Skylarking is a research-creation project by sound artist and researcher Nuno da Luz, developed within the European Transformative Territories programme (2024–2025) in the fragile ecosystem of the Aitoliko Lagoon, Greece. Situated at the crossroads of sound art, environmental research, and territorial studies, the project explores how listening can become a form of ecological knowledge, ethical engagement, and collective care.
Conceived through two complementary formats — Skylarking (Long Play), a 72-hour continuous listening installation, and Skylarking (Short Play), a participatory vocal and listening performance — the project invites participants to experience the territory through its acoustic life. By foregrounding non-human soundscapes, particularly those of migratory birds, Skylarking shifts dominant representations of the lagoon from economic resource to multispecies habitat, revealing the political and ecological implications of how places are heard, perceived, and inhabited.
Developed over nearly a year through slow research, translation, and dialogue with local communities, environmental experts, and cultural institutions, the project privileges attentiveness over intervention and care over extraction. Skylarking demonstrates how research-creation can generate durable symbolic, relational, and ecological effects even with minimal material impact. This evaluation examines the project’s transformative capacity across representations, practices, and organisational relations, and highlights listening as a powerful artistic methodology for engaging with vulnerable territories.
