The soundscape is a unique source of information about the state of nature and about ourselves. This exhibition shows how scientific research and artistic interpretation can together reveal what lies hidden in the sounds around us. You will learn how natural harmony is transformed under the pressure of human noise and how these changes affect both animals and humans. The experience is designed for both the senses and the mind—it provides data, stories, and space for your own experience. Come and see for yourself how the connection between science and art opens up a new perspective on the world that is worth hearing and protecting.

Text for the exhibition

As a society, we stand at a point where we look around and see the devastation that some of our decisions have caused. Humans suddenly appear to be an invasive species. We stand
at this point and wonder how we can continue without further aggressively disrupting the balance in the systems around us. If we can better discern and describe the phenomena,
situations, and changes we observe, it will help us better understand what is really happening to ecosystems, what our position is in these processes, and perhaps even what our next steps
should be to avert collapse.

One way to better understand ecosystems is to listen to them. Intensive or concentrated listening to the environment, both with one's own physical capabilities and thanks
to technology, has been a theme in the world of sound art and music since the 1960s, and in recent years, with growing awareness of major environmental changes, its urgency has
intensified. Artistic and scientific research and approaches are opening up new possibilities for understanding the world and ongoing processes, while there is a growing need to connect
and intertwine these worlds, often understood in the past as separate, and to seek common paths. It is precisely this diversity and dialogue between disciplines that can help us find new
ways out of the hopelessness that often accompanies the current crisis.

Mgr. Matyáš Adam, Ph.D., an enthusiastic populariser of science and determined nature conservationist, brings his research data to the art gallery with the aim of raising awareness of issues such as noise pollution, biodiversity, and listening as a method of learning about nature. The basis is field recording, which is one of the areas where ecoacoustics merges with
sound art. MgA. Leona Vyhnálková, a sound designer, transforms this data into sound compositions shaped in time and space to suit the gallery and specific technical solutions.
She creates two sound compositions that invite gallery visitors to pause, rest, and listen intently for a moment.

In the first part, we can hear biophony – the sound environment created by the sounds of animals and plants, which is disturbed by anthropophonic sounds. We can observe
the intensity, even aggression, with which human sounds enter the natural sound environment and overpower it. Thanks to the projection of a spectrogram – a graph, or more
precisely a visualization of data analysing the frequency composition of sound – and the projection of amplitude, a curve representing sound volume, we are led to listen more
analytically. We focus both on the overall sound composition and on its components, details, and their interrelationships. Moving around the space allows us to change our perspective
on what we hear and to explore our own relationship to individual sounds and changes in the sound environment.

In the second part, we find ourselves in a different listening situation. We are invited to pause, to quiet down, perhaps to suppress our other senses in a darkened room so that our hearing
can develop and refine itself, our minds can relax and absorb, perhaps even rest and connect with the undisturbed environment of nature.
We stand still, we pause, and we quiet ourselves for a moment so that other sounds can be heard, so that the more subtle and delicate sounds can be heard. We stand still and pause so
that we can hear the environment in its balance, in its perfection and meaningfulness, so that we can hear the delicate landscape.