Workshop | Robert Cole Rizzi: The Art of Listening – To Hamburg. A Participatory Soundwalk Workshop

How does the world sound when we truly listen? In this participatory workshop, participants explore their sonic environment through attentive listening, simple drawing, poetry, and playful composition — no musical experience required.
The workshop begins with a guided soundwalk, where participants listen closely to everyday sounds while also making small line drawings based on visual details in the environment, such as skylines, patterns, trees, or bushes. Back indoors, the listening experiences are transformed into short poetic texts, and the drawings are translated into music using mechanical music boxes.
The workshop offers an accessible and hands-on introduction to sound-based creativity, showing how artistic processes can emerge from listening, observation, and simple materials. Developed over more than ten years at the Danish National Academy of Music (SDMK), the format has been tested with a wide range of participants, from schoolchildren to professional artists.

About the workshop facilitator

Robert Cole Rizzi is an assistant professor at the Danish National Academy of Music (SDMK) in Esbjerg, where he teaches electronic music and sound art. His work focuses on making creative sound practice accessible to everyone, developing pedagogical methods that welcome participants without requiring musical or technical prerequisites.
As a practicing artist working with sound, visual art, and experimental music technology, Robert collaborates internationally with institutions such as the Prince Claus Conservatoire in the Netherlands, and the Technische- and Musikhochschule in Lübeck. His artistic research explores how nature’s movements and traces can become sources for audiovisual composition, using techniques from field recording to biodata sonification.
Robert has spent the past decade developing and refining the “Impression – Imprint – Expression” methodology presented in this workshop. It has been successfully implemented with primary school students, conservatory composition students, public library visitors, and museum participants across Denmark. His approach demonstrates that everyone can engage meaningfully with sound art when given accessible tools and encouragement to experiment.