On the Acoustic Image 
of a Region

An essay in the spirit of relational sound research

Exploring a region through sound is never a neutral undertaking. It is always an approach, a construction, and an encounter. The latter is particularly true when an Austrian media artist arrives in the Münsterland region and, as a resident artist at Kunsthaus Kloster Gravenhorst, embarks on what he himself describes as an “acoustic scanning” of the district of Steinfurt. The district’s 24 municipalities – from Hopsten to Wettringen, from Hörstel to Lotte, from Recke to Ladbergen, from Westerkappeln to Ochtrup – define the acoustic terrain that Hans-Jürgen Poëtz explores during his residency year. This acoustic space of the Steinfurt district corresponds to the geographical character of the Münsterland, which initially presents itself as an unspectacular soundscape: little relief, wide expanses, low frequencies, hardly any echo. Here, sound remains close to the ground, travelling slowly, drawing traces. The region does not produce spectacular sonic events but rather states: a steady hum, a buzzing that settles across the landscape. A sound artist, Rasmus Nordholt-Frieling, describes it as a landscape with “relatively much drone”, when asked the question: “What does it sound like here?” (1)

Yet “What does it sound like here?” is not the actual question that guides Hans-Jürgen Poëtz in his work. His artistic search for sonic material focuses on moments and situations, on traces of the past, and on forms of participation with different people in the region today. He collects sounds according to events, states, and actions, and makes a selection: one sound per municipality.

At first glance, this approach may seem arbitrary or even provocative. How can a single sound – the rhythmic beeping of hospital equipment in Steinfurt, the dripping in the ice cellar of Altenberge, the crackling of popcorn in Gravenhorst, the roar of the motorway interchange A1/A30 at Lotte – represent an entire place?

One Sound per Municipality as an Acoustic Soil Sample

Poëtz’s work resembles that of a biologist. A biologist does not need to measure an entire forest to understand it; they read it through moss, soil profiles, or the structure of a single leaf. In the same way, Poëtz uses microphones to take acoustic field samples to grasp the region. The noises of Greven Airport, the Kiepenkerl choir’s song Naodwölschke Wind in Münsterländer Platt, or the murmur of the fountain in Westerkappeln point to something; they are indicators – precise, almost inconspicuous measurements in which the characteristics of a larger structure become audible. This aligns with the poetic logic of the miniature: just as a droplet contains the sea, a single acoustic event resonates with social, emotional, historical, or spatial contexts. The demolition blast of the Ibbenbüren coal power station or the trickling water of the Gottesgabe saltworks contain information about space, material, function, or social significance.

Thus, the question of whether the collected sounds are “representative” does not arise in the first place. The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy emphasises in his work À l’écoute (Listening) that sound is never merely an image, rarely mimetic, but rather methexic. (2) This means: a sound is not a representative but a participant – in the world, in the space in which it resonates, and when it was recorded. Sounds cannot be extracted in isolation – they come towards us, impose themselves, dissipate, blend with others, and reverberate through buildings, landscapes, bodies.

The roaring in Recker Venn, the crashing in Ibbenbüren, the popping in Gravenhorst, the whistling in Saerbeck – these not only stand for their respective locations but are in a relationship with them. They consist of – as Nancy writes – references: not simple ones, but multiple, simultaneous orientations of meaning. The collected sound refers to a place, but also to a situation; to a temporal structure and to an aesthetic gesture; it points outward – into space – and inward, as resonance, as the possibility of hearing oneself. “Meaning consists in a reference. […] Sound consists not less in references. It spreads in space, where it resonates, while at the same time it ‘resonates within me’.” (3) Every sound points beyond itself and generates resonance, including within me as a listener.

The noises of a knee operation in Steinfurt hospital send shivers down your spine and become an acoustic cipher for care, technology, the rhythm of life. The recordings of bread baking in Mettingen make one’s mouth water and refer to themes such as craft, survival, and tradition. The same applies to the other sound recordings Poëtz has gathered in the Steinfurt district. They do not form a mere collection but rather reveal how precisely Poëtz selects and artistically combines them. The acoustic exploration culminates in a final sound piece and a sound film, and with the deliberately placed “satellites”, three further in-depth performances were created at specific locations, serving as entry points into the sound cosmos of Steinfurt.

Three Satellite Works: Ochtrup, Altenberge, Gravenhorst

Poëtz organises a happening for the water flute “Ochtruper Nachtigall”, situates sounds in a spatial constellation in the ice cellar of Altenberge, and sets standards for artistic layering in his sound-space installation Gravenhorster Popcorn and the accompanying video DA Pop. Poëtz is convinced: “Only by bringing sounds into relation with one another does the acoustic image of the region take shape.” In the three satellite works realised so far, he relates the sounds to one another – to the space and also to the visual material. Ultimately, it is an acoustic journey along significant sites to gain a deeper understanding of the region.

The Ochtrup Nightingale – a Happening as Relational Structure

When Poëtz invites the public to make music together using the “Ochtruper Nachtigall” water flute in St Mary’s Church, he deliberately refuses a museum-like, detached form of documentation. He returns sound to practice, participation, and bodies. The sound of this special flute is not only audible but tangible: in the resonance of the nave, in the simultaneity of breaths, in the collective act of sound production. This makes tangible what Jean-Luc Nancy describes in À l’écoute as a “relationship of resonance”: a form of participation that does not dissolve the self but grants access to it (accès du soi). (4)
The happening around the Ochtrup Nightingale reveals the relationships between the players, their connection with the space, history, and local culture. Sound becomes event and participation – something that happens, rather than something one possesses or preserves.

The Ice Cellar of Altenberge – a Listening Space of Correspondences

While the “Ochtrup Nightingale” happening highlights relationships in collective music-making, the Altenberge ice cellar satellite focuses on space. The intervention is not a conventional sound piece; Poëtz creates a spatial listening constellation. Water sounds from different sites in the Steinfurt district encounter the acoustic properties of the underground former brewery cellar. Nearness and distance, density and openness, dripping and echo form a structure that can be read both geologically and culturally. Listeners move through the vaulted cellar – through a system of correspondences. It is a form of listening that challenges familiar assignments such as “this is the sound of this place”. Instead, it becomes clear that sounds are never just themselves: dripping or trickling are not representations but relations. The sound space emerges through relationships stretched between water sounds, cellar stones, and the movements of listeners.

Gravenhorster Popcorn – a Shifting of Meanings

In the popcorn project, Poëtz highlights another aspect of sound’s relationality: its ability to shift meanings, redirect perception, and unsettle what seems self-evident. The maize kernels roll, crackle, explode – at first documenting a material process, but in the sound-space work they are detached from their everyday semantics. In combination with the video recordings used in DA Pop, new connections arise: spring foliage, the pulsating dots of car headlights at night – all interwoven with the acoustic rhythm of bursting kernels. The boundaries blur between distance and closeness, between the horizontal movement of the kernels and the vertical movement of car lights, between kitchen and landscape. Sound and image shift each other, layering until the complementary dissolves. In doing so, Poëtz shows the productive force of relation: the aim is not to “show the sound of popcorn”, but to reveal what new connections emerge when sound and image begin to comment on, disrupt, or expand one another.

This form of media friction – working with interstices and transitions – is characteristic of Poëtz’s artistic signature. Previous works already emphasised the fragility of meanings and the blurred boundaries between material and context. In the popcorn satellite, this becomes exemplary: Poëtz’s artistic vocabulary reveals itself – transition, interference, reference. Sound and image do not collapse into one another; they rub against each other. As in the final sound piece and sound film, contexts shift and new spaces of possibility open up. Poëtz himself speaks of “an audiovisual experimental arrangement that condenses through the layering of acoustic identities, opens alternative perspectives on the surroundings, and reflects their possible readings.”

Combination as Relation – The Rhizome of Sounds

The strength of Poëtz’s work lies not only in his precise selection of individual sonic events from the region but above all in their combination. He brings the sounds into relationship. From this emerges a network, a rhizomatic weave of sound. The term “rhizomatic” refers to the philosophical concept of Deleuze and Guattari, who use the term “rhizome” (from the Ancient Greek ῥίζωμα, rhízōma, “root mass”) to describe a network in which every point can be connected to any other. The collected sounds of the Steinfurt district behave like points on a map that can only provide orientation if one also considers the paths between them. The district becomes a sounding rhizome – not geographical but dynamic – nourished by relations: between places, between times, between the people who produced these sounds and those who listen to them.

Acoustic Identity – Processual, Not Static

These relational connections are never final. They remain in motion, just as the region itself is not static. This dynamic acoustic mesh contrasts with static visual identity markers. While visual signs such as flags, logos, or symbols aim for recognisability, distinction, and permanence, sound unfolds through time and movement. Sound is fleeting, relational, and context-dependent. An acoustic identity can never be fixed or possessed; it arises anew each time – in the moment of listening, in the interplay of space, material, weather, body, and memory. 

This perspective is radically anti-essentialist. It rejects the idea that one can “depict” a region by isolating its supposedly most important or characteristic sounds. Deleuze and Guattari offer the rhizome as a non-hierarchical model, a counterimage to tree-like structures. “The tree imposes the verb ‘to be’, but the rhizome’s fabric is the conjunction ‘and… and… and…’. This conjunction has enough force to shake and uproot the verb ‘to be’.” (5) The collected sounds thus become a weave of conjunctions – wind turbines in Saerbeck and a campsite in Wettringen and the Ems cycle path in Emsdetten and … All the sounds Poëtz chooses function as nodes of a “rhizomatic network of relations, which is not to be written, read or understood, but only to be entered and heard.” (6)

Sound Piece and Sound Film

This entering through listening occurs not only in the satellite works but also in the final sound piece: here, sounds emerge, linger, recede, connect, dissolve – without asserting a hierarchical order. The audible musical relations arise from the interplay of sonic forces themselves: volume, texture, spatial depth, rhythmic density, shifts in frequency. Everything becomes a rhizome, a multilayered and decentralised network of sonic connections. Sounds, noises, voices, and musical elements connect, overlap, and influence one another.

The concluding sound film extends this principle visually. It transforms sounds into images – not as explanation or allocation, but as dialogue. Image and sound behave like two lines that at times run parallel, intersect, drift apart, and converge again. A perceptual space emerges that does not tell us what the region sounds like, but lets us feel how it connects, how it changes, how it becomes audible.

Acoustic identity thus does not serve recognition and does not manifest in individual sound moments but rather in the relationships between them and the ways in which they engage with one another. The uniqueness of a soundscape lies not in the sum of its sounds but in the relations through which they correspond. The founder of soundscape studies, R. Murray Schafer, describes this interplay of sounds in his research (7) and quotes Walt Whitman’s poem Leaves of Grass aptly: “Now I will do nothing but listen … I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, (…)” (8)

Poëtz invites us all to do precisely this: to do nothing but listen, to listen closely to how all sounds flow together, connect, merge or follow one another – and thereby define belonging. Not statically, but through the active participation in a polyphonic, ever-changing sonic space.

Dr. Mirijam Streibl holds a doctorate in musicology, philosophy and is also a sound artist. She researches how sound shapes space, perception, and social relations, combining theoretical analysis, innovative audio technologies, and sound-artistic practice. Her projects create immersive soundscapes and participatory listening spaces that make community, atmosphere, and environment tangible. Originally from Austria, she works internationally and lives in Münster/Westphalia. 

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Annotations:

(1) See the results at www.tonwelten-festival.de. The tonwelten project spent two years (2022/23) exploring the soundscape of the Münsterland region. The soundscape was documented, interpreted, and artistically transformed. 

(2) Cf. Peter Hahn in his article “sätze zum nachdenken: jean-luc nancy ‘zum gehör’”:
“The idea is so striking that it needs to be expressed straight away. Nancy develops his thought along the difference between the senses of sight and hearing (and, of course, the resonances that arise between them). He locates meaning in sound and proposes the distinction that ‘the visual is tendentially mimetic’ whereas the sonic is ‘tendentially methexic’. (This has, of course, nothing to do with Metaxa.) Methexis means ‘participation’ or also ‘sharing’. Or, as the translator adds: ‘contagion’. The idea is interesting in terms of how music is able to foster such a strong sense of community - ultimately even across cultural boundaries.” From: sätze zum nachdenken: jean-luc nancy “zum gehör” by phahn · Published 10 August 2010 · Updated 10 August 2010. 

https://blogs.nmz.de/badblog/2010/08/10/saetze-zum-nachdenken-jean-luc-nancy-zum-gehoer/ accessed on 27 November 2025 (accessed again on 25 November 2025) 

(3) p. 17. Jean-Luc Nancy: Zum Gehör. diaphanes. Zurich–Berlin 2022. (translated from the French by Esther von der Osten). Title of the French original edition: À l’écoute. Editions Galilée, Paris 2002. 

(4) Cf. Nancy, pp. 20, 29. “To have an open ear, to listen, is therefore always to be attuned to or within an access to the self [accès au soi] (…)”, p. 20. “The entire presence of sound or tone is thus made up of a complex of references, the interconnection of which lies in resonance (…)”, p. 29. 

(5) p. 25. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix (2004/1980): Rhizome. In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi. New York: Continuum, pp. 3–28. 

(6) pp. 125 ff. Nordholt-Frieling, Rasmus: Musikalische Relationen. Brill | Fink. Paderborn 2021. 

(7) R. Murray Schafer: The Soundscape. Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. A. Knopf, Vermont 1977. 

(8) Poem by Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself, Section 26, quoted in: R. Murray Schafer: The Soundscape. Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. A. Knopf, Vermont 1977, p. 3. German translation: Walt Whitman: Grashalme. Reclam Stuttgart 1968, p. 62.