Weeds and wild ideas are VIPs here.
To-do for wanderers:
- Sniff the pixels
- Water the code
- Harvest a quote
- Get lost on purpose
SOUNDWEB
Soundweb has its growing collective home online > HERE
SOUNDWEB_2025
Soundweb is a participatory sound art project developed in collaboration with the diasporic community of Vaglio, Italy. The project investigates how sound mediates experiences of migration, memory and belonging, drawing on the traditions of sound ethnography (Feld, 1994) and deep listening (Oliveros, 2005) to approach auditory experience as both method and analytical lens.
Summary_In a world shaped by mobility and displacement, peripheral communities like Vaglio Basilicata are sites where depopulation, transnational movement and enduring attachments intersect. By engaging participants living in Dublin, Brussels, Rotterdam, Chicago, and beyond, Soundweb explores the liminal spaces that exist between departure and return, revealing how sonic landscapes act as vessels of memory and identity. The community recordings grow into auditory archives of lived experience, within the anthropological approach of “sensory ethnography” (Pink, 2015) in which the senses are central to understanding culture and social life.
Ethnographic interviews and participatory sound practices unfold the tension between rootedness and mobility, the intricacies of affective ties to place, and the emergence of diasporic subjectivities shaped by both absence and sonic recall.
These practices resonate with studies of transnationalism and diaspora, where belonging is configured as dynamic negotiation of memory, affect and practice beyond physical locations (Clifford, 1994; Portes, 2001). In this context, Soundweb works with sound itself as a medium, through which diasporic experiences are articulated and felt, creating networks of relationality that transcend geography.
The project positions deep listening as an epistemological tool. Following Pauline Oliveros’ concept, listening here is an active, contemplative practice that opens participants to the multiplicity of acoustic worlds they inhabit and carry with them.
Sound becomes a conduit for reflection, memory and connection; a way to perceive not only one’s immediate environment but the spectral presence of home, community and history.
Ultimately, Soundweb waves an experiential topology of diaspora, where voices, textures and rhythms coalesce into a polyphonic map of human mobility. Even in absence, sonic traces of place endure, shaping the rhythms of memory and identity in subtle yet profound ways. It situates sound at the intersection of anthropology and art, investigating the capacity of auditory experience to render visible the invisible circuits of social and affective life.
Methodology_Digital ethnography; qualitative interviews; deep listening workshops; guided community sound practices; participants-led field recording via everyday tools (e.g., phones, voice notes etc); on-going collective assembly of sound archive.
References
Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology, 9(3), 302–338.
Feld, S. (1994). From ethnomusicology to sonic anthropology. Cultural Anthropology, 9(2), 236–260.
Oliveros, P. (2005). Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice. iUniverse.
Pink, S. (2015). Doing Sensory Ethnography. 2nd Edition. Sage.
Portes, A. (2001). Introduction: The debates and significance of immigrant transnationalism. Global Networks, 1(3), 181–194.
Schafer, R. M. (1994). The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Destiny Books.
Soundweb is a participatory sound art project developed in collaboration with the diasporic community of Vaglio, Italy. The project investigates how sound mediates experiences of migration, memory and belonging, drawing on the traditions of sound ethnography (Feld, 1994) and deep listening (Oliveros, 2005) to approach auditory experience as both method and analytical lens.
Summary_In a world shaped by mobility and displacement, peripheral communities like Vaglio Basilicata are sites where depopulation, transnational movement and enduring attachments intersect. By engaging participants living in Dublin, Brussels, Rotterdam, Chicago, and beyond, Soundweb explores the liminal spaces that exist between departure and return, revealing how sonic landscapes act as vessels of memory and identity. The community recordings grow into auditory archives of lived experience, within the anthropological approach of “sensory ethnography” (Pink, 2015) in which the senses are central to understanding culture and social life.
Ethnographic interviews and participatory sound practices unfold the tension between rootedness and mobility, the intricacies of affective ties to place, and the emergence of diasporic subjectivities shaped by both absence and sonic recall.
These practices resonate with studies of transnationalism and diaspora, where belonging is configured as dynamic negotiation of memory, affect and practice beyond physical locations (Clifford, 1994; Portes, 2001). In this context, Soundweb works with sound itself as a medium, through which diasporic experiences are articulated and felt, creating networks of relationality that transcend geography.
The project positions deep listening as an epistemological tool. Following Pauline Oliveros’ concept, listening here is an active, contemplative practice that opens participants to the multiplicity of acoustic worlds they inhabit and carry with them.
Sound becomes a conduit for reflection, memory and connection; a way to perceive not only one’s immediate environment but the spectral presence of home, community and history.
Ultimately, Soundweb waves an experiential topology of diaspora, where voices, textures and rhythms coalesce into a polyphonic map of human mobility. Even in absence, sonic traces of place endure, shaping the rhythms of memory and identity in subtle yet profound ways. It situates sound at the intersection of anthropology and art, investigating the capacity of auditory experience to render visible the invisible circuits of social and affective life.
Methodology_Digital ethnography; qualitative interviews; deep listening workshops; guided community sound practices; participants-led field recording via everyday tools (e.g., phones, voice notes etc); on-going collective assembly of sound archive.
References
Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology, 9(3), 302–338.
Feld, S. (1994). From ethnomusicology to sonic anthropology. Cultural Anthropology, 9(2), 236–260.
Oliveros, P. (2005). Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice. iUniverse.
Pink, S. (2015). Doing Sensory Ethnography. 2nd Edition. Sage.
Portes, A. (2001). Introduction: The debates and significance of immigrant transnationalism. Global Networks, 1(3), 181–194.
Schafer, R. M. (1994). The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Destiny Books.