Sounding Waters: Elements of Water, Ice, and Snow in Sound and Music

Elements is a multi-year arts and humanities project, which explores the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water through a variety of cultural lenses across disciplines and across time. We seek to bring together scholars and practitioners as we trace the roles played by these material elements and their constant state of flux in shaping conceptions of the cosmos, framing notions of origin, myth, religion, balance, and natural philosophy, and capturing the poetic powers of the natural world. 

For calendar year 2024 (spring and fall terms), events will be oriented around water and its pre-modern, contemporary, and future imaginings. The changing, moving states and qualities of water — melting, freezing, drying, evaporating, flowing, soaking, dripping, rising, flooding, poisoning, disappearing, cleansing, nourishing, preserving — are central to our programming. From rivers, lakes, and oceans, to fog, snow, and glaciers, we will explore human and non-human contexts of myth, cosmology, creation, disaster, extraction, consumption, pollution, scarcity, health, hygiene, and renewal. Events include performances, readings, viewings/listening sessions, and conversations.

Director, Evan MacCarthy, Professor of Music and Dance, UMass Amherst