Works in Sensing Cities

Satya
3 min readMar 31, 2023

--

▪️The Nearness of a Distant Sea—Talking Place, Manchester (Video Essay)

▪️desirepath—Bandcamp, online (Sound/Text/Music)

▪️FASSY walks and sounds, Z/KU Berlin (Sound/Text)

▪️Splinter in My House Shoe—4WCoP, Huddersfield (Video Essay)

▪️Raat (Night)—Tune, Bombay (Music/Video)

▪️Now Hear My Story—Hākārā Journal, online (Poem/Images)

The Nearness of a Distant Sea // Bombay/Manchester (2022)

/////////////// I worry about touch, being in touch, touching, losing touch with places and people. I have been making videos tracing cities this past year. Literally touching cities. I’ve been thinking about place-related trauma, the anxiety of navigating IRL landscapes virtually, and an excess of movement through virtual space atrophying the tactile.

for Talking Place: A Symposium, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK, 2022

desirepath (2021)

To listen to the work on Bandcamp- please click here

Fragmented love letter to a distant city with birdsong and rumination on connection, distance, virtuality, AI, anti-capitalist readings, feeling the urban, anxiety over losing touch *** Field recording, found sound, granular synthesis, vocals *** Made for Rob Frye & Ballroom Marfa for International Dawn Chorus Day

Full Text, Poetry and Readings- please click here

FASSY // Berlin (2017)

Who decides who gets to be where in the city? Who decides?
Interviews with fellow FASSY collective members Atsuko, Yutsen and Fred from when i told them to go take a walk and tell me what happened.
We constructed out of scrap wood a structure to wear as a skin at various spots in the city. I wanted to know what they felt after they’d worn it. Then i made a couple of sound pieces to say what it’s like to be Here (click) and over There (click)

Splinter in My House Shoe // Munich/Huddersfield (2020)

walking my usual solitary desire paths in Bombay on Google Maps, but with virtual companions, talking about nature and human forces that shaped the city and our memories * walking the present in Munich with Screens || Nature || Heimweh || Reconnections || Disorientation || Distance || Saudade || Silence

for “Walk, No Walk”, 4thWorld Congress of Psychogeography 2020, Huddersfield, UK

Raat // Bombay (2009)

Thinking about access to urban space as a solitary non-male walking late at night in Bombay.

Moon rise blue light
A wayward breeze calls.

In night’s cloak i walk with stars.
Walking alone, the city walks with me.

Empty streets empty time
I revel in loneliness.

from the album Seven Blue SeasSpotify, Bandcamp

Now Hear My Story // Hākārā Journal (2015)

Exercise (i)
i watch myself being watched by you.
you see me. but can you really.
who is it you watch?
who do you want to see?
who do i see?
and who are you?

Exercise (ii)
i project what i want you to see.
you watch me. but can you, really?
what do i show to you?
what should i hide?
whom do you see?
and, who am i?

Exercise (iii)
….. Full Text and Images- please click here

Unlisted

--

--