CChanges (“see changes”) is a four-part art production dealing with sound art and climate change that started in Helsinki in 2019 with concerts by seven sound artists and electronic composers. In January 2020, the artists staged a collective sound art exhibition at Vuotalo Gallery. At the end of 2020, a CD recording was produced containing audio works and electronic compositions commenting on the state of the environment and climate change.

The book Sound, Art and Climate Change is the fourth production of the CChanges project, towards which we also invited a few visiting artists to write on the subject. The book brings together personal texts, while the authors had the freedom to produce a text reflecting on their own position. The only request given to them was to follow a theme on which it was hoped they would write: thoughts on environmental sound and climate change, and the relationship of these topics to their own work. Each text opens up the subject in its own way. Collectively, they provide an overall picture that worries artists globally. In the writings, artistic activity at an individual level is linked to the surrounding world and the change that takes place in it. Each artist sees events in their own way, but what they have in common is that they have all noticed the change. Climate change affects the environment we live in, it affects the food we eat and the air we breathe, it affects the wood we use in musical instruments.

The work of sound artists and composers is ecologically sustainable, but it’s not just a question of us. Information about the world around us can also be disseminated through art. However, the purpose of the CChanges project is not to preach, but to unite art and writings under a particular theme and to share the ideas that emerge through the work of an artist.

Artist Writings

Ava Grayson: Keeping Still

Bernie Krause: Broken Nature — Broken Lives

Charlie Morrow: Stormy Weather

Chris Watson: Vatnajökull. The Sound of Climate Change

Petri Kuljuntausta: Animal Sounds, Soundscape and Nichephony. Towards Environmentally Conscious and Ecocritical Music Performance

Esa Kotilainen: Thoughts on Climate Change

John Grzinich: Cognitive Dissonance and Resonance: On Localised Listening Within Shifting Globalised Contexts

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay: Unrecording Nature

Mikko H. Haapoja: Our Shorelines

Ana Gutieszca: In the birds’ jungle. A collection of poems and thoughts

Heikki Lindgren: Listening to the Baltic Sea

Jukka Andersson: The Soundscapes of My Life

Rauno Nieminen: Musical instruments and climate change