Twenty Springs - Installation view, first open studio version at ATD Dortmund, Photo credits ©SCC‘Common Grounds’ is an artistic-scientific research exploring strategies for sonifying environmental data. Initiated in 2020 by the Sono-Choreographic Collective and Julia Boike, head of Energy- and Water fluxes research group at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Potsdam. Through 2025 this research asks how a long-term collaboration between climate science and sonic arts can be translated into public experiences that offer embodied, sensorial connections to the fragile complexity of planetary systems.
Climatic changes occur on spatial and temporal scales much larger and slower than those we humans can sensorially perceive. Therefore even in the face of palpable damages to the earths atmo-, hydro-, cryo- and geo-spheres, the climate crisis still remains for many but an inaccessible, looming threat. Drawing on long term datasets from the fastest warming place on earth - the circumpolar region of the Arctic, the collective develops custom software, sonic instruments, storytelling strategies and participatory somatic practices towards producing a constellation of artistic outputs including a sound installation, a concert-lecture, a music record, a video work and an art-science publication.
‘Twenty Springs’ is a sonic environment drawing on their artistic-scientific research Common Grounds This installation uses a detailed set of hourly environmental data points recorded since 1998 at the Bayelva permafrost measurement station at the Svalbard archipelago in the high arctic region of Norway. Through custom software developed by the collective in collaboration with Tobias Grewenig, the 33 parameters of the dataset are translated and fed into an array of multi-channel sounding sculptures. Compressed into a single hour, it sonifies the first twenty springs of the current millenium as a navigable, storied, sound-light environment.
Read more here on the project’s wiki︎︎︎
Climatic changes occur on spatial and temporal scales much larger and slower than those we humans can sensorially perceive. Therefore even in the face of palpable damages to the earths atmo-, hydro-, cryo- and geo-spheres, the climate crisis still remains for many but an inaccessible, looming threat. Drawing on long term datasets from the fastest warming place on earth - the circumpolar region of the Arctic, the collective develops custom software, sonic instruments, storytelling strategies and participatory somatic practices towards producing a constellation of artistic outputs including a sound installation, a concert-lecture, a music record, a video work and an art-science publication.
‘Twenty Springs’ is a sonic environment drawing on their artistic-scientific research Common Grounds This installation uses a detailed set of hourly environmental data points recorded since 1998 at the Bayelva permafrost measurement station at the Svalbard archipelago in the high arctic region of Norway. Through custom software developed by the collective in collaboration with Tobias Grewenig, the 33 parameters of the dataset are translated and fed into an array of multi-channel sounding sculptures. Compressed into a single hour, it sonifies the first twenty springs of the current millenium as a navigable, storied, sound-light environment.
Read more here on the project’s wiki︎︎︎
Common Grounds is an artistic-scientific project and is being developed in collaboration with the Permafrost research group led by Julia Boike at Alfred-Wegener-Institut Potsdam. And with
Tobias Grewenig who works with us on the sonification methods and software.
The Audio Guide Voice is narrated by Atalya Tirosh and the audio-guide programming is by Moshe Levine.
Up to now Common Ground has been supported by the HIDA X ATD fellowship of the Academy for Theater and Digitally, the HIDA Helmholtz Information and Data Science Academy and the the wilo foundation, by the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung AWI, by a NEUSTART_Stipendium of the STIFTUNG KUNSTFONDS, by the Malmö City Cultural Council and the Sound Environment Center at Lund University.
Tobias Grewenig who works with us on the sonification methods and software.
The Audio Guide Voice is narrated by Atalya Tirosh and the audio-guide programming is by Moshe Levine.
Up to now Common Ground has been supported by the HIDA X ATD fellowship of the Academy for Theater and Digitally, the HIDA Helmholtz Information and Data Science Academy and the the wilo foundation, by the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung AWI, by a NEUSTART_Stipendium of the STIFTUNG KUNSTFONDS, by the Malmö City Cultural Council and the Sound Environment Center at Lund University.