Listening to Climate Change: Integrating Awareness & Acceptance Through a More-Than-Human Music (Wallace 2019)

How can climate change be woven into human imagination and memory through sound? This question is investigated through the design of environmentally-activated instruments, or listening devices. Participants interface with climate through these devices, devising a new sonic form of interacting with geophonic processes as they are articulated by architectural augmentations. This thesis addresses and reimagines temporal landscapes to remap and remake connections to climate through designed listening devices. Augmented interactions between humans and environmental phenomena may facilitate the development of a visceral knowledge of climatic realities. Part of this knowledge lies in the differences between human-produced music and environmentally produced sound. Participants engaging these new devices and landscapes must listen and adapt, letting go of accepted musical norms to incorporate the climate’s sonic language into their musical sensibilities. It is anticipated that this “letting go” may aid the necessary philosophical and behavioural shift towards adapting to a new climate paradigm.