Artist-in-Resident 2021

Artist in resident Felix at Canaveral National Seashore.

NPS/Photo

2021 Artist-in-resident Felix Blume's... Listeners

What is Listeners?
The Listeners project is a sonic map of Canaveral National Seashore through the people who live, work and play here. Rangers, neighbors, and visitors were invited to share a listening experience of their favorite place in the park. They’ve been portrayed on video while listening and are now inviting the audience to listen with them.

Félix says about this project: The residency at Canaveral National Seashore has been a unique opportunity for me to explore a beautiful natural soundscape, between islands, the lagoon, the pine woods and the ocean. It’s an area I had not visited before, and is very rich in term of sounds and biodiversity. As on many of my previous residences and projects, I am surprised by the place and the people living there. I try to understand how inhabitants listen to their daily soundscape, learning which sounds they like or not, and which places they would recommend to listen and record. I like to be guided by the encounters of people and places.

This residency has been a unique experience of learning and listening on-site, among other listeners of the park. As many of my previous projects, I’ve done it in a collaborative way, with the people living nearby and working in the park: rangers, visitors, neighbors, and other possible encounters.

The Listeners project shows the diversity of sounds existing at Canaveral through the diversity of listeners. I have involved different generations, from different backgrounds and approaches. Of course, people don’t listen equally to sounds, even being in the same place at the same moment. Our brain is constantly erasing some sounds or focusing on others. I like this subjectivity inherent in the act of listening, which is not passive at all, but on the contrary a very active state. My project is a listener's cartography of the park.

The project is participative, and the collaborators have chosen a specific place and time of the day to go and listen. The sounds of the park were amplified live in real time using microphones, then heard by the listener through headphones, as it is an easy way to focus on listening. The possibility to amplify the sounds offer a more accurate representation of the surroundings.

Each listening session has been recorded both in sound (what the microphones are capturing) and video (portrait of the listener). The material is now plotted on an interactive online map of the park, giving everyone the opportunity to listen with one of the listeners of Canaveral National Seashore.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Félix Blume is a French sound artist who has created installations and sound art throughout the world, including Chile, Mexico, Thailand, Brazil and Haiti. He says, “my work focuses on the listening experience as a shared moment during the recording, as an invitation to the audience to listen. I often work with communities in a participative way. I like to learn from places and people, from the relation between inhabitants and their environment. My microphones and sound recording gear are a pretext to meet people, to listen to them, to receive sounds and capture them. I am interested in the dialogue between humans, animals and geophonic sounds. I believe there is a very deep relation between our way of listening and our way of producing sound, how we become part of a place.” https://felixblume.com/


This program is supported by Friends of Canaveral, the Cultural Council of Volusia County, and Atlantic Center for the Arts. We welcome your personal donations to this unique program.

Open Transcript 

Transcript

Ocean, wind and wildlife sounds. No words are spoken.

Duration:

59 seconds

Félix Blume records the sounds of the seashore. Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through it's rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

Open Transcript 

Transcript

This is a natural sounds recording of Canaveral National Seashore. No word transcript detected. The following words appear on the screen towards the end of the slide. Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through it's rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

Duration:

59 seconds

This is the second selection of sound recordings by Felix Blume. Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through it's rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

Open Transcript 

Transcript

 Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through it's rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

Duration:

59 seconds

Listeners selection part three. Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through its rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

Open Transcript 

Transcript

Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through it's rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

Duration:

52.958 seconds

Listeners of Canaveral National Seashore. A sonic cartography through it's rangers, neighbors and visitors. atlanticcenterforthearts.org, www.nps.gov/cana, Felixblume.com/acasoundscape

NPS/Photo

Soundscape Map of Listeners

Courtesy of Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Soundcape Field Station.