Sonic Drift: Listening Beyond the Visible City

Part II – The City as Collaborator

The practical dimension of Sonic Drift unfolded through a series of collective dérives conducted across various Maltese urban environments between late 2025 and early 2026. Led by sound artists Kurt Buttigieg and Jamie Barbara, participants traversed areas including Marsa, Floriana, Paola, and Fgura, engaging in exploratory listening sessions lasting several hours.

derive 1

These dérives were not guided tours. They were exercises in attention.

Participants moved through urban environments equipped with recording devices but without predetermined expectations regarding what they might discover. The aim was not to document specific sounds but to cultivate sensitivity toward the sonic character of place.

Throughout the project, listening became an active and embodied practice. Participants encountered environments often dismissed as mundane or unremarkable and discovered rich layers of acoustic complexity. Mechanical vibrations resonated through industrial structures. Wind interacted with abandoned surfaces. Echoes revealed hidden spatial dimensions. Rhythms emerged from ordinary urban processes.

Listening together transforms familiar urban spaces into sites of discovery, memory, and collective engagement.

The resulting recordings formed the basis for experimental sound compositions that transformed these sonic encounters into what the publication describes as “auditory maps.”

Unlike traditional maps, which privilege visual orientation and spatial precision, auditory maps capture atmosphere, memory, emotion, and sensory experience. They document how environments feel as much as how they sound.

The collaborative nature of the project was equally significant. Artists and community participants contributed not only recordings but also interpretations of what they heard. Listening sessions and discussions created opportunities for participants to reflect collectively on their experiences and share diverse perspectives on the same environment.

This process challenged traditional notions of artistic authorship. Rather than positioning artists as sole creators, Sonic Drift embraced co-creation. The sounds belonged to the city, but their meanings emerged through dialogue between participants, environments, and artistic interpretation.

The culmination of Sonic Drift: an immersive sound performance shaped by movement, memory, and shared sonic exploration.

The project culminated in a public performance that translated these sonic explorations into an immersive listening experience. Audiences encountered layers of recorded sound shaped by movement, memory, and collective experience, inviting them to engage with urban environments not as spectators but as listeners.

In doing so, the project demonstrated that sound art can function simultaneously as artistic expression, social engagement, and research practice.

Part One of Sonic Drift: Listening Beyond the Visible City can be accessed here: [link to Part One].

Having explored the project's dérives, collective listening practices, and sonic encounters in Part Two, the final instalment will turn its attention to the research findings and broader implications of listening as a tool for understanding urban life.

Stay tuned for Part Three, where the project’s discoveries concerning sound, memory, participation, and post-industrial urban environments are brought into focus, revealing what emerges when we learn to listen beyond the visible city.

Sonic Drift: Listening Beyond the Visible City / Part I – Drifting Through Sound: Reimagining Urban Experience