‘Dear Human’ is a multisensory guide created by artist Christa Donner, activating messages from the non-human residents of this space: its pond, deer, trees, 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.

(sounds of traffic, distant airplanes, crickets chirping, insects and birds)

Dear Human,
Thank you for meeting us here. Go ahead and start walking in any direction that feels right to you. \\\ This land is home to billions of beings. You might know us as milkweed, coyote, tree of heaven, brown bat, coneflower. We are the deer, the night herons, hackberry, bagworms, and bees. \\\ This walk is about all of us: the multispecies community of which you are a part. Maybe it’s become hard to hear our voices over the many sounds of your own species, which have become quite… loud. So we’ve worked with others of your kind to translate and broadcast transmissions through your phone, a tool that seems to focus your attention. As our honored guest here today, you – and every lovely living thing inside and on your body, have become a part of our family here. Let’s get to know each other better! \\\ When you are ready to listen, choose a location on your map, or a being you’d like to visit. Once you’ve reached a place where you can find one of us, select the corresponding track and press “Play.” As you walk between locations, take off your headphones and really listen for a while, without adding any sounds of your own. Smell the signals we send through the air. See if you can sense what we are saying without amplification. And along the way maybe you’ll find ways to transmit messages of your own.

Welcome

"Winter Walking" is an artistic performance related to a 4-month daily walking practice I embarked on while experiencing winter in Canada in 2022. The piece is a response to my attempt at multispecies listening, combining the sounds of snow, ice, footsteps, magpies, coyotes, and other beings and writers with whom I was in listening conversation. I first created "Winter Walking" as an 8-channel sound piece at the University of Alberta's Sound Studies Institute. The track here is a stereo (2-channel) version designed for participatory walking. Take a listen and walk along!

Winterwalking - Stereo

Janet Cardiff, The Forty Part Motet

On a family road trip traveling South, a song is made in every state crossed, capturing a state of mind(each recorded on a phone).

Georgia

please listen to this 10 minute audio in a quiet place with headphones.  You will be asked to draw, so please have a pencil and paper ready.

Welcome

Donnersounds

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