xxxx_terrain
From 2008 to 2012, he was a professor at the UdK Berlin and headed the experimental sound design department in the master’s program Sound Studies. From 2013 to 2015, he was an associate at the GSD (Harvard Graduate School of Design) in Harvard. In 2017 a visiting lecturer in the Art Culture and Technology program at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge). In addition to his artistic practice, he collaborates with urban planners and architects and propagates (encourages, promotes) thinking with your ears as an essential part of any design process.
xxxx_terrain is an invitation to visit various marked “Listening Sites” – to linger, explore, experiment, listen and engage with their audible properties and qualities. In Arnhem and its surrounding area within walking distance, four different landscapes come together: the urban, the cultural, the industrial, and the terrestrial. Each has its own sense of time and rhythm, its unique material conditions, and different spaces of activity. All carry many layers of meaning that tell stories and sing songs. To discover and connect with them, one has to spend time there, walking around, revisiting the same spot, pausing, and listening. In this way, we can hear the information revealed and feel the emotional effects that the audible has to offer. To participate in xxxx_terrain means slowing down and getting in touch with the senses and the spaces around. The more time spent experimenting, exercising, pausing, and listening, the more we start to think with our ears.
Approximately 40 listening sites in the four different landscapes were marked and linked to a possible auditory experience. A workbook as a small booklet or as Pdf on the festival website serves as orientation.