Songs out of season: Climate change and the changing rhythms of wine production
Text & photo: Kaj Ahlsved The first thing that struck me when we drove up by bus from Trento to Cembra was that the slopes were filled with structures for cultivating various types of grapes for wine production. For winegrowers, climate change is a reality and brings new challenges — for example, drought, heat, heavy […]
Valley Soundscapes Near and Far
Text: Heikki Uimonen A hiking trail from Cembra to Lago Santo is accompanied by the sound of a stream running through the nearby gorge. Before reaching the woods above the village, the hiker is greeted by the sound of the revving engines of mopeds, which can be heard clearly from the valley and for miles […]
“You hear more dogs than children”: Workshop on sound and change in Cembra
Text: Kaj Ahlsved, Heikki Uimonen, Meri Kytö As a method of eliciting information from the expert listeners of the villages – the villagers themselves – SOMECO team organises public workshops during our fieldwork. Apart from that, we are aiming to present our project to those interested and to bring back the earlier research results to […]
How Not to Be Seen: Digital Ethnography and Visibility
Text: Heikki Uimonen ‘The camera is a tool for idlers, who use a machine to do their seeing for them. To draw oneself, to trace the lines, handle the volumes, organise the surface… all this means first to look, and then to observe and finally perhaps to discover…’ (Le Corbusier in Kortan 1997/2005, 28). Le Corbusier’s […]
Echoes of Cembra: Village Soundscape at the Turn of the Millennium
In 2000, the AEiC (Acoustic Environment in Change) project ventured into the picturesque Cembra Valley in Northern Italy to explore its unique sonic environment. The blog texts produced during this time offer a fascinating snapshot of a community nestled amidst steep hills, where sounds reflected off ancient stone walls seemed to echo a history shaped by both human activity and the constraints of nature.[1] Revisiting these texts today allows us to reflect on the transformations in Cembra’s sonic landscape—particularly when compared to earlier periods, such as 1975, documented in the Five Village Soundscapes study (Schafer 1975/2009).
Illness, Isolation, and Perceptions of Bells in Bissingen
What does it mean to experience a place from a single point of listening? During a field trip to Bissingen, Germany, illness confined me to my room — and offered an unexpected perspective on church bells, isolation, and the fragile rhythms of time. This personal reflection explores how soundscapes are not only heard but embodied, manifesting through the listener’s states of body-mind and creating shifting relations to community and place.