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Water Songs: Documenting the Imperceptible. Main Menu Introduction Listen to Stones Drought: The sound of thirsty earth Edmonton Alberta, 2025 Pond Weeds, Edmonton Anthropogenic sounds in a sweltering city Glacier Calving, Alaska San Ignacio Lagoon, Mexico About us Bibliography

Mechanical sounds interrupting natural sounds

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Introduction

Between what the archaeologist Brnar Olsen calls "the hard physicality of the world'' and the realms of abstract thought in which "all that is solid melts into air'' (2003, p. 88), no conceptual space remains for the circulations of the actual air we breathe and on which life depends. In the alternative view I propose "a view from the open" what is unthinkable is the idea that life is played out upon the inanimate surface of a ready-made world (Ingold, "Bindings against Boundaries" 2008, p. 1802)

Water Songs presentats our experiments with thinking beyond human perception. John Berger said, “Seeing comes before words.” We believe that at the present moment, what is required is more listening.

As storytelling and documentarians we have been asking what can listening in on our environment at a micro level, finding ways to tap into sounds and sights– stories – beyond ordinary human perception, and beyond the sensory hegemonies of modern Western visual culture, tell us about the natural world around us and the climate and environmental changes that have already impacted our immediate environments through devastating fires and floods?

We use various technologies such as ecoutic, contact and aquatic microphones and microscopes to listen in on the stories that tree trunks, bark and moss, water, dirt and stones have to tell us. By making the imperceptible perceivable, humans can broaden their appreciation and understanding of their environments and attune themselves differently vis-a-vis the ecologies of complex organisms and the vibrations of non-human and non-living natural matter. By learning how to listen and see differently, we propose to develop a lexicon of understanding that exists outside of but alongside human language in order to address the climate crisis by conceiving of the world differently. Using examples from our body of work, we show the small but not insignificant ways we can modify our relationship with the natural environment by using other senses to perceive the livingness – aliveness – of everything around us.
Water Songs
Water songs