When dissident listening resonates in the digital age

BarcelonaElectronic music, soundscapes, and artificial intelligence converge in the collective compositions of the group Ekho (Magda Polo, Adrien Faure, Toni Costa, and Nerea Martínez). This group is more than an artistic ensemble; it's a space for research and creation where audience participation is paramount and where listening is conceived as a practice of resistance. It's not just about composing music or sound art, but about intervening in how we perceive the world around us. Therefore, after more than three years of research in sound art and having proposed the concept of hybrid conceptual music (HCM), I propose a new concept: dissident listening (DLL).

The work BAR-CIELO-ONDA, which will premiere at Sónar on June 12, It is a clear example of this dissident listening. Composed from sound archives from the Freesound platform, electronic compositions, and algorithmic analysis processes, the piece is articulated in three symbolic layers: "BAR," as a meeting space, social noise, and a reference to the earth, to the ground we walk on every day; "CEL," as an acoustic and poetic horizon that serves as our roof; and "ONA," as sonic matter that passes through us and shapes us through the seawater. From this structure, I propose a reinterpretation of the city beyond postcards, summoning sounds that often go unnoticed—the noise of subway doors, the residual sounds of a party, the wind, the propulsion of airplanes, a few poetic verses that speak to us of the new narrative—of a new narrative of a city. Ultimately, I propose an epistemological shift that questions many things in the field of music, but above all, it questions inherited auditory hierarchies: what we hear in a harmonious, consonant way, what we classify as music... From this perspective, I propose a critical experience that leads us to reconfigure our productive and tourist logics of the city.

At a time when the sound sphere is saturated with commercial stimuli and attention is a scarce commodity, I advocate for "dissident listening," which is a form of sensorial dissidence. It's a call to pause, to perceive, to listen to what doesn't want to be heard, to practice active and critical listening to what surrounds us and what makes us. It's also a way of inhabiting the world through nuance, fragility, and an aesthetic commitment to what resonates and, often, makes us uncomfortable.

Through BAR-CIELO-ONDA, we will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of a platform like Freesound, a collaborative sound archive under Creative Commons licenses that has revolutionized the way we understand and share audio material and that was created in Barcelona and not in any other city. BAR-CIELO-ONDA not only commemorates this important contribution born in Barcelona, ​​​​but also highlights the creative potential of this type of collaborative platforms and causes the ear to become an instrument of deprogramming, and sound art, a tool to imagine the Barcelona that is, but also the one that is the fruit of each one's imagination. hidden, but significant patterns. The ability of AI to analyze, process and generate sound material opens new avenues of exploration, allowing the creation of unprecedented sound textures and structures and the representation of aspects that, in the case of BAR-CIELO-ONDA, makes it easier for us to obtain sounds created from the panot of the flower of the city tiles, from the air that allows us to breathe as an inversion of thesky line or the degree of salinity of seawater. The goal is for the audience to delve into different layers of sound, deconstruct their elements (in the style of Derrida), and establish a personal and meaningful relationship with what they hear through a deep immersion in sound as a vehicle for knowledge, emotion, and reflection.

BAR-CIELO-ONDA It is a sonic portrait of Barcelona that goes beyond its monuments and visual icons. Through the juxtaposition of everyday sounds, noises, fragments of conversations, and urban environments, the work invites the listener to rediscover the sonority of the city from an unusual perspective. In this sense, the work promises to be an auditory journey that will invite us to listen to the city with new ears and reflect on the role of sounds in the construction of our individual and collective identity.

Challenging dominant narratives, questioning sonic hierarchies, and paying attention to silenced voices becomes an act of resistance and a way to build a richer and more complex understanding of the reality around us and listen to it differently, through what I call "dissident listening."