MSAE

Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) is excited to announce our 2026 Summer Soundwalks In The Parks, marking the 10th annual partnership with the Night Out In The Parks and @chicagoparks . Between June and September, everyone is invited to explore the art of soundwalking in 6 different public parks. Led by artists and special guests, these soundwalks guide our listening awareness across the natural and cultural dimensions of Chicago. Join us for community and contemplation as we consider and share our auditory perspectives. Featured teaching artists: @jeffkolar @liairenekohl @ericleonardson and @naturalistnegin @deebeachi and @kemazzini @mauriciolopezfernandez @normanwlong and #sarazalek Find the full schedule at the link in our bio to our website, where you can learn more about each artist, and stay up to date with the latest information on meeting locations, accessibility, and rain dates. We’re looking forward to rediscover Chicago through listening—deeply, joyfully, and in community! All graphics by @madrosesock #intheparks #nightoutintheparks #mychiparks #teensintheparks

Coming up this Tuesday, May 5!! MSAE is pleased to partner with the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres to present the inaugural Great Lakes Listening Series, beginning at 7pm at @uwmunioncinema This new experimental listening event presents multichannel sonic artworks in a cinema setting, using 5.1 surround sound to create an immersive listening experience. This first edition features works that respond to the natural, ecological, political, and cultural complexities of the Great Lakes region. The program includes works by Dominic Bonelli, Darren Copeland, Neil Gravander, Kate In, Kelly Kirshtner, Regina Martinez, Christina C. Nguyen, Karthik Pandian, and John Shiga. Artists will be in attendance, followed by a Q&A moderated by Joshua Minsoo Kim of Tone Glow. Curated by Tom Dixon and Matt Feldman.

NEW DATE!! Due to a high chance of rain, we have to reschedule our soundwalk this weekend. The new date is next week, Sunday, April 19th. Event details remain the same. We hope you can still join us!!!

We are proud to announce the next event in our #communityprojectsinitiative!! Join Hanbing Liang for Listening Through Other Ears, a guided soundwalk through Madison, moving from the bustle of the city into a quieter natural landscape at the lake. Along the way, you’ll be invited to wear specially designed 3D-printed ears that reshape how sound reaches you. This simple intervention invites participants to experience familiar environments in a new way and reflect on how everyday spaces are designed around human hearing. Together we’ll slow down, pay attention, and listen a little differently.   Register at the link in our bio. We will meet at the welcome desk in Union South, 1308 W Dayton St, Madison, WI 53715. Sunday, April 12, 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM.

Inaudible Cities: A Hybrid Soundwalk Between Here and Now, There and Then Explore hidden city sounds merging past and present on a cool hybrid soundwalk with interdisciplinary artists, Jacek Smolicki & Sharkey (Sara) Zalek! RSVP: /e/inaudible-cities-a-hybrid-soundwalk-between-here-and-now-there-and-then-tickets-1985461436604 Join us for Inaudible Cities, an exciting in-person soundwalk that blends the present with echoes from the past. Explore the hidden sounds of the city as you wander, bridging here and now with there and then. Perfect for curious ears and adventurous souls eager to experience urban life in a whole new way. Don't miss out on this unique auditory journey! Inaudible Cities connects the most immediate with temporally and geographically distant soundscapes. Equipped with special audio receivers, participants will follow an itinerary that is partly defined yet largely open to spontaneous encounters. As everyday urban details—water fountains, switchboards, ventilation shafts, sewers, and cobblestones—are processed in real time, they transform into sonic manifestations of the classical elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Using a customized set of microphones—including geophones, contact microphones, hydrophones, and electromagnetic detectors—Smolicki will gradually capture these familiar sounds, weave them together, and use them as portals to soundscapes of fragile environments documented during his fieldwork on the Pacific West Coast, in the Arctic Circle, at Canaveral National Seashore, and beyond. Participants will be equipped with receivers and headphones through which this slowly evolving composition will be streamed. The different strategies of working with field recording, transmission, and processing of both immediate and pre-recorded soundscapes will be discussed after the walk. 25 spots will be available. Please bring wired, over-ear headphones (some will be provided). #soundwalk #acousticecology #urbansoundscape @jacek_smolicki

MSAE President @ericleonardson shares a bit about our history and mission. Please consider joining as a member to support acoustic ecology in the Midwest! You can find the link in our bio. 🎬 Joe Miller with Daniel Tseng

This Giving Tuesday, The Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) invites you to renew or begin your membership for 2026. Your support strengthens a network of artists, educators, researchers, and listeners working to deepen public engagement with sound and place. MSAE is a volunteer-run, member-supported nonprofit. Your participation ensures we can continue producing public programs, supporting community-led sound projects, and advocating for listening as a vital cultural and ecological practice. Join or give now at the link in our bio! By becoming a member you receive:     •    Professional development opportunities     •    Networking with regional and international practitioners     •    Event announcements and priority invitations     •    Eligibility to propose or lead MSAE programs     •    Collaboration opportunities across our Midwest network     •    Inclusion in our Member Directory     •    Discounts and early access for select programs     •    Connection to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE)

October 11 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm Join artist and educator, Eric Leonardson for a soundwalk at Crabtree Nature Center, Forest Preserve District of Cook County, in Barrington, Illinois. Crabtree Nature Center 3 Stover Road, Barrington Hills, IL 60010 Ecotones are transitional areas between different ecosystems, or plant communities, where species from both communities can coexist and interact. They often exhibit increased biodiversity due to the blending of habitats and unique environmental conditions created by the merging ecosystems. We will learn about how plants and migrating animals, wind and water give their voice to what our eyes cannot see. Walk will last approximately 45 minutes and conclude with a reflective discussion. 606soundscape Forest Preserve District of Cook County ericleonardson #acousticecology #soundwalks

We are so excited for Eliza’s soundwalk on Sunday! RSVP soon - we only have a few spots left for Exquisite Beach Corpse at Loyola Beach. Find the link in our bio. Eliza Fernand is an interdisciplinary artist working in sculptural disciplines as well as video and sound. They run a toll-free hotline at 1-833-NATR-XXX and occasionally perform noise music under the name Spooky Sounds Band. A professor of first-year courses at SAIC, sculpture at ChiArts, and queer quilting workshops in their Rogers Park studio, Eliza sees teaching and co-learning as a large part of their creative practice.

Join interdisciplinary artist Eliza Fernand for a deep listening scavenger hunt in which we will interrogate our individual and collective value sets and question the usefulness of classification. Participants will enact body-based research, listening to the beach environment through a microphone, then capturing a collection of sounds in a relay game based on the surrealist drawing game, Exquisite Corpse. In this game and other versions of it, multiple people contribute portions of a drawing or a text without knowledge of the prior person’s contribution, leading to the revealing of a poetic end-product that relies on collective assembly.   We will meet at the point where Lunt ends at the beach park and practice listening together before forming six groups to explore the sonic landscape of the park blocks of Pratt, Farwell, Morse, Lunt, Greenleaf, and Estes. We will end by listening to the collective soundscapes in the Loyola Beach Field House, everyone will have the option to receive copies of the recordings via email. RSVP at the link in our bio to join, maximum 24 participants. September 28th, 2025, 2-4pm Loyola Beach: 1102 W Lunt Ave (meet at the south end of the parking lot)

Thanks to all who attended our last soundwalk, “Tune In, Take Turns”, with Deirdre Harrison and @kemazzini . We had a great time at Columbus Park! Summer is winding down and we have one more event in our Summer Soundwalk series, this Saturday, at Jackson Park Wooded Island, with @ericleonardson . We hope you can join us, and as always hit the link in our bio to register.

We are excited to conclude our Summer Soundwalk Series next week with Eric Leonardson and Negin Almassi! They will lead us through Jackson Park Wooded Island, listening to the singing insects, on Saturday, September 6th, at 6:30pm. RSVP at the link in our bio!! The Singing Insects Monitoring Program is a community science effort to familiarize people with common sounds of singing insects in the Chicago region, including grasshoppers, cicadas, katydids, and crickets. Building on Dr. Carl Strang’s work documenting the many species within these four types across 22 counties, the purpose of the project is to collect local baseline data and help people keep their ears perked for unusual and common insect calls each summer. To enjoy and to learn how to identify these insects by their “songs,” Eric Leonardson prepares us for a soundwalk through engaging “Ear Cleaning” exercises with directions from naturalist Negin Almassi. We will meet at Garden of the Phoenix Parking Lot, 1686 E Hayes Dr.  Graphics designed by @madrosesock @chicagoparks #intheparks #nightoutintheparks #mychiparks #chicagoparks