This year, Lisbon-based filmmaker, curator, and organizer Raquel Castro has created the theme, The Unquiet Earth for World Listening Day.
In 2020 we were forced to pause by an invisible virus. This brought countless consequences to the environment , and to the sonic environment in particular. New acoustic horizons emerged, signalling times of unquietness and global change, and requiring our listening awareness to evolve.
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!
I have created acoustic ecology audio art for several of the World Listening Days and each one seems to be more urgent in theme than the last. I find this a very sad situation, as we lurch from year to year, clarion calls of climate change have increasingly got louder and more urgent, becoming calls of climate emergency. But it feels like it’s falling on deaf ears.
How long have we been told that the ice caps are melting? How many times do we hear that the earth is getting warmer? We can see the changes. We can feel the changes. We can hear the changes.
Floe is about all of this. As an audio artist I have manipulated and edited found sounds and field recordings to create a sound world of cracking, splintering, melting ice from under the surface. Large chunks grind and split. In the end there is silence.
The earth is getting more unquiet, but I fear that those in power who can actively do something are not listening and may never do so.
credits
from unQUIET,
released July 18, 2021
Composed, Recorded, Produced by O Johnson / Museleon
Copyright museleon2021
Artwork is based on original watercolours by O Johnson
Many thanks to phillchabbb and northern87 of the Freesound community (freesound.org ) and to Kit Johnson for their original field recordings which I reimagined into Floe.
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