Nobody Has Ever Looked At You As Intensely As I Have

• sound installation, 2023

The environmental disaster in the Oder river in 2022 drew attention to the need to consider rivers as legal persons in public debate. Spending time by the river and closely listening to it turns it into a subject, a person. The state of meditating on its apparent unevent- fulness, listening to the soundscape above and below the surface of its water, gazing into its depths – this is the practice of deep listening. The twelve-channel, self-evolving electro- acoustic composition takes into account the varying electrical conductivity of the water samples kept in vibrating jars-speakers, which changes depending on its degree of salinity (pollution) and the amount of organic matter – blooming algae. The samples have been taken from various sites within Wrocław – canals, bays, barge wintering harbours, branches of the Oder within the city. Each container is visibly shaking, gently stirring the water with growing algae. The structure of the contents changes microscopically because of the sound waves, affecting their character in turn. Each of the twelve channels is a resonance-tuned feedback loop that influences the character of the composition and the sound-generating properties of the other containers. The field recordings collected around the Oder river and used for the polyphonic sound synthesis were created as part of a grant from the Mayor of Wrocław for 2023.