I am thrilled to receive news of a successful application to the IDF Winter 2022 Call for Echoes and Reflections.

Groundwork has been laid for the atlas to function. Now it is time to shift focus to using heritage acoustics and acoustic fingerprints as compositional sound art material. This grant will allow me to invite 9 musicians/artists to develop sound pieces that will be embedded inside the Acoustic Atlas.

Echoes and Reflections will bring a unique experience to listeners by combining live virtual acoustic heritage sites with contemporary composition and sound art, whilst reflecting on the myth of Echo and her ironic tragic love story with Narcissus.

In short, the myth of Echo begins with Juno cursing the nymph, causing her to lose sovereignty over her voice so that she can no longer do anything but repeat the last of what is spoken and return the words she hears. In the end, only her voice remains, her bones, changes to shapes of stone. “Echo is the mythical metaphorization of an acoustic phenomenon, its explanation in terms of the divine.” (F. J. Bonnet 'The Order of Sounds - A Sonorous Archipelago'.)

When collecting an acoustic fingerprint of a site, one is in a way taking a picture of Echo. It will be a thrilling curated series of musical works released in a limited edition album and for the Acoustic Atlas project. Nine artists will be invited to create musical interventions based on the idea of using the echoes and sonorous reflections of sites as key features of their compositions and performances.

The most ancient sites in the collection will be in focus and some of them also are connected to nymph mythology or other spiritual beliefs: Maes-Howe, Orkney, is one of the finest chambered cairns in Europe, and is dated to 3000BC. Prior work in the acoustics of ancient sites explores how the resonances exhibited therein might have affected regular human ritual and interaction with the space. Newgrange, a Neolithic passage tomb in County Meath Ireland dated 3000 BC. The Witches Valley in South Italy where parallel rock walls generate echoes and legend has its witches performed sacred rituals with dances and chants accompanied by the rhythm of drums. The Cumaean Sibyl cave is a mythological place in the north of Naples, where the Sibyl, a priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle, received the travellers and predicted their future. Ear of Dionysus cavern is famous for acoustic properties that amplify even the quietest of sounds, allowing them to be heard through an opening at the top. The Taj Mahal also called the 'temple of love' was commissioned by Shah Jahan in 1631, to be built in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died, while giving birth to their 14th child. UNESCO declared it "the jewel of Muslim art in India and one of the universally admired masterpieces of the world's heritage". Melissani Cave Lake, Kefalonia, according to Greek mythology, the nymph Melissani who suffered from unrequited love for the god Pan, committed suicide by throwing herself in these waters. The remains of a temple were found on the small island that stands in the centre of the lake. Hagia Sofia, Istanbul, the immense interior volume of 255.800 m3, the dome and semi-domes, the nestling of architectural volumes, and the reflective surfaces of marble and gold mosaic produce 10 and 11 second long reverberation times.

Image credit: Image taken from Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis from 1650. In it he describes various echo experiments and explores the science of sound from the perspective of the echo.” He defined two meanings for echo. In the first case echo is imago vocis—reflected (or repeated) voice. In the second meaning as expressed in Latin is resonance, from the Greek verb Ηχέω, (resound). This second meaning of echo is intended as the air in the cavities of a body, as within the Vitruvian vases, or in sound-chests.