June

Walking on a lichen

artistic research by Leonie Roessler and pantea

Walking on a lichen is a map-based audio exploration of the cities of The Hague and Barcelona. Artists pantea and Leonie had collaborated remotely between Tehran and The Hague before, and pantea had created maps of the places that they had recorded afterwards. This collaboration, published on  Lateral Addition , had sparked the idea to create another map-based work with the final result of a one-hour art radio work. As the project grew and developed, it became clear, that the web portion of it (which you are looking at here), is at least as important as the final piece itself. You can navigate the sights and sounds of the two cities along the lichen, and find links below to the supporting institutions and artists, research reports with much more detail about the development of this work, and the final art radio piece itself.

The process was initially to be guided by something tiny yet present and profound in our environments... a fungus, an algae, or a seed. We chose lichen... an image from a lichen in Flow Country, Scotland is superimposed onto the map of our cities, with our home locations in the middle of the lichen image scaled to a radius of approximately 3 km around where we live in each city.

Ten locations were randomly marked onto the lichen, and both artists spent the month of June visiting the these locations in their respective cities, making field recordings there and sharing their observations, or relaying memories to the spots they had been assigned. The resulting recordings were uploaded to each marker, accompanied by an image or two. Visitors can use the map or the uploaded sound/image as a starting point to also “walk on the lichen” and immerse themselves in the sounds of Barcelona and The Hague. Furthermore, both artists created a one-hour radio piece using sounds of each location. For the premiere of this radio project for Radiophrenia Festival, pantea layered both pieces, creating a work that gives both cities the space they need to be heard while creating a new and imaginary compound reality.

This project was created during a residency at Studio LOOS with funding from the Gemeente Den Haag. The project is hosted on the Story Maps account of Sonic Tehran Network.