Elia Moretti

PhD researcher, Institute of Musicology
Charles University, Faculty of Arts

Situated sound ecologies in Eastern Slovakia

The assumption here is that we can achieve an acoustic knowing through sound, that is articulated on listening processes as knowing in action. In this study I analyse how an experimental music theatre project could open up new spaces for dialogue and perspectives to perceive a multicultural society. The methodology encompasses an ecological approach, that emphasizes the structure of the environment itself and regards perception as the pick-up of that already structured information according three factors: the relationship between perception and action; adaptation; and perceptual learning.

What is the role of sound in perceiving and enacting the changes in contemporary society?

The sound of environments reveals territorial transformations that produce ideology and ecosystems which we belong. The project analysed in this text focused on the relationship of Roma population and nowadays Slovak society through listening. This text explores a wide range of issues regarding listening and peripherality in music and sound through the case study Symposium Musicum, which happened in the frame of the 9th edition of the contemporary theatre festival UM UM (2019). An ecological perception of sound allowed the possibility of re-elaborate the present and to challenge self-reproductive relations, as the modernist paradigm which perceives rural territories as simulacra of the past.