Listening to Light | Deep Listening Workshop

Join the Arbor Institute on Saturday, July 18th from 7:00-8:15pm  for Listening to Light: World Listening Day and the unveiling of the Boulder Street Light Survey Project led by artists Brittney Hofer and Aaron Treher.

Listening to Light explores how deep listening practices and field recordings can create an awareness of the larger environment. This event serves as the public dedication of the Boulder Street Light Survey, a public art project and biodiversity survey aimed at documenting insects and other animals around street lights, porch lights, and other artificial lights.

This free contemplative practice will be held outside in Central Park across from the Arbor Institute in downtown Boulder — with social distancing precautions, limited to 10 attendees in person — or join online from any location of your choice (link provided with registration).

Registration required – see below

About the Program:

Meet up between 6:45-7:00pm  in front of the Arbor Institute at 1708 13th St. or join the Zoom link to make sure your technology is working.

We will then move to the park across 13th street for the workshop which will be streamed by Zoom for those participating online.

Sound artist Brittney Hofer will lead:

• • movement exercises from Heloise Gold’s Deeply Listening Body
  • an extremely slow walking practice / sound walk
  • a closing sonic and sensory meditation leading into a discussion of Boulder Street Light Survey Project with Aaron Treher. 

Deep listening is a contemplative practice founded by Pauline Oliveros that dances between creating an expanded awareness of the surrounding environment while simultaneously creating focused inward attention of self which offers an understanding of the roles humans play in the environment. This practice is open to all ages and body types – no experience required.

“Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.” – Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations

Learn more about the practice at the Center for Deep Listening.

Questions? Contact us at info@arborinstitute.org

More about the Boulder Street Light Survey Project

The Boulder Street Light Survey Project is a collaborative public art project that functions as an archive of urban ecology and street lights. The work is aimed specifically at creating an awareness of the interaction between artificial light, animals, and the human-built environment.

Located at a public street light that has a high rate of attraction to bugs, an official project sign, survey box, and biodiversity survey will guide residents to collect information and document insects at street lights within Boulder city limits. The survey will also be available online through iNaturalist.

Deep listening workshops will be held in conjunction with the Boulder Street Light Survey Project monthly in July, August, and September 2020. Community members are also welcome and encouraged to take their own self-guided walks at any time outside of the workshops as well and can complete the survey with any street light within Boulder County.

Survey results can then be dropped in any of the Survey boxes located at Arbor Institute and in the Central Park area or input online through iNaturalist project site which will be provided. 

Following the conclusion of the project, survey cards, images, and survey data will then be collected to construct a graphic music score, corresponding electronic composition, and public exhibition, engaging and emphasizing the importance of community through social practices, public and visual art, and contemplative practices.

Learn more at iNaturalist : Street Light Survey Project

Listening to Light is hosted by organizers of the Boulder Street Light Survey Project in partnership with the Arbor Institute in downtown Boulder, Colorado.

Boulder Street Light Survey Project is facilitated by Amanda Eberly, M.S., Plant Science, Delaware State University, Brittney Hofer, M.F.A., Art Practices, University of Colorado Boulder, and Aaron Treher,  M.F.A., Art Practices, University of Colorado Boulder.

This project is sponsored in part by the Boulder Office of Arts and Culture through the Creative Neighborhoods: COVID-19 Work Projects