Common Grounds
2020-
Common Grounds is an artistic-scientific research exploring strategies for sonifying environmental data. Initiated in 2020 by the Sono-Choreographic Collective and Julia Boike, head of Energy- and Water fluxes research group at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Potsdam. Through 2025 this research asks how a long-term collaboration between climate science and sonic arts can be translated into public experiences that offer embodied, sensorial connections to the fragile complexity of planetary systems.
Climatic changes occur on spatial and temporal scales much larger and slower than those we humans can sensorially perceive. Therefore even in the face of palpable damages to the earths atmo-, hydro-, cryo- and geo-spheres, the climate crisis still remains for many but an inaccessible, looming threat. Drawing on long term datasets from the fastest warming place on earth - the circumpolar region of the Arctic, the collective develops custom software, sonic instruments, storytelling strategies and participatory somatic practices towards producing a constellation of artistic outputs including a sound installation, a concert-lecture, a music record, a video work and an art-science publication.
To read more about the process and thinking behind the work, visit our wiki page here
Climatic changes occur on spatial and temporal scales much larger and slower than those we humans can sensorially perceive. Therefore even in the face of palpable damages to the earths atmo-, hydro-, cryo- and geo-spheres, the climate crisis still remains for many but an inaccessible, looming threat. Drawing on long term datasets from the fastest warming place on earth - the circumpolar region of the Arctic, the collective develops custom software, sonic instruments, storytelling strategies and participatory somatic practices towards producing a constellation of artistic outputs including a sound installation, a concert-lecture, a music record, a video work and an art-science publication.
To read more about the process and thinking behind the work, visit our wiki page here
20 Springs, installation view; Bayelva Station; Photo credits: Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari, Kerstin Ergenzinger; AWI Potsdam
Common Grounds is an artistic-scientific project and is being developed together with Kerstin Ergenzinger and the Sono-Choreographic Collective in collaboration with Tobias Grewenig and the Permafrost research group led by Julia Boike at Alfred-Wegener-Institut Potsdam.
Data sonification software and methods are developed in collaboration with Tobias Grewenig. The Audio Guide Voice is narrated by Atalya Tirosh and the audio-guide programming is by Moshe Levine.
Up to now this project has been supported by HIDA - Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy, The Academy for Theater and Digitality, the Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, the Malmö City Cultural Council and the Sound Environment Center at Lund University.