Heidi Holmström

50hz conference call focuses on temporality of acoustic ecologies of a place. Part of a research project Some places only exist through voices, the project focuses on the importance of hearing. To hear, we must listen.

While landscape is often described as visible features of an area of land, sounding becomes essential in re-constructing these temporalities where over time things change and get lost - and which these sounds inhabit. The contrast in between the constructed landscapes and nature can be realised for example how birds are inhabiting the electricity poles around the landscapes of cities. As not fully becoming a part in the electricity circuit, the birds use the power lines to seek rest, shield and to get a point of view. The adaptation occurs on these electricity lines, as the birds use them as some sort of replacement for trees; It becomes their momentary ‘seat'.

While these landscapes change, the nature that surrounds it does too. Since nature doesn’t respond to symmetry, it forms a polyphonic score of the present.

Finally having ' seat at the table' , the 12 conference speakers transmit the body of the birds. Their sounds, communication- and alarm calls forms an asymmetric score of their sonic qualities, which introduces as what joy and urgency sounds like at the same time.

Site-specific focus in The Netherlands, the audio consists of Amsterdam wildlife footage and field recordings made in Moorderlicht, which is one of the last places in the Netherlands where wooden electricity poles run energy.