What is the sound of the climate emergency? Can practices such as listening and soundwalking allow us to apprehend its magnitude?

In “Klinein 01 – Arga”, a soundwalk along the banks of the river Arga between Pamplona and Huarte in Navarre has been modulated and transformed with datasets from the NSIDC Sea Ice Index, which contains details on the evolution of the surface of sea ice on the planet since 1978.

Thus, “Klinein 01 – Arga” attempts to question conventional notion of soundscape, and is a demonstration of the possibilities of soundscape- and data-synthesis, beyond mere data sonification techniques. The listener can not only follow the changing soundscape along the banks of the river Arga – they can also listen to the data of climate change. The resulting datascape attempts to insert otherness into our sound environment in the current context of climate collapse.

“Klinein 01 – Arga” was produced in November 2020. It was premiered in the “Sonido y Antropoceno” broadcast programme of the December 2020 Tsonami Festival in Valparaíso, Chile, and was also included in this year’s Borealis Festival Radio Space in March 2021.