)listening room( with Soundcamp 

17 - 08 - 23

on Radio AlHara






)listening room( is a weekly radio show is tuned to ephemeral micro ecologies of the Acoustic Commons network. 


 Chat Transcript while listening to the Hydrophiles









participants:

Grant Smith; Mort Drew; Dawn Scarfe

 

 

grant

)Listening Room(


mort

this is hyrdophile_4


dawn

What just came and went

Sounded like the jetsons


lia

ola


mort

this is my favourite of the streams from the project - so vivid, i love when people walk by

ola @lia !


grant

hi lia


lia

hey everyone

this is Hortus Brug (bridge) in the city center of amsterdam next to the botanical gardens

and zoo

I love to hear all these different types of diesel motors cruising past


mort

is it trains or trams we can hear?


grant

which sounds quite touristic, and yet..


lia

yes its the tram

it is one of the bridges that opens up quite often.. what do you call that kind of bridge

again?


mort

!!


dawn

Transporter?


grant

bascule bridge?


lia

wiki says bascule bridge


dawn

Yeah Bascule


lia

yes grant !


grant

yay


mort

would you like to suggest which stream we move to next Lia? I think 3 sounds very nice

buut maybe you'd like to share a specific one?


grant

so like our sense of place is being re configured quite drastically


lia

yes 3


mort

though as i said before thiis is my fav


grant

it seems


lia

I just played them both together and its sounded wild


mort

are they near each other


lia

airplanes landing in schipoll and boats cruisin


mort

ive found them quiite hard to piece together


lia

hydrophile_3 is at Stadtwjick further in the south of the city next to Amstelpark and a

motor way -


grant

hard to interpret?


mort

someone strimming?


lia

its placed right outside the 100 year old pumping station that makes sure the water

levels are balanced between Amstel and canals


dawn

Iquite claustrophobic


grant

@lia you must be strangely familiar with these soundworlds.. by now


lia

someone is mowing their lawn ..


grant

unaware their civic action is creating acoustic havoc


mort

machnical wiiiiring to the right

a plain flies overhead?

plane*


lia

its right on the flightpath of schipoll


mort

much quieter than the flightpaths here in london

seems there is space here for unmoved air

in london all you hear everyday are the planes flying too close to the city


lia

tbh honest this stream shocks me every time - the place is next to a river and forest but

all most of the time one can hear is human made noise from airport/motorway.....

when it rains a lot you will hear the pumping station but I did not have the honour yet


mort

ah!

where to next lia?


lia

try hydrophile_1 would love to know what you think of that @mort


mort

is 5 further up the road?

but lets listen to 1 together


lia

5 is further north yes


mort

i think this is the most consistent of the hydrophile streams - this is what i have heard

the majority of the time i have tuned in

is it in a tunnel?


lia

ah I was hoping you'd hear more


mort

livestreams are odd that way - how did you choose your sites?


lia

its inside the Hortus bridge - this morning I could here the engineers doing works -

pigeons flying around - and lots of water dribbling down the steelwork


mort

!!!


lia

I feel like its more active in the morning hours


grant

we re listening to HydroFiles, a project with waterways of Amsterdam by Lia Mazzari


mort

i think i have only listened late evening


grant

https://liamazzari.com/HydroFiles


lia

(still under construction ;))


grant

of course!


mort

odd how so much of a place is determined by when over where


lia

I had help with picking the locations from hydrologists from the waternet in A'dam. they

are the company that take care of all types of water in the region and beyond


grant

was listening something they were accustomed to, with the waters?


lia

the person I closely work with is very open to this and listens a lot to the water.

in fact I hope you are listening Maarten!

a lot of pigeons live in this bridge


mort

!!


lia

we could listen to another underwater stream at Berlage Brug


mort

Hyrdophile_2?


lia

correcto


mort

under the bridge + under the bridge


grant

as if the familiar geographies of a more or less familiar european city, with its well know

canals..

are being undermined

by alien topologies


lia

this is my fav

it depends so much on the time of day


grant

something quite sculptural, like a lot of sounds sound kind of time shifted


lia

I had it installed for a while then the municipality decided to renovate the bridge this

summer so when you listen between 7am-3pm AMS time (MON-FRI) you'll hear

underwater construction work -

early morning its the rowers


mort

listening to wet reverb

how are all these streams powered? from mains?


lia

its a very central node of the city - much bigger bridge ... more water and cycling traffic

most of them via mains

but one of them is powered by solar, unfortunately this has stopped working since a

week and I have not found out what the problem is ....yet


mort

when you listen they feel quite covert


grant

Subversive


lia

can you elaborate, what do you mean with covert?


grant

coots?!


mort

placed secretly, walked on site in a high vis vest and placed the box, left without saying

goodbye, unoffical, keeping an ear on things, keeping an ear on the city and the way

they treat the water

but this is very much not the case?


grant

mm.. i guess a lot of thinking around aqualiteracies.. lss is proposing..

that thinking with water opens up new perspectives.. new epistemologies even


lia

actually its a bit of both

I have help from the waternet but its all happening below the radar


grant

but/and sometimes it seems like there is still an assumption that we are talking about

something quite conventionally aqueous, fluid, splashy..


mort

aha


grant

whereas for me, these soundworlds feel like an expose


mort

time for the final stream i think - hydrophile_5


grant

somehow much less familiar, more stringent

operating under bridges in tradition maybe like graffiti

or some kinds of graffiti


lia

the most exciting thing was speaking to the hydro peeps after they started to listen to

the streams .... hearing


mort

3 magpies?


grant

something like that

uh oh


mort

can you wash off a stream if you don't like the sound


grant

what did they think?


lia

they heard more and different then I did


grant

Mm


lia

like xmas for one of them


mort

hahaha


grant

they knew what sounds were coming from?


lia

this is the waste water treatment plant


grant

what was going on?


lia

yes they knew the engine types - the flow when the waters are quiet


mort

a ringing in the riight? a plane?

or machine, air being pressed tight


grant

mm do they ever use sound eg for monitoring or diagnosis?


lia

they measure all sort of values and environmental data from the waters to monitor and

preview , so I wonder if they stream could be helpful in understanding their

measurements


grant

mm i was wondering


mort

dusk coming?


lia

again the flightpath of schipoll, we are out of the city in the industrial zones ... closer to

TATA steel


grant

i like the low placement of the microphones

working with water leads to these low positions maybe – there is no overview


lia

so true


grant

or clear sense of perspective – was that what @ mort meant by 'hard to piece together! i

wonder


lia

below sea level


mort

hmm


grant

thank you very Much Lia Mazzari for sharing HydroFiles!


mort

below city level


grant

thanks Mort Drew for the mix


mort

thank you lia !


lia

thank you !


grant

) (


lia

thanks for the mix


grant

thank you as always @radio al hara