Dew Pond #1

"Dew Pond #1" was a talk and listening session that was part of "Acoustic Ecologies: Hildegard Westerkamp and Environmental Listening" at the Attenborough Centre of Sussex University on January 31st, 2020. The sheets of paper I am holding in the first image and the participants have in subsequent photographs were letter-pressed by Alex Cooper and used to respond to the listening environment of the dew pond, marked with chalk to create soundmaps, scores, listening diaries.

Photographs: Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin

Dusk brings a shift of the senses, a change to how the world is known. A similar recalibration can happen when we choose to settle down somewhere and map what our perceptions find there.
A powerful inspiration derives from Hildegard Westerkamp’s pioneering approaches to soundwalking and to soundmapping and, particularly, her sustained commitment to acknowledging the complexities at work when we establish “times for heightened listening, an opportunity to connect more deeply to a place, a sonic moment or situation … to one’s own associations”.
In her compositional approaches as much as in her contributions to the methods of acoustic ecology, Westerkamp has both opened our ears to rich sonorities and located the listener as a creative contributor to encountered meaning.
After a short introduction, we will find our own time for heightened listening at the edge of the University campus, settling down together, each with a stick of chalk and blank piece of paper to document what we hear under the darkening sky, marking out a sonic sketch that could be a soundmap, a score, a diary of acoustic associations.

Pictures of Alex Cooper's letter-pressed Dew Pond sheets and examples of what participants did with them.