Fragments, an acousmatic piece for air raid sirens and voices

Fragments (2026) is a fixed-media sound work developed as part of an ongoing research trajectory in soundscape composition, listening, and the formation of shared sonic environments. The work was commissioned by Mili Romano as part of "Protected Area, Dritto al cuore della guerra", a collective sonic action against war created in collaboration with Coxo Spaziale and Radio Città Fujiko. It was first broadcast on Radio Città Fujiko, Bologna, on 5 April 2026, and subsequently presented as part of the project’s return to Neon Gallery, Bologna, on 18 June 2026.

The research enquiry asks how listening can operate as an ethical, situated, and environmentally embedded practice within conditions shaped by conflict. It examines how sonic environments can sustain attention, relationality, and vulnerability across distributed sources, particularly when those sources include voices, sirens, mediated signals, and sounds associated with war. This enquiry develops from a wider compositional trajectory that includes The Hyperdrone #1 (2015), The Hyperdrone #2 (2020), and Méiyǒu shālù (2023), works that collectively engage peace, soundscape, seismic and political data, and perceptual attention as interconnected fields.

Methodologically, Fragments brings together environmental recordings, constructed sonic material, air raid sirens, distant artillery, and multilingual vocal fragments gathered through the participatory structure of the project. These materials are organised through layering, temporal displacement, repetition, and sustained incompleteness, creating a listening environment in which sonic events emerge, recede, overlap, and return. The work treats sound not as a fixed object, but as a relational field through which listeners encounter proximity, distance, interruption, and shared vulnerability.

The contribution of Fragments lies in its compositional framing of sound as an ecological, relational, and public medium. The work explores how listening can remain attentive under conditions of saturation and repetition, addressing the normalisation of conflict through tension, partiality, and perceptual openness. In doing so, it contributes to a technoecological understanding of sound practice, where environmental recordings, mediated signals, and human voices operate within interconnected systems of perception, memory, and meaning.

The collaboration with Mili Romano situates the work within a broader field of public and participatory artistic practice. Its outputs include the Radio Città Fujiko broadcast and podcast context, and the presentation of the expanded Protected Area project at Neon Gallery (March 2026), Bologna (June 2026).

Podcast of the live broadcast is available here: https://coxospaziale.blogspot.com/2026/05/coxo-spaziale-573-roberta-cavallari-e.html

The full curated composition is available here: https://www.radiocittafujiko.it/protected-area/

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