Budhaditya Chattopadhyay – The Nomadic Listener
[Gruen 201]
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
“The Nomadic Listener”
This is a parallel release from The Nomadic Listener – an augmented book project on migration, contemporary urban experience, and sonic alienation. The book is composed of a series of texts stemming from psychogeographic explorations of major contemporary cities, such as Copenhagen, Berlin, Brussels, Leipzig, The Hague, Graz, London, Kolkata, Vienna, Delhi, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Amsterdam, New York, Paris, and others, through situated writing and field recording. Each text is an act of contemplative listening, where the artist/author records his surrounding environment and attempts to attune to the sonic fluctuations of movement and the passing of events. Each corresponding sound attempts to trace these nomadic interactions in unedited field recording. What surfaces is a collection of meditations on the minutiae of life movingly interwoven with the author’s own memories, associations, desires and reflections. The release and publication are entwined by a QR code for an augmented listening experience that draws up a tender map of contemporary cities, and the often lonely, surprising, and random interactions found in urban navigation.
