Our goal
Our goal is to create a worldwide community of musicians, sound artists, scientists, environmental activists, and an interested public, based on the compelling idea that environmental sound art can inspire in us an emotional involvement with the environmental issues that we face today.
Our agenda
Our agenda is:
To maintain an email listserv and forum where people interested in environmental sound can meet and exchange ideas, information, and sounds, thereby creating channels for global communication that foster worldwide community.
To create new dialogues and deepen existing ones between environmental activists, scientists, sound artists, and an interested public, thereby defining an interdisciplinary groundwork to provide contexts for environmental sounds.
To produce public events in New York City and elsewhere, exploring creative formats that mix conference, installation, performance, and a range of artist- environmentalist conversations and interchange, thereby bringing people together in an interdisciplinary setting to share a learning experience.
To support, promote, and publicize environmental events produced by others in locations throughout the world, thereby encouraging others to produce public events and become active members of the community.
To support, promote, and publicize the work of musicians and sound artists whose work is based on environmental materials and issues, thereby disseminating ideas through the community.
To encourage and support documentation of our natural and man-made environments, including research and analysis, thereby enlarging the scope of our material resources and knowledge of the environment.
To disseminate information and materials, including CDs and books, thereby providing any member of Ear to the Earth with access to resources that may not otherwise be available.
Recording Times Square around the clock, September 2008
Joel Chadabe, president of Electronic Music Foundation, the parent organization for Ear to the Earth, writes:
"Our idea is that cities can be understood by listening to them. The Ear to the Earth festival in 2008 focused on the launch of New York Soundscape, a panoramic portrayal of New York City's personality and urban ecology in sound. New York Soundscape is a multi-year project that will culminate in a comprehensive collection of documentary field recordings, music and sound art compositions, and multimedia, created by artists, students, and New Yorkers from all walks of life.
"New York Soundscape is a major artistic and preservation activity. It is also a social experiment in bringing people from diverse backgrounds and with different perspectives together in a common creative civic project.
"It also has educational possibilities. We ask: What is the learning potential in creating digital art based on environmental issues?
"Like New York itself, the theme contains myriad variations. The works of the participating artists, among them Walter Branchi, Francisco Lopez, Agnieszka Roginska, Paul Geluso, Robert Rowe, Tom Beyer, Alvin Curran, Marina Rosenfeld, Michael Schumacher, Miya Masaoka, LoVid, Richard Lainhart, Andrea Polli, Charlie Morrow, and myself, vary widely in artistic concept, in sound, and in performance. It was a strong beginning. And we're now looking for support to make the project grow to realize its full artistic, cultural, and educational potential."
SITES
EMF :: Arts Electric :: EMF Productions :: Ear to the Earth :: CDeMusic :: EMF Media :: EMF Institute