Jana WinderenEnergy Field, documentary picture,
Greenland, 2007.
Photo: courtesy of the artist

Listening at Depth

When the composer and music theorist Pauline Oliveros wrote her book Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (2005), she sought to bring to our attention the symbiotic relationship between sound and its surroundings. “As you listen, the particles of sound decide to be heard,”¹⁹ 19 - Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 40. as she poetically put it. She defined “deep listening” as the heightened state of awareness that connects to all there is — the act of listening to more than one reality simultaneously.²⁰ 20 - Oliveros, Deep Listening, 30.

In 2021, the Brisbane-based artist Taloi Havini (Nakas Tribe, Hakö people) was commissioned by the TBA21 — Academy, a contemporary art organization and ocean-focused research centre, to create an installation based on her experience aboard a research vessel called RV Falkor, as part of the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Artist-at-Sea program. Havini joined this scientific expedition, which was mapping the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast with state-of-the-art sonar technology. The resulting artwork, Answer to the Call (2021), was part of Havini’s exhibition The Soul Expanding Ocean #1 at Open Space, TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary’s venue in Venice.

Facebook Tweet LinkedIn Email

You must have a valid Digital or Premium subscription to access this content.

Subscribe to Esse or log in now to read the full text!

Subscribe
Log in

Listening at Depth

Suggested Reading

Performances déambulatoires

Une certaine consistance
(Extraits de jours, 2000 – 2001)