Listening to the mississippi

by Monica Moses Haller

There is no one correct way to listen to the river; there are multiple listenings and multiple rivers. Listening to the Mississippi is an iterative project that has unfolded since 2013. In asking listeners to orient themselves to the river through their sense of sound, rather than sight alone, the project seeks to understand the Mississippi as a dynamic condition.

The project activates underwater recordings gathered in 2015 by artists Monica Moses Haller and Sebastian Müllauer that span the river from the headwaters to the Gulf. To collect the sounds, they suspended a hydrophone (underwater mic) from an environmental robot called ORB, who navigates waterways and bayous and was designed by Müllauer and collaborators. On the river, ORB collected the sounds and animated their actions.

Here, recording and gathering sounds became a process of sharing with, and learning from, people along the river’s bank. In this iteration, composers Michi Wiancko and Judd Greenstein responded to these sounds, creating an audio landscape that takes the listener to the river, blending original composed music with the sounds gathered above. Listening to the Mississippi invites a perceptual adjustment to the river and attunement to critical histories, present and futures both human and non-human.