Morning all. How are things? The snowdrops and daffodils have been out for at least a week now (in West London at least) which means we’ve probably just about made it to Spring. I can feel my Vitamin D stores replenishing already. But before we all go prancing around outside, let’s catch up with February (and some of March, oops).
AudioSpace(s) of the month
We've got quite an international selection from the past month, albeit mainly from Europe. It’s been lots of fun discerning the different voices, accents and languages making themselves heard on the map, even if I’m not sure what most of them are saying. A particular shout out to our new Slavic contributors this month.
Have a click on the links below to take a whirlwind trip from downtown Lyon to central Prague; from the coast of Montenegro to Deptford Market in London; from a Piešťany evening to the Taima river in Wakayama; the Kyiv metro system to suburban Nashville; Lisbon to Withington; from icy footing in rural Austria to a train cart on the Hudson River. ✈️ ✈️
Nouvel an chinois lyon guillotière
by bat
Ambient Game Background Noise - Wasteland 3
by hello
In between rail cars
by peretsky
wind chimes on a snowy night
by nick royall
People arguing about nothing at 1am
by matoumatio
A song about homesickness by Mohammad
by owolf
Showing Oliver my reading has gotten better since Lanny
by jody
Sounds of Kyiv Metropoliten
by keser1
Applause enraptured. Maria Schneider @ the Barbican. Guess you had to be there
by saxophonesamurai
As always, there are two caveats to mention with regards to our AudioSpace(s) of the month: first, all these links will only take you into the map if you have the iOS app downloaded, and second, you’ll only get a thirty second preview unless you’re physically in the recording’s pinned location. BUUUT with regards to both of these limitations: very soon, everything’s gonna get a whole lot more nuanced, accessible and customisable.
I know, I know. We’ve been promising an Android version for months. But it really is coming soon now, along with a web version which you’ll be able to use from your laptop or desktop at home. This not only means a whole lot more of you will finally be able join AudioSpaces, but also it will expand the ways we can all engage with the project. We’ll get into precisely how all of this is going to work in the next newsletter.
Other thing (just the one this time)
Listening to “after” the catastrophe
Even as I get increasingly excited about AudioSpaces on a daily basis, I do find it hard to ignore that things around the world more generally are becoming extremely weird, dark and catastrophic. It’s all a bit stressful—not to mention distracting.
I don’t know about your algorithms, but in February I found it hard to miss the flames that engulfed various parts of Argentina, especially in North Patagonia. These followed similar patterns of devastation that took place in California a month before—though, whereas one fascist president blamed the fires on a small Pacific fish and an insufficient “raking” of the forest floor, the other used them as a pretence for deepening the violent persecution of local Indigenous Mapuche and Tehuelche communities, among others.
This of course isn’t the place to discuss the causes of wildfires, their consequences, or the highly differentiated experiences of people living through them.1 I will share with you, though, a couple responses to the “after” of a wildfire that may be of interest to our AudioSpaces friends. How have people used their ears to process what’s happened and to reconnect with forests that have been destroyed?
On the one hand, the big daddy soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, in this deliciously shot and recorded but admittedly quite overdramatic documentary by The New Yorker, emphasises the importance of continuing to listen attentively (in fact, closely monitor) the soundscape of a place after the catastrophe.
Similarly, the “extraterrestrial” art collective Proyecto Visitantes recently documented a trip through El Hoyo in the Patagonian province of Chubut. They pay close attention to a space in revival and adaptation after being burnt during a previous wave of wildfires in 2021 but mostly spared this time round.
“The place is not the same, we are not the same, our surrounding worlds are transformed … Maybe that’s what remembering [the fire] is all about: finding ourselves accidentally walking in the forest.”
These kinds of responses to the aftermath of a catastrophe seem to me to help make sense of the seemingly senseless. With all the doom it’s more useful than ever to pause and pay attention to our surroundings, which are more likely than not going through their own catastrophes in slow motion.
What can I hear, then, in all these spaces that are changing? What do those transforming sounds mean, what do they feel like—not just for me, but for other listening bodies as well? And equally as important: how might my own listening shape the worlds of others, and other listenings mine?
My sense is that these questions go into what our amazing contributors are doing all the time—even if it usually happens unconsciously. We might also be able to think about the AudioSpaces map as (among other things, of course) a collective living, breathing, transforming document of the world’s multiple and increasing “afters”.
Anyway, that’s one of my convoluted thoughts about AudioSpaces and the world from the past month. Have a nice rest of the week, and keep posted for what’s coming up xx