Did you realize that sound is unstoppable?

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As long as you have the sensors, you will hear.

But how much of everything you hear, do you listen to?

Do you know how your day- to-day sounds? How do the spaces you visit sound?

How much do you sound and how that affects the world you share with others?

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This well-known philosophical question echoes in the title of The falling tree. The physical answer is yes: as long as there is disturbance of a medium, in an audible range, there will be sound. Even without the presence of a biological hearing system, a sensor, such as a microphone connected to a recording system could corroborate the claim. However, this experiment is not enough to ensure that what sounds is heard as sound.

Because listening is not the same as hearing. The sound pressure reaches the ears, yes, all the time, what´s more, because there are no eyelids for the ears. But whether that is sound, noise, music or art is not something that is characteristic of the phenomenon. There must be someone who, in addition to having the sensors, attributes a meaning to what is perceived. Someone who, through listening, exercises their way of living in the world, their way of categorizing, valuing and prioritizing the events that surround them and in which they participate.

The Falling Tree invites us to become aware of the sound dimension and to reflect on the social mechanisms that mediate listening and foster the consideration of what sounds as natural or artificial, desirable or undesirable, sound or noise. Conceived as a walk organized in parts, it is made up of three site-specific sound installations on the terrace and corridors of the Cultural Center: Hyperstimulus, Totem and Listeners.

In turn, the intervention is part of the thematic exhibition «Inhabitants, visitors» that, during September and October, proposes to review the relationship of humans with Planet Earth in terms of coexistence with the environment through various activities.

Instead of celebrating nature as something that must be cared for solely as opposed to the human or social, The Falling Tree focuses on the idea that these poles are inseparable. That which is human is nature too. And listening to him, his artifact, the mediation of symbolic technology, which connects him with the environment as much as the environment models him.

What is noise and what is not, what is heard and what is ignored, are the reflections that the work wants to leave open. It is that perhaps, taking an «ecological» attitude towards the sonic environment is nothing more than recognizing the responsibility of listening: listening can produce sound, as much as it can mute.