls, traffic on Ditchling Road. In 2022, as part of our sonic explorations of the Port of Shoreham near our homes, Simon James and I live streamed the sound of the dawn tide rising over a bank of shingle.
The 2006 stream was broadcast on the Locus Sonus map; in 2020 and 2023, the streams were part of the annual Reveil event created by Soundcamp to celebrate the dawn chorus, with streams from all over the world being mixed live over a period of 24 hours. Although there are other sound streaming platforms, protocols and practices, Locus Sonus and Soundcamp were my introduction to the process. Each organisation additionally amplified a space of exploration where such strange almost-simultaneous encounters with audio transmission as Joy and I experienced could be thought about and thought with. Locus Sonus hosted a number of symposia dedicated to the form; Soundcamp published the book Sounds Remote about the stream experience and commissioned a number of essays of which Ella Finer’s is exemplary.
For this year’s Reveil, Arctic Auditories established a live microphone on the roof of the Polarmuseet. In March at the Soundcamp HQ, Katrin and I had an induction to the technology: learning a little more about how the streambox – the system through which the microphone connects to a mini-computer that connects to a nearby data network and routes the audio signal to a transmission server where Joy or I or anyone else can listen in.
Given what I said earlier about technical matters, it was lucky for me that Katrin was the person responsible for getting the streambox running, as I gather this was far from a simple operation, albeit an ultimately successful one. These screenshots show the audio stream running during Reveil.
The streambox itself underwent something of an eccentric voyage from Soundcamp HQ in Loughborough Junction to the Polarmuseet in Tromsø / Romsa. The protectively-packed equipment flew with Katrin’s luggage to Oslo before being handed to our colleague Silje Gaupseth’s partner (who took the box to a meeting at the Norwegian Parliament). After the flight to Tromsø / Romsa, the wonderful Benn Gjøran Johansen wrapped the water-proofed microphones and computer in a fishing net and secured the device to the roof of the Polarmuseet, where it is now installed.
The travels of the electronic audio equipment that were distinguished by bubble-wrap, physical hand-overs and being enclosed in secure netting and Katrin’s technical ministrations to ensure that the system functioned well both speak to something Grant from Soundcamp told us about regular streamers: that they establish relations of care with their streams. At our meetings, Katrin, Paula, Britta and I have talked about another aspect of that care relation – a certain vigilance of ‘checking in’ that involves making monitoring the stream something we turn to again and again, as entertainment, as education, as a reassurance things are OK. We dial in to hear what is happening on that harbour roof top: rain falling on the sloping tiles, a party of school children walking past, the slush of melting snow, a noon high tide making waves lap audibly the shore, kittiwake cries, the weekday percussion of construction work (a chorus of hammers, drills, ratchets and truck reversing sirens all conducted by indistinct shouts), the occasional helicopter, boat engines and the very rare sound of a boat horn and the perennial drone of traffic crossing the bridge.
I often share our Arctic Auditories audio feed with friends. Many are shocked at the disparity between what they imagined a harbour so far into the Arctic Circle might sound like and how very “urban” the microphone and box and its rooftop perch make Tromsø / Romsa sound. This experiential contrast is one potential significance of the stream for our project, an affective tension that I think has often been explored by projects sponsored through Soundcamp, Reveil and Locus Sonus.
The prosthetic aurality of our streambox offers remote listeners the opportunity to speculate how the specific microphone, gain settings and placement might amplify or attenuate particular features of the sounded environment in the historic harbour of Tromsø / Romsa; to wonder about what is made here and what now, what is near and what far; to question what it means to hear world as a “live” unfolding and perhaps to question what kinds of latencies (technical as much as cultural) insert themselves between the original releases of mechanical energy that a museum passer-by might hear and the transmission that vibrates from speakers connected to a distant computer.
You can listen to the feed here and let us know what you think.
Me and soundmaps go back a long way. I’ve been avid – and frequently critical – consumer of these modalities of aural cartography for several decades. I have integrated exploration of soundmaps into my teaching, in recent years running workshops with the wonderful MA Sound Arts students at London College of Communication, whose approaches always offer inventive (and sometimes radical) responses to the conventions that have accreted around the form, conventions that became enshrined in a long-standing Wikipedia definition that proposed ‘digital geographical maps that put emphasis on the sonic representation of a specific location’. I commissioned an article about one example of such a digital online soundmaps from the collective New York Society for Acoustic Ecology, who discuss their multi-faceted NYSoundmap in my 2009 book Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice.
I’ve made unambiguous sound and mapping projects, too, such as “51° 32 ‘ 6.954” N / 0° 00 ‘ 47.0808” W,” my unforgivingly-titled contribution to the Sound Proof group show at the E:vent Gallery, London in 2008, which addressed the transformation of what had been a canal-side pocket of light industry and open green space for the 2012 Olympics. For 2012’s Viso Come Territorio (“Face as Territory”), another group show, I made a soundmap of the Italian commune San Cipriano Picentino in Campania.
Here are two responses to my sound-mapping activities, the first from Sound Proof’s curator Monica Biagioli, the second from Salome Voegelin’s Sonic Possible Worlds:
“Carlyle’s contribution to a sense of social and spatial orientation is asserted through finely noted observation of activity and ephemera encountered during his visits to the site. These seemingly inconsequential events and objects are plotted diagrammatically on his map as key markers of the site, giving prominence to the vernacular components of this site in transition. His approach echoes the notion that whoever maps the space gives that landscape and location its territorial characteristics”.
(Biagioli 2018: 102)
“This geography is not that of San Cipriano Picentino and not of my living room either but that of their possibilities generated in my recentred listening, exploring the material that sounds there and bringing it back into the actuality of my present listening that is every thicker and pluralized for it. These sonic narratives do not share in the generality of the visual map, nor in the image we might have of an area […] I am not following the map but mapping my own while listening.”
(Voegelin 2014:34)
From my own perspective, a lot of my creative practice inhabits a space that is proximate to maps, map-making and the devices of cartography – and this applies not just to the more explicitly sound-related works, as might be visible above on the cover of my Makina Books poetry collection Night Blooms and an inside page from the self-published work Mirrors.
Alongside these creative projects, I’ve written a little on maps and map making. In 1999 I wrote “Below This Level There is None,” a chapter for City Levels that riffed on Virilio, Dostoyevsky and Ralph Ellison about the underground as an architectural space and how the vertical projection that is common (and pretty much ubiquitous in its adoption on online soundmaps) occludes what lies below. In 2022, I contributed an article to the Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies which, to an extent, takes some of the thinking in the 1999 article and adapts it for the sonic realm.
I’ve put both these articles on my very sparse medium account for you to read.
The ideas of maps and layers of sound knowledge has been a recurrent idea in Arctic Auditories. You might remember that when it was Za Barron’s turn to post to our Instagram account, she talked about sound maps: “maps can take many forms and tell many truths, but some might argue (me, for example) that they have to be visual to be maps. I just can’t get my head around the idea that a sound is a map. This is not my ontology of maps, but this project is pushing on it…”
Alongside the recordings of our conductors telling us how they have designed their soundwalks, the recordings of the walks themselves and recordings of post-walk discussions, I have been looking at Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen’s and Britta Sweers’ analyses of the transcripts of soundwalks to guide me to make new recordings of the soundwalk locations that capture a balance between what the conductor intended and what the participants experienced. This is not at all an easy task, but the inspiration is to create an online soundmap that seeks to represent this process.
I’ve been using Udo Noll’s astonishing Radio Aporee as a platform to disseminate this developing soundmap. Radio Aporee has been running online since 2000, has been hosting its maps since 2006, backs its files to the Internet Archive, has many very useful resources and, at the moment I am writing, would take me 225 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes and 40 seconds to listen to all its content. Radio Aporee is a firm feature of my soundmap teaching, it appears in the Bloomsbury chapter and it is certainly a good example of one of those soundmaps I mentioned right at the start of this blog post: one that I respond to as a listener. Radio Aporee has its own rules, such as the injunction to avoid ‘composition’ by editing or layering recordings. I have imposed further restrictions, too, but I am slowly building this Arctic Auditories layer. The quality of existing Aporee contributions sets the bar dauntingly high.
The current distribution of my recordings for the Arctic Auditories map looks like this.
If we zoom in you can see that there is a cluster in Tromsdalen / Romssavággi, reflecting the three soundwalks that took place there, each with quite rich details.
One of these recordings seeks to capture the sounds of the water that two soundwalk conductors told us had special meaning for them in this area.
The best way to get a sense of what I am doing with this online map is to dial into Radio Aporee yourselves (something I highly recommend you do anyway). To navigate to our Arctic Auditories project map within Radio Aporee and explore, head to this link: https://aporee.org/maps/work/projects.php?project=arcticauditories.
