Zugzwang: Installation view

Ars Electronica Festival 2020: In Kepler’s Gardens

Zugzwang explores how a non-human-centered approach to ways in which the use of technology can help us tune in to our companion species & environments. Though sound is omnipresent, we have problems understanding. Miscommunication and distortion happen constantly. Can listening become a central asset in learning about our environment?

The attempt to tune-in with our environments opens possibilities to critically discuss questions around listening, talking, and connecting with all our companions, living and non-living. Listening doesn’t merely extend to caring for each other, but to eavesdropping on other species to prevent threats.

But though sound is omnipresent, we have problems understanding it. Miscommunication and distortion are constant. Can listening once again become a central asset to learn about our environment? Though access to machine learning allows us to interpret planetary sounds, will this prevent further misunderstandings? How can we avoid a too human-centered perspective and start to think as a connected network, resonating on Earth?

Zugzwang is an 8-channel sound/single-channel video installation, collaboratively created by composer Samuel Hertz and freshwater ecologist/visual artist Christina Gruber for Ars Electronica Festival 2020. Spatializing frequency-sorted recordings of sediment transportation in the Mississippi and Danube Rivers, as well as recorded documentation of underwater sound pollution, Zugzwang makes available a mode of machine-listening, recontextualized as a new way to hear and understand increases of flows and volumes of river erosion.

Project Acknowledgements:

AMRO – Art Meets Radical Openness, servus.at Research Lab, Natalia Domínguez Rangel, Tega Brain, Johann Aigner, Institut für Hydrobiologie und Gewässermanagement, Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Sturgeon recordings courtesy of Dr. Chrys Bocast, Divergent Arts Ltd, Colorado, USA