(hydro)Files
Nov 2022 - May 2024, Amsterdam, NL.
Listen here Live - [this is not a recording!]
Hydrophile_5 is a live audio hydrophone transmission broadcasting in real-time from beneath Berlage Brug, in Amsterdam. Hydrophile_5 is transmitting since April 2023....
(hydro)Files explores how live audio streaming engenders different modalities of ‘being and listening with’ our planet. Between March - December 2024, (hydro)Files consisted of a network of 8 live audio streams continuously broadcasting from various sites above and below the waterways of Amsterdam, such as canals, bridges and the dunes. By placing microphones and hydrophones across surfaces, drinking, sewage waters and giving the Amstel waters a voice.
The hydrophiles 1-8 were stereo microphones and hydrophones across surface, drinking and sewage waters. They were hidden inside bascule bridges and historic water pumping stations, they dangled off temporary cycling bridges, dipped into the busy Amstel canals and broadcast via solar power from the sand dunes.
What are the differences between listening to a field recording, a predetermined audio file, and listening to a Iive audio stream, a format that is always in a process of becoming?
For (hydro)Files, I continued to explore how live audio streaming engenders different modalities of being and 'listening with our environments, making the urban and rural waterways of Amsterdam the site of investigation.
Amsterdam has an incredibly long history in water management and a deep going relationship with water. One third of the Netherlands Is below sea level and most of its land is built on sand. River dikes prevent flooding from water flowing into the country by the major rivers Rhine and Meuse, while a complicated system of drainage ditches, canals, and pumping stations (historically: windmills) keep the low-lying parts dry for habitation and agriculture.
Since December 2022, I have an ongoing conversation with hydrological scientist Maarten Ouboter about 'giving the water a voice'. Together we located and researched important acoustic landmarks and nodes that reflect the diverse ecologles of the water networks In and around Amsterdam.
Through 'listening with' the hydrophiles 1-8 (qr codes) it is possible to tune-in to remote and hard to reach locations; it helps us to untangle the ubiquity of the water flows and the city's deep going relationship to water, furthering an ethical reorientation to more-than-human life in a shared city.
hydroFiles is research-in-progress looking into the affordances and limitations of live audio streaming and making contributions to creative discourses on environmental sound. Through the slow and durational monitoring of the digital air waves, the project engages with the emancipatory potential of technology in music and sound art, and prototypes immersive and sustainable strategies for composing new sound works with live audio streams. hydrofiles is supported by Waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht, Waternet and could not have happened without the support of Maarten Ouboter. artist research and concept: Lia Mazzari map: Maarten Ouboter, Frank van Schaik
(hydro)Files is supported by Waterschap Amstel, Gooi en Vecht and by Waternet.
This project was part of the Polyphonic Landscapes artisttic research project at Zone2Source Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), and in collaboration with ArtEZ professorhsip Theory in the Arts/ ArtEZ University (NL).
(hydro)Files interactive map with QR codes guiding listeners to live audio streams.
