Spector Books, book, ISBN 978-3959058933, English, 240 pages, 2025, Germany

There is a growing cultural interest in the non-visual, in stark contrast to the endless screens that convey the past and present at any moment through social media, and in the local, as opposed to the universally accessible, globalised dimension of virtual people and material products. This interest appears to be fostered and disseminated particularly by those in sound studies, with a renewed, almost therapeutic, focus on ‘active listening’ practices and field recordings. The ‘ecotone’ is a transitional space between two ecosystems that is typically rich in biodiversity. In this book, these conceptual zones, whether urban or natural, are embodied through diverse styles (personal, discursive and theoretical), in various forms of writing (fiction, poetry, theory and case studies), and from the perspectives of architecture, musicology, and ecology. The relationship between sound and territory is also explored from other parts of the world, subjectively seeking to define what a soundscape means. As an ‘expansion’ of the Sonic Investigations installation at the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, featuring works by Ludwig Berger and Anthea Caddy, this book makes an original contribution to the discussion on ‘listening’ as a necessary practice, regardless of the territory to which the reader belongs.