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.

You are invited to participate in World Listening Day 2016,  an annual global event held on July 18.
The purposes of World Listening Day are to:

• Celebrate the listening practices of the world and the ecology of its acoustic environments;
• Raise awareness about the growing number of individual and group efforts that creatively explore Acoustic Ecology based on the pioneering efforts of the World Soundscape Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, La Semaine du Son, Deep Listening Institute, among many others;
• Design and implement educational initiatives that explore these concepts and practices.

This year’s theme for World Listening Day is “Sounds Lost and Found.”

World Listening Day 2016’s theme, “Sounds Lost and Found,” calls on reminiscing, listening and observing what changes in our soundscapes have occurred in recent decades—be it language, nature, technology, music or even silence itself. For “Sounds Lost and Found,” we invite you to dig into crates of vinyl and cassettes, dive into digital archives, and engage deeply with memories and unheard languages to rediscover or identify these “lost sounds.” In doing so, “Sounds Lost and Found” hopes to spotlight the need for effective and accessible conservatory efforts to be implemented to preserve some of these sounds—whether those efforts include archival projects, changing our daily practices or supporting the preservation of indigenous languages and engaging with the keepers of and archiving fading oral traditions where that seems impossible. We can protect and celebrate sounds whose vitality can be vulnerable and fragile.

World Listening Project, Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and Biosphere Soundscapes invite you to participate in World Listening Day 2016 on Monday, July 18, and through the week of July 16th-22nd. Some suggestions on how you can participate and organize include:

• Soundwalks or listening events in your local community, with a particular focus on natural and human evolution, human activity in nature and industry, technology and machines
• Field recording trips or workshops
• Site-specific performance events
• Concerts curating compositions inspired by the theme, “Sounds Lost and Found” (contact us to connect with composers and sound artists)
• Personal experiences of attentive listening or field recording
• Educational events that relate to acoustic ecology, field recording, or a similar topic
• Public talks or lectures about listening and acoustic ecology including participation in the World Listening Day “Sounds Lost and Found” virtual symposium on July 17-18.

Use the hashtag #WLD2016 to connect with other local and global groups participating in the World Listening Day 2016: Sounds Lost and Found and get involved.

Our planet continues to change due to human involvement and interventions. People evolve. Cities morph. Technologies advance. We can hear the planet changing. Our soundscapes reflect evolution; whether created by humans, machines or nature the shifting presence and absence of sounds is affected by human activity in natural and industrial worlds.

Cities’ sonic identities are continually fluctuating as residential and commercial infrastructures develop. The resultant social dynamics of industrialization and gentrification sponsor variegated relationships between people and the public and private places they occupy.

Humans’ complex interactions with nature have encroached upon Earth’s autonomy and her anonymity. Phenomena such as pollution, deforestation and global warming are manifestations of natural processes; they are the aftershocks of industrial pursuits. Swaths of land have been decimated, dismantling animal ecosystems for human consumption and destruction. This reckless, shortsighted mode of interacting with non-human life has forced the retreat and extinction of many species, eliminating their sounds until there is silence.

Technological advances over the past several centuries, particularly in recent decades, have been astronomical. Of late, machines and media become obsolete before we have even become proficient in using them. These advances have impacted the acoustics of commercial and residential spaces with newer versions of devices designed with quietness in mind Sounds produced by older models are noticeably more obtrusive. Most of these advancements can be seen as positive, though some sounds we were accustomed to or fond of have become less prevalent or been silenced in our relentless push toward progress ad infinitum.

Some Questions of Inquiry

• How do our environmental, social and technological perceptions and understandings of change exist within the spectrum of sound?
• How do our understandings of listening and sounds morph as human intention and activity changes relationships between humans, the built environment, and nature?

This theme ultimately encourages awareness, a deep aural attention to our surroundings through the recognition of the variables that define the acoustic ecology of our lived environment, and a recognition that sounds of the past are different from sounds of the present or future.

The theme for World Listening Day 2016 was developed by ​Nigerian sound artist Emeka Ogboh (@goslowlagos). Emeka is co-founder of the Video Art Network Lagos and works primarily with sound and video to explore ways of understanding cities as cosmopolitan spaces with their unique characters. 

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.

You are invited to participate in World Listening Day 2015, an annual global event held on July 18.

The purposes of World Listening Day are to:

• Celebrate the listening practices of the world and the ecology of its acoustic environments;
• Raise awareness about the growing number of individual and group efforts that creatively explore Acoustic Ecology based on the pioneering efforts of the World Soundscape Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, La Semaine du Son, Deep Listening Institute, among many others;
• Design and implement educational initiatives that explore these concepts and practices.

This year’s theme for World Listening Day is “H2O”.

The global water crisis means 750 million people around the world lack access to safe water. Water is rapidly becoming the commodity of the 21st century and the catastrophic effects of climate change often involve negative associations with water. Rising sea levels, devastating floods, melting ice in Antarctica and droughts spreading throughout the globe, all highlight our increasingly unpredictable and extreme relationship with water.

Yet H2O is vital for life, water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface, and 60% of our bodies are made of water. Oceans, rivers and lakes are the core of many of the world’s iconic cities and historically civilizations formed around water. Indigenous communities across the globe believe water is at the core of our existence. For thousands of years communities have lived sustainably by holding significant cultural and spiritual value of rivers, lakes and oceans.

World leaders believe we need to create a cultural shift in how we think about water. We need a better understanding and awareness of the value of water and we need to make critical changes to avoid the ramifications of the global water crisis. In the words of Sylvia Earle “even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.”

World Listening Day 2015: H2O invites you to reflect on water, metaphorically in how you listen, or through creative events inspired by water and sound across the globe. The 2015 theme resonates at a time where we need to shift our collective thinking and actions towards water globally.

World Listening Day 2015 will include a virtual symposium hosted on WaterWheel (www.water-wheel.net), an electronic publication, and hundreds of events taking place across the globe.

World Listening Day is co-organized by the World Listening Project (WLP), the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) and Biosphere Soundscapes. July 18 was chosen because it is the birthday of Canadian writer, educator, philosopher, visual artist, and composer R. Murray Schafer. His efforts leading the World Soundscape Project and his seminal book, The Tuning of the World, inspired global interest in a new field of research and practice known as Acoustic Ecology.

World Listening Project, Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and Biosphere Soundscapes invite you to participate in World Listening Day 2015 on Saturday, July 18, and through the week of July 12th-18th. Some suggestions on how you can participate and organize include:

• Soundwalks or listening events in your local community, with a particular focus on oceans, rivers, lakes and catchments
• Field recording trips or workshops
• Site-specific performance events
• Concerts curating water inspired compositions (contact us to connect with composers and sound artists)
• Personal experiences of attentive listening or field recording
• Educational events that relate to acoustic ecology, field recording, or a similar topic
• Public talks or lectures about listening, water and acoustic ecology

Use the hashtag #WLD2015 to connect with other local and global groups participating in the World Listening Day 2015: H2O and get involved.

Participation in World Listening Day is rapidly expanding every year. In this sixth year we anticipate even greater activity and interest. Please join in the World Listening Day 2015 activities by emailing [email protected]about your plans and be sure to include “World Listening Day” in the subject line. Or fill out the World Listening Day 2015 online participation form. Thanks!