CANARIAS DC SOUNDWALK at Sound Scene 2021

As part of the “Sound Scene 2021” festival, “CANARIAS DC SOUNDWALK” explores the sonic ecologies of the Canary Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in the geographic region known as Macaronesia.

Currently a work in progress, the completed project is scheduled to be presented in full in September 2021. CANARIAS DC SOUNDWALK will present a series of geolocated compositions for headphone listening created with sound materials from each of the eight main islands: Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Graciosa. Through diverse creative listening strategies and technologies, the fieldwork focuses on what usually remains hidden or unnoticed, on the limits and thresholds of perception and attention.

The project aims to promote less anthropocentric ways of listening and thinking, investigating the vitality and creativity of more-than-human agencies and realities: non-human species, materials, energies, spaces, air, water, weather, landscape formations, and sounds themselves as phenomenological entities capable of producing affective responses.

Sound Scene 2021 will be the North American premier preview of this new work and can be experienced in select locations in North East Washington, D.C.

Instructions

Canarias Soundwalk DC is a location-based sound work. You will need a smartphone with an Android or iOS operating system.

1. Download the free Echoes app on Google Play or App Store.
2. Plug in high-quality headphones. The artist does not recommend the use of wireless bluetooth headphones as the compression degrades the audio quality.
3. Within the Echoes app installed on your phone, navigate to the work Canarias Soundwalk DC. The audio art work can run in real-time. However, for optimal listening the artist recommends that you pre-download the entire project to your phone before setting out to the select locations..
4. Follow the map feature to arrive at the first destination.
5. Upon arriving at the first destination, the audio will begin automatically and you can listen while walking nearby or find a spot to sit down, relax and listen fully.

Canarias Soundwalk DC is meant to be a screenless aural experience. Nevertheless, if you wander beyond the designated listening area, the audio will stop. Explore! Enjoy.

Just as the archipelago of the Canary Islands emerged from a series of volcanic eruptions originating at the ocean’s floor, Canarias Soundwalk DC draws audiences of listeners out from their homes and into their environment to experience new listening opportunities: sound as an emergent perception, arising, as-if magically, from an aggregate of situated physical, material, and mental phenomena.

About Pablo Sanz

Pablo Sanz is an artist currently based in Spain and Northern Ireland. His body of work includes site-determined and public art projects, immersive installations, multichannel live performances in the dark, exhibitions, releases, and pieces for broadcast and headphone listening.

For more than ten years, his work has been experienced internationally in diverse contexts, such as the Museo Reina Sofía, National Music Auditorium, La Casa Encendida, Fundación Juan March, Matadero (Madrid), Phonos (Barcelona), Cafe Oto (London), STEIM (Amsterdam), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Audiorama (Gothenburg), MWW Contemporary Museum (Wroclaw), ACMC Sonic Environments (Brisbane), Brooklyn Acoustic Ecology Festival (NYC), and FILE Festival (São Paulo), among others. He has participated in several artist residencies, including EMS Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm), Visby International Centre for Composers (Gotland), CONA (Ljubljana), INLAND, Académie de France in Madrid, Mamirauá Institute (Amazonas), LASOm (São Paulo), ARE Holland, and Q-O2 (Brussels).

In 2020 he received a Phonurgia Nova Award for the work strange strangers, commissioned by the Czech Radio. Pablo graduated from the University of the Arts of The Hague, attending the ArtScience Interfaculty and the Institute of Sonology. He holds a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University Belfast.

Ecology Fieldwork and Sound –a conversation with artists Barry Schmetter, David Mordini, Ben Pagac, Ana Maria Kleymeyer and Pablo Sanz– will take place on Sunday, June 27 at 5:30 pm EST, followed by exhibitions. RSVP required.