Artist Prompt: Listening Exercise + Ocean Sounds
At Dia, our education department works closely with artists. These artist-designed prompts encourage people of all ages to connect with their surroundings as they relate to the body and find ways to be creative within the home.
Listening Exercise + Ocean Sounds
Designed by Audra Wolowiec
“Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”
—Pauline Oliveros, “Sonic Meditations,” 1974
Listening Exercise
This listening exercise is inspired by the composer Pauline Oliveros. She developed exercises called “deep listening” exercises to become better listeners and to learn how to listen with the entire body. She describes deep listening as “listening in every possible way to everything possible, to hear no matter what you are doing.”
Try this at home by walking or sliding slowly across the floor.
Absorb all sounds into your body from the bottoms of your feet.
What does it feel like?
Try walking on different surfaces.
Does it sound differently wearing socks or with bare feet?
Can you listen with any other parts of your body?
What does it feel like to listen with your hands?
Are there any animals that you can think of that might move or listen like this?
Ocean Sounds
Imagine that you are near the ocean.
What does the air feel like?
Are you on the shore, out at sea, or underwater?
Can you draw, write, or move to describe your ocean?
How does the water sound as it meets the shore, one wave after another?
Are the sounds loud or quiet?
Can you recreate the sound of the ocean with only your voice or breath?
Allow your breath to become the waves.
Try this a few times.
Then record your ocean sounds.
The recordings will be compiled into a collective chorus, an ocean of sound.
Tip: For inspiration, try searching YouTube for different ocean sounds from around the world.
We would like to see your creations and add a selection of them to the blog. Please share images and sound recordings of your work by emailing submissions@diaart.org.
Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose work oscillates between sculpture, installation, text, and performance with an emphasis on sound and the material qualities of language. Wolowiec currently teaches at Parsons School of Design in New York City and is also the founder and director of the publishing platform Gravel Projects. Wolowiec is an artist educator at Dia Beacon working with the Arts Education Program.
