The escucha workshops have been developed over the span of the past four years and facilitated through residencies, fellowships and universities in Colombia, Finland and the US. The workshops explore sound as a medium for art and scientific exploration while noting that the practice of listening is an active process rather than passive.
With the simple act of listening, we learn new ways of empathizing with our environment, our neighbor, and even ourselves.
We begin with silent contemplation and meditation on sound. While listening to the surrounding environment, participants discuss what it means to listen and how the sounds we hear shape and shift our perception of the world around us.
Participants learn about the fundamentals of sound as both a physical phenomena (physical vibrations) and perceptual phenomena (our cognition of these vibrations), and build custom transducer microphones to record vibrations not ordinarily heard by the human ear.
The workshops also include many activities and exercises such as listening tours, and sound-scavenger hunts. Here are some excerpts from past scavenger hunts. Participants were given thirty minutes to capture all of the sounds listed below.
☐ Happy Sound ☐ Sad Sound ☐ Angry Sound ☐ Peaceful sound ☐ Melody ☐ Noise ☐ Nature ☐ Technology ☐ Echo ☐ Water ☐ Air ☐ Rhythm ☐ Motion ☐ Silence ☐ Empathy