Conservation/Conversation

In the Conservation/Conversation exhibition, composer and sound artist Mary Edwards asks the community to listen and reflect on their experience of Canaveral National Seashore . Edwards invites visitors at Apollo Beach to collaborate and engage in the immersive sound available to them in this distinctive environment through a series of nine guided prompts and questions.

During her residency with the ACA Soundscape Field Station at Canaveral National Seashore, Mary Edwards’ objective has been to enhance the listener’s spatial-sensory, historical and ecological awareness. Edwards said she is excited to have been given this remarkable residency, and grateful for her encounters in the park with its biodiverse, sonically enriched terrain: “Listening to, and describing sounds are an inherent and integral part of my process of understanding co-existences, and how ‘conservation’ and ‘conversation’ are etymologically, and urgently, interchangeable. How does the practice of deeper listening raise our awareness to soundscape ecology, our compassion, or stewardship and healing of each other and the wellness of the environment?”

Following the exhibition, Edwards plans to combine responses to the questions with sounds and music she will compose, into text and a recording that will cinematically reflect the themes of temporality, impermanence, nostalgia and the natural world. Moreover, Edwards said, “I hope to honor the collective experiences and the importance of listening to this wild coastal expanse with this creative work.”