With this “fragmented landscape” as a starting point, we decided to explore it through sound. We began collecting sound fragments from our environment: the noises of the town, the house, and our daily life. We also recorded our conversations. Normally we speak in English, but we wanted to experiment with our mother tongues —Arabic and Catalan— to create situations of “failed translations.” In these dialogues, the lack of knowledge of the other’s language distorted the meaning we wanted to convey, but at the same time opened a new form of attention, focused on rhythm, intonation, and the emotion of a voice speaking an unknown language.

We brought all these sounds together in a sound composition, which we presented in a participatory workshop. To do this, we used modified headphones that allowed us to relocate the sounds in different corners of the town, turning them into temporary listening points that moved through the street. With this proposal, we wanted to invite people to listen in a different way, activating the imagination and directing curiosity toward hidden mirages in the everyday landscape.

Documentation of the workshop