Piazza del Rinascimento in Urbino

About
Orecchio alla Terra
Ear to the Earth



Ear to the Earth is an international network based in an annual festival in New York City that connects to similar events throughout the world. The goals of Ear to the Earth are to support environmental initiatives in music and sound art and to convey knowledge of the environment through sound.

Despite the speed of climate change that is adversely affecting all of our our eco-systems, the governments of the planet don't seem to be able to implement an immediate reversal of direction. Orecchio alla Terra, the first version of the Ear to the Earth festival in Europe, was created as a response to that situation.

In this first year, Orecchio alla Terra confronts the theme of environmental sound from diverse perspectives while exploring the meaning of the term "soundscape", which in general refers to the totality of all information in the auditory domain but also refers to the relationships within the presentation of a group of natural sounds, as in an audio documentary, or to a musical composition. At the center of our explorations of soundscapes, there are two basic questions regarding aesthetics and sociology:

Is it possible to inspire people, through music and video compositions, to listen to the sounds of the world? And can sound art, perceived from an aesthetic perspective within the art world, make a relevant contribution to real-world debates on the environment?

Fully aware that the difficult political process of redirecting energy towards the utilization of sustainable resources will happen through widespread knowledge and the pressure of public opinion, the goal of Orecchio alla Terra is to contribute towards a heightened awareness of the environment through sound in all of its formats, as performed music, as audio documentation, as installation sound art, and through relationships with visual art and video.

The festival includes two lectures, two concerts, numerous audio/video installations, soundwalks and listenings in various locations throughout the cities of Pesaro and Urbino, all with participation by pioneers in soundscape research and acoustic ecology, international practioners of sound- and video art relating to science, and environmental activists invited from Italy, Holland, the United States, and Canada.

—David Monacchi