The audible flicker of fluorescent lighting, collision of waves against the coast, and the opening bars of When the Sun Comes Out. Snow crunched underfoot. An evasive mosquito, freshly percolating coffee, and the fitful stop and start of a neighbour’s DIY project.
Reeta Hafner began the seminar on Futures of Sound and Song held at Media Evolution on April 26th by invoking an array of sounds.
Sounds are everywhere around us. And yet, they often go unnoticed. A symptom perhaps of our over-attunement to visual stimuli. We see this order of priorities in our built environments - spaces are designed for their appearance rather than their acoustics - with adverse consequences for all of us, but in particular those who are deaf or have hearing loss.
And we create sounds, incidentally and intentionally. We write songs, so many. Today there are one hundred million songs on Spotify. They have the capacity to bring us together, help us heal and connect, while at the same time having the power to mark lines of difference and separation.
The seminar on Futures of Sound and Song stood at a moment of conclusion and renewal. The culmination of the Collaborative Foresight Cycle was marked by the launch of a book Waves of the Blue Sea, a collection of scenarios, stories and critical commentary that emerged from the workshops conducted as part of the foresight cycle.
The work was driven by a curiosity about new music technologies, an open exploration of the positive and negative impacts of sound, and a consideration of external factors such as cultural change, climate crisis, and conflict. Threaded throughout is the guiding principle that futures are plural, imagined, and created.
Reeta invites us to explore the scenarios and stories within Waves of the Blue Sea, whose perspectives on sound and song are complemented by the seminar speakers.
17 июн 2024
