Listening is a powerful means to discover and understand a place, even though Western societies have long privileged the visual sense. The Listen(n) Project draws attention to the sound of place, specifically the sounds of National Parks in the American Southwest. Environmental sounds can tell us stories about the land, its flora and fauna, its seasons, weather events, human activity, and about the health of the land’s overall ecosystem. The Listen(n) Project seeks to introduce you to the delicate and fragile acoustic ecologies of landscapes in Southwestern deserts.
JTree Recording Workshop
The Listen(n) team has developed workshops on listening concepts and techniques and on field recording techniques and creative responses to listening experiences. The workshops are open to the public and intend to encourage park visitors and communities to experience and document the parks’ soundscapes in new ways. The recordings and sonic place stories from park visitors and locals can be shared with larger communities through a public portal on the Listen(n) website. The Listen(n) Project has built a collaborative sound database that archives Southwestern soundscapes made over long periods of time.
The Listen(n) Project welcomes discussions about environmental change as evidenced in the change of the parks’ soundscapes and hopes to stimulate environmental stewardship in local communities across the American Southwest and on a global scale.
From 2015-17 Listen(n) team has been offering workshops for park visitors and communities near Joshua Tree National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Death Valley National Park. The workshops are organized in collaboration with national park administrators and community organizations and made available to all members of the community. There aretwo types of workshops: one focusing on concepts of listening and listening techniques and the second centering on audio field recording and the creation of media art works. The recording workshops equips participants with audio recorders. They learn how to make field recordings and mixed media works based on their local national park environment for an exhibitions and concerts.
The Listen(n) Project has also developed exploratory workshops for school children (4th grade and up), providing training in listening skills and sound recording skills – using innovative ambisonics field recorders to capture full 360 degree sound fields. The advanced youth and community workshops also focus around documentation and archiving platforms to build a longitudinal sonic record of these pristine wilderness areas.
The first phase of community workshops launched as part of the 2014 National Park Week across California. Hosted by the National Park Foundation and National Parks Services, National Park Week celebrates the vibrant culture, rich history, and iconic landscapes of National Parks across the country.
If you would like to request workshops or receive notifications about upcoming programs, please visit the contact page on this website.
