LIVESTREAM | SOUNDbath

PROJECT:

Taking place along qathet waterways, LiveStream | Soundbath is a progression of work and activities evolving from lived experience in the qathet area. The project was launched and tested as part of Cultural Adaptations: Radical Reimagining symposium and includes collected video + soundscapes, imagining and exploring place based environmental change.

The first collective wading took place Sept 24, 2022 at Teeskwat, at the river access, preceded and followed by a series of talks and engagement sessions around local waterways.

RESEARCH:

Through video/audio collection, water methodology discussions, landwalks, collective wading and poetic responses, participants were asked to consider the life of waterways and how they have evolved over time. Engagement activities were set up alongside local waterways and riparian corridors, foregrounding the environmental and cultural resonance of these sites. The resulting installation consists of a 12 channel live fed video stream of natural waterways looped with dissonant audio soundscape. The artist team is interested in research collection of playing back water sounds as a form of sonic enrichment into places that have experienced dramatic human caused change.

We are losing sounds through climate change, and the artists are trying to collect, record and play back the sounds into the places where they would have once been. This “playing places” is an experiment in which the sounds of healthy ecosystems (in this case waterways) are played into degraded areas in order to attract life back into them.

returning language, stories, and sounds.

INSTALLATION:

A place specific installation recreating versions of the site where it is shown, specifically the Alberni and Joyce Street intersection, where a public library and civic arts building are now located. Lying in the middle of a city now paved over - creeks, and perhaps waterfalls, would have once run downslope through lush temperate rainforest. Now diverted and flowing in culverts through residential neighbourhoods, parks, commercial areas, box stores, parking lots, over and under roads, these waterways eventually enter the sea at various points. 

Through waterflow and sedimentation, these waterways have been shaping our collective spaces since time immemorial - wearing down soil and rock while carrying nutrients to the river flora and fauna that in turn provide life and stability to the riverbanks. These waterways have been shaped by dams, erosion, construction, waste, power generation, recreation, farming, forestry, blackberries and ivy.