The second part within FIBER Festival’s Reassemble lab explored the potential of (spatial) sound experiences to investigate and sense ecological processes and landscapes in transformation. With Sound Ecologies we boosted interdisciplinary collaborations between artists, designers, researchers,  musicians, ecologists and scientists in order to raise awareness or make experienceable the invisible effects of the Anthropocene.

The program provided a combination of lectures, workshops, and fieldwork to support group research and work development. 

The physical lab took place from 25 to 30 October in The Netherlands.

We invited makers and thinkers who are active in sound, ecology-focused art and the environmental humanities. For example artists, designers, musicians, ecologists and a wide variety of scientists who work with, or are interested in, the medium of sound in the broadest sense of the word to conduct research and craft new perspectives. Together, we will investigated Borssele, an area in the Netherlands where we set out to capture the often untraceable interactions between industry, engineering and ecology. 

Critical Tool Analysis

Parallel to the ‘making’, Sound Ecologies critically reflects on the historical and sociopolitical contexts in which digital tools are created and the contemporary (digital) cultures they are part of. The ways in which technological developments shape a multitude of different futures can be liberating for some and dehumanizing for others.  They are forces of extraction, exclusion and division, while they simultaneously offer the possibility to give form and imagination to new, necessary realities.

Who develops the tools and platforms we use? What is the cultural impact and political/commercial origin of simulation technologies and machine learning? In what ways do the current forms of these technologies relate to ecological and social problems? Do they help with creating solutions? Do they add fuel to the fire? What possibilities are there for artistic practices to adapt their use, or even reassemble them to accommodate representation and inclusion? A network of researchers will investigate the lab methods, techniques and principles and disseminate them through our platform.

Diversity, Inclusion and Equity

In addition to understanding our entanglement with a multispecies reality, the lab will  strive to bring together a rich prism of perspectives – including feminist, queer,  non-binary, trans and voices of color – to share resources, time and space with many different imaginations of our near-future societies. We warmly welcome participants from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds and people from LGBTQIA+ communities.

Despite some of the technical aspects of the lab, the focus will be on unlocking and  accessing a wide variety of (non-coding) skills. This will be done through  interdisciplinary collaboration and conceptual approaches to topics. Therefore, the lab will also be a valuable environment for newcomers to narrative, sonification and visualization techniques.