On Water: Audio Pieces

Water rushes, drips, cracks, gurgles, surges, and flows. It has a different sound depending on whether it is in rivers, oceans, glaciers, clouds, or objects of technical infrastructure. One thing that research on this exhibition revealed was how diverse the sounds of water are. The audio pieces expand the catalog by adding a sensory dimension, thereby opening up access to water through the sense of hearing. Immerse yourself in the soundscapes of “On Water.”

Note: The audio files are optimized for headphones.

Sap Score

What is the sound of a tree drinking? The sound installation by the artist Andreas Greiner makes it possible to hear the barely perceptible phenomenon of transpiration. Trees take up water through their roots and transport it via their vascular system up to the leaves. This hidden water cycle can be experienced in the piece as a polyphonic concert. In collaboration with the sound technician and philosopher Roland Bolz, Greiner wired various trees in and around Berlin with highly sensitive microphones that pick up the delicate tones of the ascent of sap as well as other sounds moving through the tree trunks and branches.

Sap Score
Andreas Greiner, Roland Bolz
Multichannel sound piece based on field recordings of trees
Audio piece, 2025

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Labor

Water Conversations

The anthropologists Isabel Bredenbröker and Kirsty Wissing have listened to water in very distant places and recorded its sounds. Their fieldwork led them to Berlin, Nuremberg, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, and the Northern Rivers region of Australia. What memories does water store? As sea levels rise, what future is there for life? And what relationships are developing in connection with water? The resulting composition brings together recordings of sea waves, rivers and lakes, swimming pools, nature reserves, and parks in both Germany and Australia.

Future under water
Isabel Bredenbröker, Universität Bremen and Kirsty Wissing, Australian National University
Audio piece, 2025

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Labor, Gefördert durch das Global
Partnership Flexible Funding Program der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Black Diaspora from Berlin to Brooklyn

Artist-scholar Layla Zami explores how the qualities of water can inform how we hear and make Black sounds in and of the Black diaspora. These musical and tonal forms of expression
deal with specific historical experiences of colonialism, migration, memory, identity and resilience. In Zami’s research and music, dissolving becomes an acoustic process: Sound is imagined not as a fixed form, but instead as something flowing continually reshaping spaces and relationships.

Black Sounds of Diasporic Dissolving
Layla Zami, Freie Universität Berlin, Campus Caraïbéen des Arts in Martinique
With the support of Makda Isak, Oxana Chi, Charlene Jean, Shaynicia Dicanot
Audio piece, 2025

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Labor

Aquatic Musicology

The musicologist Sebastian Klotz at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin deals with aquatic musicology, a field at the interface of sound research, anthropology, behavioral science, and ecology. Starting from the sea, this nascent field of research asks if this might be a way to develop new perspectives on the ocean, the things living in it, and even on life itself. The experimental exploration turns the sea into a shared experiential space that transcends species.

Aquatic Musicology
Sebastian Klotz, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Copyright of the musical recordings: Sarah Niksič alias Inner Child (Canticum Megapterae, 2019) & John Luther Adams (Become Ocean, 2013)
Audio piece, 2025

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Labor

Water and the Music of the Andes

The cultural scientist Walther Maradiegue at the Freie Universität Berlin talks about Dionisio Chuya, a farmer and musician from the village of La Ramada in the Andes in northern Peru.
Chuya plays instruments that are an important part of ritual life. The sound recordings also contain his thoughts on limpia de acequia, an annual community cleaning of the irrigation channels. This clearly demonstrates the deep interconnectedness of music, agriculture,
water, and community life.

In the joyful river of sound we exist together
Walther Maradiegue, Freie Universität Berlin, Research assistant: Jao Yamunaqué
Audio piece, 2025

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Labor

L‘intreccio

This sound piece invites listeners to immerse themselves in the layered rhythms of life in Sardinia’s wetlands. It is based on the research of the anthropologist Magdalena Buchczyk at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In L’intreccio (Italian for “the weave”), she focuses on the entanglements of human and more-than-human worlds that shape the waterscapes of the Italian island.

Lagoon – L’intreccio
Magdalena Buchczyk, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
With the support of Melanie Garland, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Audio piece, 2025

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Labor