Acoustic Commons is a collaboration between four small cultural organisations with a shared interest in environmental sound. Their innovative work to date has included an interactive map of live sounds, radio broadcasts following the dawn chorus around the globe, artist residencies and sound and ecology festivals. The project will develop shared creative resources for a growing number of artists, scientists and citizens who are increasingly drawn to sound as a medium to make and explore environmental connections.
The project consists of three strands:
1. Streaming technology: We will create an innovative set of digital tools that allow people to share the sounds around them in real time; an online interface where these sounds are available live and tools for using these sounds within installations, performances, games, scientific research and for environmental advocacy.
2. Innovative public events: We will extend a model of networked micro-festivals (soundcamps) across and beyond Europe, creating inclusive ways for people to engage with the environments around them through arts activities outside of conventional cultural venues. We will also further develop the unique Reveil 24 hour radio broadcast that crowdsources live sounds of daybreak around the globe on International Dawn Chorus Day and commission new public artworks for exhibition with each partner.
3. Audience development: We aim to widen and diversify our live audiences and listenership for these activities through the creation and implementation of a shared audience development strategy. This will include training, shared marketing, knowledge sharing and an end of project colloquium.
Together, these elements will lay the ground for an emerging Acoustic Commons, with artists and cultural operators working with audiences to co-produce a new field of artistic practice, alongside new ways to recognise and value soundscapes as part of Europe’s intangible cultural and environmental heritage.
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