World Rivers Day is a celebration of the world’s waterways. It highlights the many values of our rivers, strives to increase public awareness, and encourages the improved stewardship of all rivers around the world. Rivers in virtually every country face an array of threats, and only through our active involvement can we ensure their health in the years ahead.
In 2005, the United Nations launched the Water for Life Decade to help create a greater awareness of the need to better care for our water resources. Following this, the establishment of World Rivers Day was in response to a proposal initiated by internationally renowned river advocate, Mark Angelo.
The proposal for a global event to celebrate rivers was based on the success of BC Rivers Day, which Mark Angelo had founded and led in western Canada since 1980. A World Rivers Day event was seen by agencies of the UN as a good fit for the aims of the Water for Life Decade and the proposal was approved. River enthusiasts from around the world came together to organize the inaugural WRD event. That first event in 2005 was a great success and Rivers Day was celebrated across dozens of countries. Since then, the event has continued to grow. It is annually celebrated on the last Sunday of every September. In 2014, several million people across more than 60 countries will be celebrating the many values of our waterways.
River Listening Lab on the Mary River
To celebrate World Rivers Day 2014 we are running River Listening workshops along the Mary River in Queensland in collaboration with the Mary River Catchment Coordinating Committee (MRCCC) and the Greater Mary Association Inc. The first will be on Saturday, September 27 at Moy Pocket near Kenilworth and the second on Sunday the 28th, near Tiaro, much closer to the river’s mouth. The Mary River is just over three hundred kilometres long with several thousand kilometres of tributaries included in its catchment. For over two decades the MRCCC has worked to foster better stewardship of not just the river and its riparian vegetation but of the whole of the catchment.
The Moy Pocket Rivercare Day will be held just to the north of Pickering bridge and will include a riparian walk led by Marc Russell as well as tree-planting, natural regeneration and some freeing of young trees engulfed by Cat’s Claw Creeper. The property is part of the Connection Road Corridor which links the biodiverse Conservation Park on top of the Kenilworth Bluff with the Mary River. The day starts at 10 am and goes till mid-afternoon. The River Listening workshop will happen from 12pm-1pm with an introduction to the project and demonstration of the River Listening hydrophone recording kits. Participants will have the opportunity to listen to the sounds of the Mary River and make their own hydrophone recording that will be published on this website in November.
The Tiaro event on Sunday the 28th of September, will be held in the Mary River Koala corridor at Petrie Park on the Mary River just north of Tiaro town. Starting at 10:00 am, the event includes koala food tree planting, and the launch of a new publication by the Greater Mary Association about the creation of the corridor. There will also be opportunities to tour the biological control facility established to fight Cats Claw creeper around the Fraser Coast region. The River Listening workshop will run from 1:30-2:30pm with an introduction to aquatic bioacoustics, hydrophone demonstrations and recording in two locations along the river. Participation in the River Listening workshops is free of charge and the resulting recordings will contribute towards a community sound installation at the 2014 Mary River Festival.
Thanks to Tanzi Smith for inviting River Listening to participate in these events.
My creative interest in rivers manifested in early environmentally engaged instrumental compositions such as River of Mirrors (2004), composed for chamber orchestra and inspired by elements of the Noosa Everglades. This work used an array of extended performance techniques to imitate the natural soundscapes, and employed repetitive textures to evoke the tannin-stained, mirrored waterways of Noosa River. The following year, in 2005, I composed Confluence, my first major multimedia environmental work commissioned for the opening of Earth Song Exhibition, during the launch of the Queensland Great Walks. Although not inspired by a specific river, Confluence drew inspiration from the characteristics of water and rivers and used hydrophone recordings as compositional source material. The piece was composed for cello, live electronics, digital projections and two dancers, which created an immersive environment in a constant state of change that was controlled live. These two projects informed the development of my largest rivers project Sound Mirrors, and the beginning of a large-body of work inspired by rivers over the last ten years.
Confluence (2005), Leah Barclay
Sound Mirrors is an interactive sound installation that responds to specific rivers across the world. During 2009 and 2010 I travelled through Australia, India, Korea, and China, capturing the sound of significant rivers and their surrounding communities. Sound Mirrors grew out of my lifelong connection with rivers and a deep affinity with water. I was inspired to explore a voice for the rivers through electroacoustic composition at a time when I felt it was becoming very important to listen to the environment.
My creative inspiration from rivers is shared by a wide spectrum of electroacoustic composers who have created works inspired by rivers across the world. Among the most pertinent is Voicing the Murray, an immersive sound installation by pioneering Australian composer Ros Bandt. The work was commissioned for the Mildura Arts Festival, and was designed to give the Murray River a voice: ‘A voice derived from all the voices impinging on its banks and surfaces’ (Bandt, 1996).
Bandt’s composition process involved several on-site recording sessions, which focused on gathering stories from the local people. She was interested in the idea of capturing endangered sounds and exploring how the soundscape of the area had changed and evolved with the impact of technology. The project was underpinned by environmental intentions; Bandt wanted to draw attention to the environmental degradation of the area, by encouraging listeners to engage in the rich soundscapes:
“I was excited at the prospect, as the Murray River is such a unique and critical habitat for the whole of Australia. It is a manmade oasis which has brought with it the by-products of man’s overuse of the environment, erosion, salination, and cultural dislocation for indigenous peoples.” (Bandt, 1986)
The electroacoustic repertoire inspired by rivers can be divided into three relatively distinct categories: works composed in the studio inspired by rivers; works drawing on environmental field recordings from rivers; and, finally, site-specific works that involve interactivity and community engagement. The first category includes iconic electroacoustic composers such as Richard Lainhart’s The Course of the River (1975), Douglas Lilburn’s Soundscape with Lake and River (1979), and Kaija Saariaho’s Trois Rivières (1994).
Italian composer David Monacchi’s electroacoustic composition Stati d’Acqua (States of Water) composed in 2006 is a most effective sonic exploration of a river. Those fortunate to experience a live performance of the work are immersed in multichannel sound diffusion that draws the listener deep into a dense sound world that at times evokes the sensation of being underwater. The work was inspired by the multiple physical transformations of water (such as evaporation and condensation) through processed field-recordings. The composition draws on field-research in Rome on the Tiber River, ranging from its springs in the Monte Fumaiolo to its outlet in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Monacchi explored many recording techniques, including an array of microphones and movements along various sound sources, such as springs, streams, waterfalls and caves (Monacchi, 2006). The final composition is presented as a 30-minute performance on a multichannel sound array with 18 loudspeakers.
Garth Paine’s composition Present in the Landscape (2011) is among the most pertinent of compositions that explores contentious environmental issues through immersive river soundscapes. This work was composed during a residency at Bundanon in New South Wales, Australia, and is an exploration of the nearby Shoalhaven River.
“Present in the Landscape specifically addresses the existence of a river, which runs across floodplains, and has had a dynamic and active life, changing direction, remapping its own presence in the landscape over centuries, as large weather events have occurred. However, a decade ago the large Tallowa dam was constructed upstream from the Bundanon property with the intention of providing drinking water to the communities on the south coast of New South Wales.” (Paine, 2011)
Shoalhaven River – Garth Paine
The damming of Shoalhaven completely transformed the river and had a profoundly negative effective on the local environment, as is apparent in the damming of many rivers worldwide. Paine spent time interviewing the community surrounding the river to capture local perspectives. This included Aboriginal men who offered a critical understanding of the river from the perspective of traditional owners. His ambisonic field recordings captured the environmental soundscapes of the river, from the jumping fish to the temporal flow of the landscape itself (Paine, 2011). Present in the Landscape was presented as a six-channel composition and has also been published as a stereo recording.
The diverse literature inspired by rivers is impossible to capture in a short article, but this collection of works would not be complete without mention of Annea Lockwood’s trilogy of river sound maps. The trilogy begins with A Sound Map of the Hudson River (1982), and is followed by A Sound Map of the Danube (2005) and A Sound Map of the Housatonic River (2010). Lockwood has experimented with river soundscapes from the mid-60s, but the sound maps solidified her process of creating an ‘aural tracing’ (Lockwood, 2010) and of documenting the entire length of the river through sound. The sound maps are realised as multichannel installations with the recorded sites located on a wall map accompanied by a time-code so the listener can locate the current soundscape at any given time. Lockwood’s sound maps are certainly rich creative responses to the rivers, and they are also functional and accessible insights into their respective acoustic ecologies.
The Noosa River positioned in a UNESCO listed Biosphere of Australia, the historic Han River flowing through the city of Seoul, South Korea, and the Pamba River in the evocative backwaters of Kerala, South India, formed the foundation of my Sound Mirrors project. The process was mirrored at each river involving three distinctive stages: on-site research, field recording and composition. Each of the stages involved various elements specific to that environment, such as community interviews and intensive study and collaborative performances. The process of working with the three specific rivers in Australia, Korea, and India was completed over the duration of three months, working in cultural immersion in each location. In addition to the three rivers, Sound Mirrors involved shorter duration projects on the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China, and the Pearl River Delta in Hong Kong. The realisation of Sound Mirrors was just as much about the cultural immersion in the rivers’ communities as it was about the creative process.
The process in the field varied from sculpting and layering sounds recorded on location to directly responding to the environment. The source materials range from hydrophone recordings deep in the Noosa River, to pilgrims chanting at dusk on the banks of the Pamba in South India. I worked intuitively with these materials in each location and attempted to capture a living aspect of culture through focusing on various sound marks of the environment. This project was produced on the road — in makeshift studios on boats, trains, riverbanks, and in hotel rooms — while drawing further inspiration from the environment. Working in the cultural context provided insight into the layers of tradition that were impossible to access without first-hand experience. Although these rich webs of history and heritage raised issues of possible cultural appropriation, every effort was made to approach this material in a culturally sensitive way. The most critical process was gathering permission from the appropriate custodians and building strong relationships with the rivers’ communities. By producing these works on location, as opposed to returning to the studio, I was able to gain feedback from the local community and collaborators, which was invaluable for my research process.
The Sound Mirrors installation has been exhibited a number of times, including the Noosa Regional Gallery in Australia, the Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore, India, Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Siva Zona Contemporary Art Space in Croatia. Eleven of the resulting compositions were released as an album, titled Transient Landscapes, and these works have also been programmed at various conferences and festivals. I also began performing Transient Landscapes as a live work where I create a multi-channel mix of the river soundscapes in real-time in response to the performance location. This project has no doubt brought attention to the soundscapes of rivers, yet it is unlikely to have made any significant contribution to the conservation of river systems. While it was a positive learning curve, I recognised the potential for creative projects to have a wider impact when combined with ongoing community engagement, interdisciplinary collaborations and multi-platform outcomes. Sound Mirrors was a starting point for these ideas, and laid the foundation for River Listening.
One of the most critical outcome of Sound Mirrors was realising the opportunities for using hydrophone recordings as a measure for river health. While I could never predict exactly what the river would sound like when I lowered the hydrophones into the water, the resulting recordings were always extremely revealing about the overall health of the river.
The sounds of dolphins, fish and shrimp in the Mary River
This became even more apparent in my next large river venture, The DAM(N) Project, a large-scale interdisciplinary art project that connects Australian and Indian communities around the common concern of global water security. The project is focused on community capacity building and the creation of multi-platform creative content that can be disseminated internationally. The outcomes present the lives of remote communities in the Narmada Valley of North India, which were displaced by large-scale dam development securing hydropower for Indian cities.
As with all of my creative explorations of rivers, hydrophone field recordings have become an integral element to my practice. I am always eager to hear beneath the surface of the river, as the soundscapes reveal so many qualities, including the active marine life. Unfortunately, during our first field trip I found the hydrophone recordings in the Narmada River featured very little marine interaction, similar to the stagnant and lifeless bodies of water in the Narmada villages that were virtually silent. I was reminded of a quote from Bawabhai, an Adivasi (Indigenous) from the village of Jalsindhi in the Narmada Valley. He said the river had been silenced by the dam and lost its cleaning function, which had led to illness in the community. “Narmada used to be a narrow, melodious river, where we could walk down through the forests to its edge. Earlier the river was melodious — now it has become a silent river”. The stagnant water now carried countless viruses and diseases, which have resulted in many people fearing the water rather than worshipping it. It is inspiring to find someone that thinks about the river in sound, yet tragic to see the cultural and spiritual ramifications of damming a river for local Adivasi communities.
While the pure hydrophone recordings provided limited source material, the soundscapes with human interaction recorded from a boat were quite compelling. The sound of people washing dishes and clothes on the riverbank, splashes as people climbed into the boat and the creaking panels of the wooden vessel as we ventured down the river. The unpredictable recordings of the hydrophone abruptly dragging along the riverbed from our moving boat are not the most pleasing auditory experiences, but they captured some of the dystopian energy of this landscape. While this is perceived as a distorted sound, and something I would probably delete in other circumstances, I was compelled to make use of this recording in the project.
The DAM(N) Project Dancers on the Narmada River
The other memorable field recordings were from the Jobat dam, one of the larger dams that submerged 1216 hectares across 13 villages, allegedly displacing 595 families. The metal steps along the dam wall acted like resonators propelling my footsteps along the bridge. I was struck by the silence of the dam and the intensity of my presence amplified in the soundscape. In situations where the hydrophone recordings provide limited source material, I compose based on my response to the landscape. In this example you can hear the Jobat dam recordings and the propeller of our small boat travelling down the river.
As rivers across the world continue to be impacted by human activity, the River Listening project is designed to extend on the existing creative work I have done in this area to explore a process that could bring attention to rivers as ecological entities that deserve respect and conservation. River Listening is deeply grounded in the scientific possibilities of hydrophone recording and the role of community engagement and multi-platform presentations. The process involves not just composing (in the traditional sense of the word) but collaborating with the community, listening to each river, and, at each site, responding and adapting to other processes that may emerge.
Field recording workshops in the Narmada Valley with Leah Barclay
References
Barclay, L. (2013). Sonic Ecologies: Exploring the Agency of Soundscapes in Ecological Crisis. Soundscape The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, 12(1), 2013, 29 ‐32.
Bandt, R. (1996). Voicing the Murray. Retrieved from http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/web/biogs/P000352b.htm
Krause, B. (2012). The great animal orchestra. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Lainhart, R. (1975). The Course of the River. [LP]. USA: Vicmod records.
Lilburn, D. (2004). Complete Electro-Acoustic Works. [CD]. New Zealand: Atoll.
Lockwood, A. (1989). A Sound Map of the Hudson River. [CD]. USA: Lovely Music.
Lockwood, A. (2004). Sound mapping the Danube River from the Black Forest to the Black Sea: Progress report, 2001–2003. Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 5(1), 32–4.
Lockwood, A. (2007). What is a river. Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, 7(1), 43–4.
Lockwood, A. (2008). A Sound Map of the Danube. [CD]. USA: Lovely Music.
Lockwood, A. (2010). A Sound Map of the Housatonic River. Retrieved from http://www.annealockwood.com/compositions/housatonic.htm
Marshall, A. (2002) The Unity of Nature: Wholeness and Disintegration in Ecology and Science. London: Imperial College Press.
Monacchi, D. (2006). Stati d’Acqua: Eco-acoustic compositions. [CD]. New York: Electronic Music Foundation Ltd.
Paine, G. (2011). Present in the landscape. Retrieved from http://www.eartotheearth.org/artistswork/paine_110506.html
Saariaho, K. (2002). Six japanese gardens & Trois Rivières Delta. [CD]. Paris: INA-GRM.
“Look at the plan of London through the ages. What is it that has remained constant throughout? The river Thames. … yet sadly, the city has until now looked away from its river rather than look at it” (Sinha-Jordan 2005).
Leah Barclay listening to the Thames – Photo by Simon Linke
As a pilot project for River Listening, the River Listening team was invited to develop an audiovisual installation at the 25th Anniversary of Electronic Visualisation and the Arts(EVA) in London, July 2014. Based on a live hydrophone audio-stream from the Thames, the installation deliberately inhabited a liminal space at the arts-science nexus, seeking to highlight the positive contributions each domain can have on the other, and document an emerging model of aesthetic-scientific exploration.
Listening to the Thames explores real-time hydrophonics as a means to revealing the hidden world beneath the river surface. Drawing on ‘holistic’ bioacoustics approaches to ecosystem health assessment it adopts a creative approach to an informative audio-visual interpretation of the riverine environment.
Toby Gifford & Leah Barclay experimenting with hydrophones
In our EVA London supporting paper, Toby Gifford wrote “Since the dawn of agriculture, rivers have been central to civilisation, affording river cities such as London as thriving hubs of commerce. The health of a river and the community it supports are intertwined. We see and smell the river, yet what do we really know of its secrets below the surface? An open wound we may see, and a gangrenous decay we may smell, but who will hear if the river weeps?”. The Thames was a fantastic river to experiment with the possibilities of River Listening, as it is such an iconic river system in one of the worlds most renowned cities.
Simon Linke and Toby Gifford listening to the Thames
We spent five days monitoring the sounds of the Thames and discovered it was a very tidal river. Fortunately we were able to install the hydrophones on the HMS Belfast, originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, permanently moored on the River Thames. The live stream was hosted on PlaceStories, and supported by Feral Arts. While I have used PlaceStories for previous river projects and regularly used the webcasting interface, this was the first time we streamed hydrophones continuously for five days.
Leah installing hydrophones on the HMS Belfast
The live stream formed the foundation for our installation at EVA London, where I composed a series of short soundscapes responding to the Thames that were mixed with the live stream. Toby Gifford created a visualisation of the live stream and we experimented with different diffusion methods throughout the conference. I was particularly interested in gaining feedback online and we used the hashtag #RiverListening to encourage people to listen to the live stream and talk about what they could hear.
We found that the sound of the Thames was dramatically different from rivers in Australia. While it’s often quite a surprise to hear exactly what sounds emerge once the hydrophones are in the water, the Thames was incredibly loud, to the point that at times it sounded like a busy highway. Many people in London were surprised by the intensity of the sound, and this provided a great starting point to talk about the value of bioacoustics in understanding river health.
Listening to the Thames: Day One Field Recording Sample
The Listening to the Thames project gained the attention of the marketing department at Griffith University and we were happy to be joined by Bridget French, Griffith Sciences Development and Alumni Manager to document and promote the event in London. Griffith University also held a VIP event for Listening to the Thames at the Savoy Hotel to officially launch the project with a guest list that included high profile media identities and organisations associated with river preservation, such as the River Thames Society.
Listening to the Thames was a successful pilot for River Listening and certainly highlighted the diversity of global river soundscapes, the emerging interest in acoustic ecology and confirmed that in our current state of environmental crisis, this type of assessment is critical to understanding the rapid ecological changes taking place across the globe. By unveiling the usually hidden sonic aspect of the underwater environment, we hope to increase awareness of the value of aquatic bioacoustics in comparing and gauging the health of rivers.
Listening to the Thames: Installation sample by Leah Barclay
We hope to return to London and extend the project to multiple locations along the Thames in collaboration with local communities over the coming years, based on the results from River Listening in Australia.
Leah Barclay and Toby Gifford listening to the Thames. Photo by Simon Linke
Queensland based science communication researcher Ruth O’Connor also joined us in London. She wrote a short article about the project on her Stream Stories website available online here
In our current state of environmental crisis, biodiversity assessment is critical to understanding the rapid ecological changes taking place across the globe. In the last ten years, there has been a strong emergence of non-invasive monitoring involving auditory recordings of the environment. This emerging field is commonly referred to as soundscape ecology and shares many parallels with other fields, including bioacoustics. Soundscape ecology has an array of creative possibilities that have been deeply explored by practitioners including Bernie Krause. The literature suggests it will continue expanding within scientific fields, with a particular focus on the importance of soundscape conservation, the impact of noise pollution, and the value of soundscapes to assist with biodiversityanalysis. There are now a growing number of international projects and scientific institutions embracing methods of bioacoustics in biodiversity analysis of aquatic environments.
River Listening is a practice-led interdisciplinary collaboration of freshwater biodiversity, virtual technologies, soundscape ecology and environmental sound art to explore methods of hydrophonic recording, soundscape analysis and virtual dissemination. Despite the rapidly growing interest in emerging auditory fields such as bioacoustics, there is yet to be standardised approaches to field recording and interpreting the data. While scientists have developed advanced software tools for species recognition, there is a growing need to consolidate the available tools and explore the value of listening to the data in new ways. There are also exciting possibilities to make this data available for a wider audience through digital technology and creative collaborations.
Leah Barclay recording on the Noosa River
The River Listening Synapse residency specifically involves field labs on the identified rivers experimenting with various hydrophonic recording techniques and sound processing. The labs each involve a three-week immersive engagement process, which is based on a methodology developed during my doctoral research. The labs involve three daily recording sessions; sunrise, midday and dusk. Each recording session is approximately two hours, with a custom-made quadrophonic hydrophone rig attached to a moving kayak. These recordings are databased onsite, and made available online for analysis at the Australian Rivers Institute.
In addition to the kayak recordings, other field kits are distributed on location to capture sounds without human intervention. These include a stationary hydrophone that records from the same location during the entire field lab and a series of smaller field kits to capture the soundscapes above the water. The additional field kits are useful to analyse particular sound sources in the hydrophone recordings that might be difficult to identify. The recording sessions are accompanied by community workshops and creative development experiments involving streaming and processing the hydrophone recordings. The team will facilitate a range of community events and will also collaborate with existing programs in each river community.
The field labs are designed in an open format and encourage collaborations with the local community. The future outcomes will be made available through a virtual sound map and public listening sessions in Queensland, Australia. The database of recordings will form the foundation for a series of experiments at the Australian Rivers Institute to explore new methods in understanding and analysing the data from a scientific and creative perspective.
I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with The Australian Rivers Institute (ARI) on River Listening. The Australian Rivers Institute is Australia’s largest university aquatic ecosystem research group with globally recognised expertise in river, catchment and coastal ecosystems. ARI is currently leading a range of innovative projects revolving around catchment and river ecosystem processes, aquatic biodiversity and conservation, and aquatic ecosystem monitoring and assessment.
While I’m working with several researchers at ARI, the scientific grounding of the River Listening collaboration is directed by ARI Senior Research Fellow Dr Simon Linke, one of Australia’s leading freshwater conservation scientists, whose pioneering work in biomonitoring and river conservation planning has been used by agencies and NGOs from South East Queensland to the Congo. Simon has a strong interest in bioacoustics and was introduced to me Dr Toby Gifford, a music technologist from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Dr Gifford is a world-leader in real-time audio processing, machine listening and automated musical scene description who has worked with the ARI to explore future frameworks for a real-time bioacoustic wildlife population monitoring network for Australian waterways. We hope some of the results from River Listening can be incorporated into the broader aquatic bioacoustics visions of ARI in the future.
As the international interest in the emerging auditory fields of bioacoustics and acoustic ecology continues to expand, there are clear opportunities to harness virtual technologies to develop accessible community engagement around the creative and scientific possibilities of listening to the environment. River Listening provides a model to develop a truly interdisciplinary approach at the critical stage of creative development and it is anticipated the future results will be beneficial to national ecosystem monitoring programs. I also hope that River Listening could become a catalyst for community engagement and interdisciplinary thinking at a time when the conservation and management of aquatic ecosystems is a critical priority. At the conclusion of the River Listening labs in Queensland, the research team hope to expand this project across Australia and beyond.
River Listening is a research collaboration between independent artist Dr. Leah Barclay and the Australian Rivers Institute to explore new methods for acoustically monitoring four Queensland river systems: the Brisbane River, the Mary River, the Noosa River and the Logan River. The project involves the establishment of site-specific listening labs to experiment with hydrophonic recording and sound diffusion to measure aquatic biodiversity including fresh-water fish populations – a key indicator of river health. River Listening fundamentally explores the creative possibilities of aquatic bioacoustics and the potential for new approaches in the management and conservation of global river systems.
In 2014, The Australian Rivers Institute (ARI) and
Dr. Leah Barclay were awarded a prestigious Synapse grant to support the development of River Listening. Synapse is an initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) that supports collaborations between artists and scientists in Australia. This project extends Barclay’s long-term engagement in acoustic ecology to explore the creative possibilities of aquatic bioacoustics in collaboration with an interdisciplinary research team.
