‘Dear Human’ is a multisensory guide created by artist Christa Donner for Chicago’s West Ridge Nature Park, activating messages from non-human residents: its pond, a resident tick, a tree, and others. Pair your smartphone with headphones for an immersive experience merging narration with the existing soundscape through site-specific prompts to listen, touch, and find your place within the local ecology. Transcript of this track follows.
(water flowing, ducks softly quacking nearby)

Dear Human,
Look at you. Your body, reflected in my surface. All warped and crinkled up when the wind blows. All the stuff that’s tugging at you, just leave it here for a while. Let the ducks swim through it. \\\ Yesterday a family came by and I heard a snatch of conversation — the smaller one was telling one of the bigger ones about a dream she’d had. \\\ Maybe it sounds silly, but I hadn’t thought about that before: what are human dreams like?
Do you ever dream about the ocean? \\\ Sometimes the sound of cars streaming nearby lulls me into sleep, and my molecules remember what it is to rise up as a huge, foamy wave, and to then sink down again. (Whshhhhhhh. Whhhshhhhhh. Whshhhhhhh) \\\ Look at me, dear human. Look at us. No, really. Look into me, past your reflection. There are places where you can see deeper, under a shadow or near a shallow edge. The shapes of my soft sludginess, of rotting leaves and old bottles. In this form my pond-ness includes plants, sediments, calcium, fish. Under the surface there are more living things than you can imagine. I evaporate and condense over and over again, and eventually some of me will move through your body, too.\\\ Have you ever dreamed you could float, leave gravity behind? Of course you have. If we stand here long enough, we can all remember what it is to be a cloud. \\\ Close your eyes and feel the weight of your body. \\\ Take a deep breath in, and feel the tiny droplets of moisture all around you - and inside you, too. \\\ Breathe out, and feel the liquid in your body evaporate into the air above us with each breath. \\\ We are made of the same water. Water borrowed from the skies, from the rivers, from the winds. Through millennia the water that inhabits your body has been through the Mississippi, in icy mountain tops in Argentina, and in plant cells in Nepal. \\\ The water in you remembers all these journeys. \\\As you mingle with other molecules, find your own strong memory of water. Feel its temperature and weight. Find the smell of it.\\\ I know this part of you well. I know the rain, just as I know the water in your bathtub. They travel through soil, through chemical filtration, through living bodies. With every cycle something is added, and something is taken away. Microscopic messages from landscapes and bloodstreams. Limestone and iron oxide, medicines, plastic residue, drain cleaners, laundry soaps. The water is changing. And all the organisms that need water to live, you are changing too. \\\ The smallest droplets have gotten heavier with the weight of remembering, and as they join together they begin to fall. As you return to your human body, let the fluid move with the memory. Send a signal to let us know what you’ve found.

Pond

Brooklyn-based composer Elori Saxl explores a realm where orchestral arrangements meet dance music sensibilities. 

Tracklist: https://stadiumsandshrines.com/e81-elori-saxl

S&S Radio

S&S Radio - E81: Elori Saxl’s ‘Classical Music that Makes Me Feel Like I’m at the Club’

info: https://radio.syg.ma/episodes/prosthetic-sentiments-02-cerpintxt-x-stephan-barrett

prosthetic sentiments

prosthetic sentiments 02 – cerpintxt x Stephan Barrett

Boiler Room Berlin : Laurel Halo, Errorsmith, Afrikan Sciences, M.E.S.H, Dj Richard

[Broadcasted on December 11th 2013]

boilerroom.tv

M.E.S.H 60min Boiler Room Berlin Mix

Ties

Study I

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An investigation into fourth-world undercurrents in Japanese ambient and pop music, years 1980-1986. Mixed 2010.

Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo (2010, Expanded)

composer/musician/whatevs, sound & installation artist, started otherpeoplespixels. i live in chicago.

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