Chance Meeting
Friday March 28th, 2025 with Heavy Ben
Water Part V: Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies: Swiss Water Trilogy
Chance meeting on a glacier of a reservoir and a melting landscape
Thank you Christophe Girot, Ludwig Berger, and the students of ETH Zurich.
Seamlessly joining sound art, field recording, sonic ecology, and scientific research, each LP of "Bodies of Water", the Swiss Water Trilogy, addresses a specific environment, weaving rigorous research and documentation into a constellation of pieces that echo with a musicality and abstraction that places the soundings of the environment in close conversation with the histories and practices of experimental music.
https://girot.arch.ethz.ch/uncategorized/bodies-of-water
Ongoing Water Series on Chance Meeting
Water Part I: Michael Hoenig & Manuel Göttsching, Annea Lockwood
https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/581/61673.html
Water Part II: Rüdiger Lorenz, Yu Su
https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/581/61767.html
Water Part III: Listen To The Fish
https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/581/63587.html
Water Part IV: Electronic Sounds From France 1962-1984
https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/581/66851.html
(to embiggen the show icon, right-click and choose "Open image in new tab")
| Rapid ice melt has been profoundly shaping the alpine region in recent years. It has become an omnipresent and tangible phenomenon, and an iconic symbol of ongoing climate change. Over the past three years, the Chair of Landscape Architecture of Professor Christophe Girot and architecture students of ETH Zurich have been documenting the melting landscapes of the Morteratsch Glacier region, using underwater and self made contact microphones, as well as large- and medium- format analog photography. The sounds of the moving ice mass contrast with the eerie silence of the black and white pictures. The selection of works in this publication turn the evanescent beauty of the glacier into a strong sensory experience; they thus become meaningful witnesses of the rapid changes to come
in the alpine landscape. |
| Freezing Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Accumulation Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Drone Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Wind Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Bubbles Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Milk Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| River Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Pond I Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Pond II Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| Sand Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 01: Melting Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2018 |
| The 20th Century radically transformed the balance of the alpine landscape by building impressive hydraulic dams, that became the Modernist pride of Switzerland. They changed the country by providing energy to the cities located in the valleys below. Today, these dams bare witness to a foregone era, when glaciers and snow covered peaks were abundant and thought of as the eternal water providers of the nation. Yet all these glaciers are melting rapidly nowadays, and bountiful water will probably be sorely missed soon. Whether the monuments of modernity will take on a new significance in the course of renewable energy strategies is yet to be seen. Visiting the pumped-storage power plant Punt dal Gall and Ova Spin up in the Grisons over the past three years, the Chair of Landscape Architecture of Professor Christophe Girot recorded and documented the dam infrastructures and their immediate surroundings with the help of ETH architecture students. Together they tested a mix of underwater, airborne, electromagnetic, and vibrational recordings as well as lidar technology and analogue photography to produce this compilation. Through a precise composition of images and sounds, the imposing stature of these dams, and all the technocratic power they symbolize, unfold in an overwhelming sensory discovery and experience of place. «Dammed Landscapes» sounds quite ominous — and it is, for it questions first and foremost, the scale and passing materiality of time and space embodied through these objects in the alpine landscape. |
| Wall Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Border Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Pendulum Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Cave Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Supply Air Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Lake Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Turbine Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Stairway Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Pipe Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Barrier Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| River Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 02: Dammed Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Buried Landscapes gathers a careful recording and depiction of the hidden network of galleries, pipes, turbines and reservoirs that supply Zurich with all of its water. It presents a surprising juxtaposition of archetypal constructions starting with the archaic water galleries at Kohlbodenquelle carved directly into the moraine substrate, through a high-tech underground lake pumping station at Tiefenbrunnen and ending with a Modernist concrete water reservoir at Lyren buried in the foothills of the Uetliberg. Each place reveals water in its most abstract, least visible, but nonetheless essential form. The album is a testament to the effective burial of water in our landscapes. It closes our audiovisual water trilogy "Bodies of Water" with an ominous question about the scarcity of water foretold. What form this ever may take will definitely be the next upcoming chapter in the shaping of our landscapes. |
| Kohlboden Spring Catchment Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 03: Buried Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
| Water Works Lengg Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies - Bodies of Water / Swiss Water Trilogy 03: Buried Landscapes - Institute of Landscape Architecture - 2022 |
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3:05 PM, March 28th, 2025