listening

Edwin van der Heide's Spiral of Time offers a gentle, non-intrusive auditory portrait of Plaça dels Àngels in Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood, inviting us to observe changes in temporal and meteorological patterns, the varied uses of the space, and the subtle shifts that occur from day to day. By presenting soundscapes over different intervals—hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly—it helps listeners perceive the scale of time differently and understand how the square evolves with each season and moment. In this podcast, we sit down with Edwin van der Heide exactly to discuss this work. We reflect on concepts of time travel and spirals, on creating staged memories and living archives, on the far-reaching sounds that traverse the square, and on the intriguing possibility of expanding Spiral of Time to encompass diverse, non-human landscapes.

In loving memory of Alvin Lucier (1931-2021), we dig up a conversation with Alvin, one of the most amazing composers and sound artists we've seen, in which he talks about the need to listen carefully, the composers that have accompanied and influenced him over the years, and the role of space and technology in his work, among many other things. One of a kind.

Political geographer and sound artist AM Kanngieser works in the coordinates between space and sound. This merging of disciplines that seems completely normal to her tends to be more perplexing to the compartmentalised world of science and academia than to the undisciplined field of artistic practice. In this podcast, we become the listeners as AM Kanngieser reflects on expanded listening, on the inaudible, and on our anthropocentrism. They talk about their long-standing interest in sound governance and dissect the many tensions that built up in the project “Climates of Listening”, which was originally based on the intention of amplifying campaigns for self-determination and self-representation in the Pacific.

The slovak musician, sound artist, and maker Jonáš Gruska is a proud amateur, honouring the French origin of the term (to love what you do). Curiosity and passion run through pretty much everything that Gruska engages in. In our conversation ranging from his site-specific sound installations to his hand-crafted microphones and audio tools, his recent interest in mycology, and his playful exploration of the electromagnetic spectrum, Jonáš used the word 'fascination' quite a lot. We talk to Jonáš about resonating spaces, resonating surfaces, tramways, self-taught electronic circuitry, field recordings, fermentation, mushrooms, and unusual microphones.