Keynote Talk

Since the Renaissance we have had an agreed visual perspective, and language to speak accurately about images. This we still lack in the world of sound, where words fail us to describe for instance even the complex waveforms of an urban environment, much less what those sounds do to us and how they make us feel.

For over 20 years, O+A have made the chaotic soundscapes of urban culture perceivable as music and as environments in public art installations around the world. Now they go further by asking us all to listen to and find meaning in the cultural waveform – that vast waste stream of unintentional sounds produced by fossil-fuelled culture that we normally spend so much effort shutting out. Using examples from their work, they will take the audience on a journey through the failed "sonic commons" on a search for information hidden in the cultural noise. They propose that after centuries of pursuing the implications of a visual perspective it is time to take steps toward a “hearing perspective” of the world we live in.