Gleb Glonti
JUST TAKE TIME TO LISTEN
I have been doing field recordings for over 15 years, I came to the conclusion that the best field recordings I did were those that I haven't recorded.

That means that instead of recording and fussing with the recorder, mics, and cords, I chose to listen carefully and memorize it.

Over time, it grew into a sound study project Just Take Time To Listen — a study of the human relation with public spaces and buildings through the soundscape.


DIRECT AND INDIRECT PERCEPTION

In the original acoustic setting, the direct listener is present at the creation of the sound phenomenon at the place and time of its origin. His hearing is accompanied by vision and perception of other sensory modalities.

The mediated listener also listens with his two ears, but he listens to what the loudspeaker produces while in a different place, at a different time, and in other conditions from the origin of the original event.
SOUND STUDY, SOUND MAP
It is the attention to different acoustic environments and the desire to share direct experiences that contributes to the initiation of the project Just Take Time To Listen.

For those who start drifting, I propose to experience precisely the situations in different spaces, determining some of them and, sometimes, designating the possible optics of perception.

Based on the polymodality of perception, the author includes the sound layer in the space of representation, focusing on it, but does not exclude other modalities of perception, which are also taken into account in psychogeographic mapping, as well as changes during the time of day, attention to the dynamics of social activity and the hierarchy of social groups. inside space, considering climatic fluctuations, the anthropological component, etc.

The author proposes space as an unknown object for perception, in order to obey the impulses of the territory and the meetings that take place on it (Guy Debord) or, to take a broader view, situations of recognition and rediscovery of oneself.

MURMANSK EDITION 2020

Murmansk is an industrial city — a port, which is reflected through the dominant feature of industrial sounds: cranes in a port, a railway junction. All that exists in natural sounds of water, seagulls and wind. Significant, but with seasonal restrictions, are the sounds of interaction with snow: steps, the sound of shovels that remove snow, snow removal equipment.

"On my last afternoon in Murmansk, during a break in the blizzard, I headed out to experience Glonti's urban acoustic intervention, Just Take Time to Listen, carrying a map bearing the locations it was taking place in. Initially, I was stumped: despite standing, as requested, inside the door of the railway station and by the sea terminal, there was no sign of speakers or any hint of an installation, acoustic or otherwise.

Then, as the light came down, the penny dropped: Glonti was asking me to listen to the particular sonic textures of the city itself. I tried again, closing my eyes and trying to ignore the cold seeping into my fingers. Heard from a railway bridge, there was the rasp of a worker's shovel scraping snow, mingling with the grumbling of container lifts at the seaport and the occasional distinctive toy-like whistle of a Russian train. By the arts college, there was the rustle of fir trees and the churning swoosh of cars negotiating ice, in counterpoint to the foghorn-like vocals of a busker yelling his way through 1970s Russian rock. I'd never quite heard anything like it."

Andrew Dickson
The Guardian



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