Irena Pivka & Brane Zorman – garden GOround

Ljubljana, Slovenia – June 2023

Pristina, Kosovo – June 2023

Strasbourg, Apollonia / Orangerie – ongoing


Within the framework of VITAL, European cooperation project

Departure from Espace Apollonia, artistic sound walk to the Parc de l’Orangerie, return to Apollonia. 45′

The main idea of the project is based on an audio-guided sound walk, using bio-acoustic headphones specially designed for the project: with an integrated computer, software made up of sensors and a narrative sound composition have been created for the Strasbourg walk in the public space. The work was activated on Sunday 2 July 2023 and will be available at Espace Apollonia until September 2024!

The public can experience the sound work using the specially designed headphones, which are intended to be a tool for the world of the future, offering an auditory landscape. The world is becoming too crowded, too dangerous for our fragile ears, which have not been able to adapt to aggressive frequencies. These headphones offer the possibility of simultaneously listening to and mixing two main components: live environmental sounds using binaural technology and the authors’ narrative composition. The custom-made circuit boards, electronics and software are fixed and mounted on commercially available headphones.

The story of the garden GOround performance-sound walk highlights the difficult relationship between humans and plants, which is essentially based on the exploitation of the plant world by humans. The history of colonialism and plant transmigration is based on the enslavement and exploitation of nature. In the light of the growing awareness of the ecological crisis and the possibility of a better scenario for the future, there is an urgent need to change this attitude.

With the aim of bringing the plant world closer to us, the work touches on the temporal dimension through the prism of the journeys of these two very different temporalities, that of humans and that of plants, which don’t seem to offer any opportunities for exchange. It speculates on the development of a future coexistence between humans and plants.