Collecting Silence

2014–ongoing

Participatory sound archive

 

Collecting Silences is a long-term participatory project composed of sound recordings sent by people from different parts of the world in response to a simple invitation: to record ‘What does silence sound like where you are?”

The resulting archive reveals silence not as absence, but as a fragile and situated condition shaped by geography, architecture, climate, technology, and social realities. Insects, electrical frequencies, distant traffic, winds, breathing, pauses, and domestic spaces emerge as forms of acoustic presence.

By assembling these dispersed recordings, the project constructs a collective and unstable cartography of contemporary life, where listening becomes a tool for reflecting on proximity, distance, coexistence, and the environmental conditions that structure everyday experience.The work was developed during the residency RedBull Station in downtown Sao Paulo in 2014, and was shown at the end of the residency in the basement of the building, in a dark room, where the recordings were played at the exact moment they were recorded, divided into 5 speakers mapped through the space, one for each continent.A map/infographic allowed navigation by region or time.

To listen to the tracks, please acess the Soundcloud link.