Bit of a different format this month, a live discussion about the intersections of arts and science, imagining futures with sound, and the agency of water. I was excited to be part of this roundtable along with exhibiting artists and researchers Mariko Hori and KWR Water Research Institute researcher Sabrina Keinemans, sound artist Stijn Demeulenaere, and researcher Moniek Driesse. In a conversation moderated by Jonás Bisquert, we explore questions like how does sound help us transform ecological uncertainty into tangible future scenarios, and how do we give a voice to the water itself? Co-organized by Gaudeamus Festival with Utrecht University’s Urban Futures Studio, it was a fascinating conversation on how collaborations between scientists and artists can help expand the imagination. Apologies for the quiet audience questions, the microphones were not set up to catch that well.

Links

Artist installation details https://gaudeamus.nl/en/events/gaudeamus-2026-sunday-afternoon/resisting-waters-installations/

Gaudeamus https://gaudeamus.nl/

Urban Futures Studio https://www.uu.nl/en/research/urban-futures-studio

Mariko Hori https://www.instagram.com/korimariho/

Sabrina Keinemans linkedin.com/in/sabrinakeinemans

Stijn Demeulenaere https://www.instagram.com/zzztijn/

Moniek Driesse (University of Antwerp) https://www.instagram.com/moniekdriesse/

Steve Williams / drusnoise https://instagram.com/drusnoise

Jonás Bisquert https://jonasbisquert.com/

Listening with glaciers? Auscultation and planetary health? Climate data turned into percussion performances played on glacial ice? Tune in for all of that and more in a fascinating conversation with Konstantine Vlasis. Konstantine is an environmental composer, audio researcher, musician and writer currently based in Iceland whose work explores how sound, music, and listening mediate experiences of changing landscapes and ecologies, and how music can be a form of climate communication and environmental storytelling. With collaborations, compositions, and publications with a wide range of people and places around the world, I really enjoyed diving into his world and his sounds.

Links and Bio

Artist website https://www.konvlasis.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/konvlasis/

Time and Water https://scienceandfilm.org/articles/3747/the-sounds-of-time-and-water

Life of the Glacier https://intotheblue.is/life/

After Ice film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsQoCVlgGn8

2124

Composer & Project Lead: Konstantine Vlasis

Produced by Jake Lyons Performed by Chris Parker Audio by Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan Directed by Marcus Neudigate

Ablation

Composer & Project Lead: Konstantine Vlasis Videography: Josh Flint Recording & Mixing: Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan Video Editing: Jake Lyons Color Grading: Marcus Neudigate

Bio

Konstantine Vlasis is an environmental composer, audio researcher, percussionist, NYU Torch Fellow, Leifur Eiríksson Foundation Fellow, Fulbright-NSF Arctic Research Fellow, and Fulbright-Nat Geo Award recipient. His projects, public talks, and performances center on the ways that sound and listening mediate experiences of changing landscapes, and how music can be a form of climate communication and environmental storytelling.

As a composer, Vlasis has become a leading voice within environmental, art-science, and audiovisual composition. His music blends complex rhythmic structures, minimalist textures, and sound design to create environmentally conceptual and immersive pieces. In this regard, Vlasis explicitly builds his works upon pre-existing musical textures created by nonhuman entities, natural soundscapes, and environmental phenomena. His recent compositions expressly focus on ecological awareness, creative approaches to musical sustainability, and the efficacy of art-science collaboration. Vlasis is a visiting lecturer at Listaháskóli Íslands, a research affiliate of Háskóli Íslands, an Innovative Percussion Artist, and a performing member of APEX Percussion.

Fresh off an amazing sound workshop in Norway last week called Soundshed, we hear sounds reflecting sonic presence and absence, hauntings, ruins, and imaginaries. The project, funded by the Oslo Center for Environmental Humanities, explored sound at the intersections of art, ecology, and energy production at Kistefos, a sculpture park and museum located on the site of a former paper pulp mill about an hour outside Oslo. I was excited to be part of this project led by Sadie Menicanin from University of Oslo and can’t wait for you to hear the sonic collages created by the participants.

Co-creators

Sadie Menicanin

Steve Williams

Kyle Devine

Megan Gette

Cristina Archetti

Moa Hjärtström

Elise Matilde Malik

Alexander Refsum Jensenius

Parisa KhoeiLucy Cathcart Frödén

Vicky Mikalsen

Nikos Baskozos

Chryso Nikolaou

Sofia Shuvanova

Kahena Wilhite

Links

IMV Instagram @unioslo_imv

Kistefos https://www.kistefosmuseum.com/

Soundshed project page https://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/research/teams-phase-two/junior-collaborative-research-teams-1/soundshed.html

UNRULY Sustainability https://unrulinesss.com/

Thumper trucks and dowsing rods. Seismic listening and fraudulent maps. Ham radio and silence. Just a few of the ideas we cover in today’s show with Megan Gette. Megan is an artist, a writer, a poet, an editor, interested in how sensemaking is articulated and given material form. Playing with technologies of listening, fluidity and im/materialisms , her artistic and academic works made for a fascinating conversation. Check out our chat and listen to some of her sounds.

Bio

It is hard to name the various crises of the present to which theory promises to attune. The worlds of others are incoherent. Thought is immanent to material processes and their social fragmentations. I am interested in how sensemaking is articulated and given material form. I examine techniques and technologies of listening through which extractive atmospherics shapes perception and ordinary life.

Links

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/808omega/

Artist web site: https://atrace2.cargo.site/

Today I am thrilled to have on the show Natalia Escobar. Natalia is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and DJ whose practice spans moving images, sound, performance, and installations. Her work explores Abya Yala phenomenology, Indigenous cosmovisions, identity, and memory, drawing from decolonial and intersectional feminist perspectives. Since 2021, she has been developing pedagogical projects and collaborations with different Indigenous communities in South America, notably with Las Traviesas, a community of trans-Indigenous women from the Embera people in Colombia. Together, they have developed initiatives that promote social and ecological transformation through artistic processes, emphasizing transdisciplinary collaboration as a strategy to challenge colonial norms and reimagine alternative realities and spaces for knowledge exchange. So you can imagine how excited I am to speak with Natalia today.

Bio

Natalia Escobar is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and DJ whose practice spans moving images, sound, performance, and installations. Her work explores Abya Yala phenomenology, Indigenous cosmovisions, identity, and memory, drawing from decolonial and intersectional feminist perspectives. Since 2021, Escobar has been developing pedagogical projects and collaborations with different Indigenous communities in South America, notably with Las Traviesas, a community of trans-Indigenous women from the Embera people in Colombia. Together, they have developed initiatives that promote social and ecological transformation through artistic processes, emphasizing transdisciplinary collaboration as a strategy to challenge colonial norms and reimagine alternative realities and spaces for knowledge exchange.

Links

https://www.instagram.com/discobar/

https://www.instagram.com/poison.arrow/

https://www.instagram.com/awera___/

https://www.instagram.com/pierce_with_arrow/

Artist Web site https://www.nataliaescobar.com/

Awera project https://www.nataliaescobar.com/awera

Today on the show I’m happy to have Robert Willim as a guest. Robert is an artist and a researcher working at the interplay between art, research and dialogue. His practice explores imaginaries, media-related practices and human experiences of technology. In our conversation we explore sound, technology, media, artistic research, industry and society, and questions around digital and material culture.

Links

More about Robert’s work: http://www.robertwillim.com/

https://www.instagram.com/willimworks/

About Mundania: https://mundania.se

The audio paper Mundania – Just Above The Noise Floor:

https://seismograf.org/fokus/sonic-argumentation-ii/willim

A video of the Fields of Unknowing performance in Malmö:

https://vimeo.com/950990832?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Info about the performance from the Intonal website:

https://www.intonalfestival.com/artists-2024/robert-willim

We have a special edition this month, a look – actually a listen – back to 2025. Thanks to all of you and my amazing guests, we have quite a collection of sounds to listen to. Enjoy listening to everything from Bristol beats to pond soundscapes to raw heartbeat driven noise. Today we have some sounds from a live broadcast of the show at RBL with me drusnoise, then sounds from Xayide, a livestream recording provided by Mort Drew and Grant Smith from the Soundtent collaborative, JacqNoise & Dan Graveyard live set, Zuzana Hamm / FridaY playing live, Andreas Kühne & Paulina Medvedeva, Hendrik Klatte, and closing with another live set by Jeannette Petrik / Chebedajha. Looking forward to another year of sound and conversation. Until next year, see you on the dance floor.

Track listing

drusnoise – There is no separation (live broadcast from RBL) @drusnoise

Xayide – Marginal Disc and ERß @ xayidexadiyei

Soundtent - Jasper Ridge Livestream

https://locus.creacast.com:9443/jasper_ridge_birdcast.mp3 @ mort_drew @sound_camp

JacqNoise & Dan Graveyard – Live performance @jacqnoise @dan.graveyard

Zuzana Hamm / FridaY – Soundtrack to Flora (Live at bitumen lichen) @friday_musik

Andreas Kuhne & Paulina- The Informals II 360 (2023) Live a/v performance with Bobbie Johnson, Phonetic, and Marshall Mandiangu @andreaskuhne_ @p.a.medvedeva

Gregor Dys – mumstakes @gregordys

Hendrik Klatte – Mucus

Jeannette Petrik / Chebedajha – live performance at Schwankhalle Bremen @jeannettepetrik

Today I am happy to have Jeannette Petrik on the show. Jeanette is an experimental noise maker performing as Chebedajha, writer, and cultural worker based in the Netherlands. I have been fascinated by Jeannette’s work ever since I saw their live performance in Enschede using heartbeats to clock a live modular synth show. We talk about live performance, working with environments, and building community and hear some of their incredible live sounds.

Links and Bio

Bio:

Drifting off while in the moment, a raw and unfinished collage of harsh and intense analogue and digital electronic sounds emerges from the delicate interaction between a human and a collection of sound devices—sensitively modulated noise with a slow, yet driving pace, embracing the unexpected with a situationist attitude. Chebedajha means “not from here” in an imaginary language. Chebedajha is the solo sound art project of cultural producer Jeannette Petrik, mental child of situationism, adhocism and punk. With a curiosity for sound design, experimental noise and meditation practices, they consider language, sound and design as an opportunity for public empowerment. Operating in the vicinity of intense states of anxiety and pleasure, discomfort and relief, the experimental sound of Chebedajha aims for increased levels of perception and sensitivity to become part of the collective everyday. Petrik is a cultural producer concerned with collective spaces and processes, who challenges hierarchies and structures of dominance. Their practice spans across disciplines which include text, sound, performance and the organising of collective events of doubt. Since 2013, they’re part of Dutch and German D.I.Y. scenes and are active in a loosely organised network of tekno soundsystems. Petrik was an organiser at the squatted D.I.Y. venue The Loch in Enschede. They’re part of the feminist network fem*noise and are active as an experimental sound artist under the pseudonym Chebedajha.

Photo credit: Paulus https://www.instagram.com/by_pauluz/ https://www.by-pauluz.nl/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeannettepetrik

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/chebedajha

Recordings

sw9mep: excerpt of a live recording that was produced as part of the podcast 'Conversing our Soundscapes of Fear' hosted by studio calh at Z33 in Hasselt, BE (2021): Invited as the show's accompanying musician, I was tasked to try and acoustically articulate their approach towards contemporary sounds of fear.

Quantum Inspired Sound: https://jeannettepetrik.com/quantum-inspired-sound

Recording of live performance at Schwankhalle Bremen as part of the series Anachronism: using a modular synth and other sound devices (2023

Recording of live performance from Voltage Control Amsterdam (January 2025): using the heartbeat together with a modular synth and a Lyra-8