Common Grounds

Common Grounds explores strategies for per-sonifying environmental data and listening to the ecologies of our shared planet. Sustained by profound artistic-scientific exchange this multidisciplinary research asks how a long-term collaboration between climate science and sonic arts practices can be translated into public experiences that communicate and offer embodied, sensorial connections to the fragile complexity of planetary systems.

read more about the research and its background in our COMMON GROUNDS WIKI

Climatic changes occur on spatial and temporal scales much larger and slower than those we humans can sensorially perceive. Therefore even in the face of palpable damages to the earth’s atmo-, hydro-, cryo-, geo- and biospheres, the climate crisis still remains for many but an inaccessible, looming threat. Drawing on detailed instrumental datasets starting 1998 from the fastest warming place on earth – the circumpolar region of the Arctic, the collective & collaborators develop sonic and choreographic instruments, custom software, listening and storytelling strategies and participatory somatic practices towards realising a constellation of outputs including by now a sonic environment Twenty Springs made of sounding sculptures and stories (more About the installation Twenty Springs), Instrumentalities for Common Grounds a participatory performance in form of a concert-lecture (more About the performance Instrumentalities) and BayelvaMic a permanent live listening station (more About the listening station BayelvaMic).

Initiated by the Sono-Choreographic Collective and Julia Boike, head of Energy- and Water fluxes research group at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Potsdam to explore strategies for sonifying environmental data, particularly the growing detailed instrumental data sets from the permafrost measurement stations. The data sonification software and methods are developed in collaboration with Tobias Grewenig. The Audio Guide Voice from both Twenty Springs and Instrumentalities for Common Grounds is narrated by Atalya Tirosh and the audio-guide programming is by Moshe Levine.

Link to joint cryospheric science blog post: Perspective on Listening to Permafrost