Music Efforts for Green Activism
Environmental sound art performance - Avant Festival 2025
Experimental sound art and vocal improvisation exploring the negotiation of human and non-human presence in a polluted landscape, based on field recordings of an industrial cement plant in Puglia, Italy.
Summary_As part of the MEGA residency (Music Efforts for Green Activism), mentored by Nicola Di Croce and together with the violinist Kieli and the sound artist Eropi, we explored the disruptive sound sources of south italian industrial landscape. Our fieldwork took us to the COLACEM cement plant in Soleto, where we listened, observed, and recorded its impact and pollution. From these sonic traces, a dialogue with the captured drone emerged, as we tried to attune into it, to harmonize with its presence and resonate alongside it.
The process culminated in an improvised performance for three voices and violin, carried by that same continuous drone, which became a metaphor for a community trying to negotiate its own presence with the overwhelming, unsettling force of a polluting industrial facility. The performance was part of the Avant Festival 2025, the avant-guarde electronic music festival in Puglia, Italy.
MEGA 2025 is an international advanced program in sound art and experimental music that brings together artists, and researchers in a collective learning environment. Through practice-based research, mentored by Margherita Pever, Filippo Rosati and Nicola di Croce, MEGA 2025 fosters critical approaches to listening, sound, and contemporary sonic practices, with a strong emphasis on fieldwork, experimentation, and environmental justice.
Methodology_ethnographic fieldwork; deep listening; field recording; experimental composition; vocal improvisation.
References
Cox, C. (2011). Beyond representation and signification: Toward a sonic materialism. Journal of Visual Culture, 10(2), 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412911402880
Di Croce, N. (2019). Listening as a relational practice. Conservatorio di Musica “Tito Schipa,” Lecce, Italy.
Gallagher, M. (2016). Sound as affect: Difference, power and spatiality. Emotion, Space and Society, 20, 42–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.02.004
LaBelle, B. (2010). Acoustic territories: Sound culture and everyday life. Continuum.
Lane, C., & Carlyle, A. (Eds.). (2013). In the field: The art of field recording. Uniformbooks.
Oliveros, P. (2005). Deep listening: A composer’s sound practice. iUniverse.
Schafer, R. M. (1994). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Destiny Books. (Original work published 1977)
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
Westerkamp, H. (2002). Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology. Organised Sound, 7(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771802001065
Summary_As part of the MEGA residency (Music Efforts for Green Activism), mentored by Nicola Di Croce and together with the violinist Kieli and the sound artist Eropi, we explored the disruptive sound sources of south italian industrial landscape. Our fieldwork took us to the COLACEM cement plant in Soleto, where we listened, observed, and recorded its impact and pollution. From these sonic traces, a dialogue with the captured drone emerged, as we tried to attune into it, to harmonize with its presence and resonate alongside it.
The process culminated in an improvised performance for three voices and violin, carried by that same continuous drone, which became a metaphor for a community trying to negotiate its own presence with the overwhelming, unsettling force of a polluting industrial facility. The performance was part of the Avant Festival 2025, the avant-guarde electronic music festival in Puglia, Italy.
MEGA 2025 is an international advanced program in sound art and experimental music that brings together artists, and researchers in a collective learning environment. Through practice-based research, mentored by Margherita Pever, Filippo Rosati and Nicola di Croce, MEGA 2025 fosters critical approaches to listening, sound, and contemporary sonic practices, with a strong emphasis on fieldwork, experimentation, and environmental justice.
Methodology_ethnographic fieldwork; deep listening; field recording; experimental composition; vocal improvisation.
References
Cox, C. (2011). Beyond representation and signification: Toward a sonic materialism. Journal of Visual Culture, 10(2), 145–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412911402880
Di Croce, N. (2019). Listening as a relational practice. Conservatorio di Musica “Tito Schipa,” Lecce, Italy.
Gallagher, M. (2016). Sound as affect: Difference, power and spatiality. Emotion, Space and Society, 20, 42–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.02.004
LaBelle, B. (2010). Acoustic territories: Sound culture and everyday life. Continuum.
Lane, C., & Carlyle, A. (Eds.). (2013). In the field: The art of field recording. Uniformbooks.
Oliveros, P. (2005). Deep listening: A composer’s sound practice. iUniverse.
Schafer, R. M. (1994). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Destiny Books. (Original work published 1977)
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The mushroom at the end of the world: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton University Press.
Westerkamp, H. (2002). Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology. Organised Sound, 7(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771802001065