Yarra River Terrace & Federation Square, Melbourne
​Monday 8th – Sunday 14th Feburary // 9:00am – 11:00pm

River Listening is launching in Melbourne, Australia during Pause Fest 2016, a catalyst for innovation, a uniter of industries and a platform for the future. Six years ago, Pause’s founder George Hedon saw an opportunity to start bringing together a new breed of thinkers and Pause Fest is now established as a major international event for those working at the intersection of creativity, technology and innovation.
Melbourne’s first River Listening installation explores the Yarra River. The installation can be experienced by walking along the Yarra River with a mobile device and listening to content that is geotagged along the river bank.

As you walk along the path, the sounds of river system are layered with sonic art and river stories for Pause delegates to discover between sessions. In addition to the Yarra soundscapes, this experience will stretch through Federation Square with a sound map connecting to other river systems across the world.
Listeners will hear Amazon river dolphins as they walk down the steps and pilgrims chanting on the banks of India’s Narmada River as they look towards the sky. These sonic discoveries will explore the value of sound and technology in contributing towards environmental awareness and engagement.

As the recent documentary Racing Extinction highlights: if we can bring the sights and sounds of the natural world to humans who would otherwise never think about them, they might be motivated and inspired to alter their habits enough to take action and respond to the ramifications of climate change.
To experience YARRA – RIVER LISTENING, Pause Fest delegates will download the free app Recho for this exclusive Pause Fest experience.

The soundscapes will evolve with new sounds added everyday during Pause Fest. Follow @LeahBarclay on twitter for live updates onsite and join our daily demo sessions and sound walks by using the #RiverListening hashtag on twitter.

Rainforest Listening is an augmented reality project that layers rainforest soundscapes in iconic urban environments to inspire ecological engagement. Listeners access the sounds via mobile devices and sculpt their own soundscape as they walk through Paris.

At COP21 we brought the rainforests of the world to Paris and encouraged global leaders to listen to nature and take climate action. Rainforest Listening showcases one of the most critical environments on earth, the Amazon Rainforest. The installation features pristine sounds recorded in a diversity of ecosystems including lowland tropical rainforest with abundant wildlife. Listeners can hear the rich biodiversity of insects and birdlife and those who venture deeper into the sound maps can discover the endangered Amazon River dolphins or elusive howler monkeys hidden in iconic locations throughout Paris. 

The Eiffel Tower and surrounding parklands were transformed into an immersive sonic experience layering rainforest soundscapes over the breathtaking views of the city. Each observatory platform of the Eiffel Tower was interpreted as the four distinct layers of tropical rainforest vegetation through immersive soundscapes and original sonic art created exclusively for COP21 by multi-award winning Australian artist Leah Barclay.

Over 100 sounds were planted across Paris during COP21 at major side events including Petit Palais for Earth To Paris – Le Hub, The Global Landscapes Forum, The Hub Culture Paris Pavilion and throughout Le Bourget. 

To experience Rainforest Listening in Paris you need a mobile device and headphones. You can access the soundscapes via two free mobile applications Recho and Podwalk, with Recho being our core application for iOS and android users. The installations run 24 hours a day and can be accessed anytime throughout COP21. If you would like to join a guided sound walk or meet our team on the ground in Paris, please use the contact page on our website or follow #RainforestListening on twitter.

Rainforest Listening is produced by Rainforest Partnership, an international NGO founded with a mission to protect tropical rainforests by partnering with people at global and local levels to create lasting solutions to deforestation. Rainforest Listening is supported by HubCulture, the UN Foundation and Earth to Paris.