Hydrology 2.0 Sound Walk is a thirty-minute original locative media work created for Pula, Croatia, commissioned for Media Mediterranea 27: H2O Interface. Drawing on over 300 hours of hydrophone recordings gathered from aquatic systems worldwide over the past decade, the work maps this global underwater archive onto a specific urban environment, grounding planetary-scale ecological data in local place. The work treats water as both subject and material, responding directly to the festival's theme of water as interface, and invites festival audiences into an embodied, participatory listening experience that connects everyday public space with hidden acoustic ecologies through original soundscape compositions along the streets of Pula.
The work was commissioned by the Croatian Metamedia Association and premiered as part of Media Mediterranea 27: H2O Interface (2025), curated by Darko Fritz within an international program examining water as interface across art, science and technology. Media Mediterranea, presented by the Metamedia Association, has run annually since 1999 as one of Croatia's leading international media arts festivals, hosting international artists alongside a free public program for local communities. H2O Interface examined the relationships between water and the diverse human and non-human entities that depend on it, asking how living beings and material worlds interface with water in its many forms.
Research Background Locative media and sound walks offer new ways of layering invisible ecological information onto everyday urban space, prompting publics to engage with ecological data in new ways (Behrendt, 2015). Within new media art, water is increasingly framed not as subject matter but as an interface connecting human, non-human and technological worlds (Latour, 1993). Underwater recordings reveal acoustic ecologies of rivers, oceans and lakes that remain inaccessible without technological mediation, yet rarely enter public space outside galleries or formal listening contexts. This research asks: how can a locative sound walk use underwater recordings to reveal water as a connective interface between human communities and aquatic ecosystems within an urban environment? Research Contribution Hydrology 2.0 Sound Walk is a thirty-minute original locative media work in Pula, Croatia, commissioned for Media Mediterranea 27: H2O Interface. Drawing on over 300 hours of hydrophone recordings gathered from aquatic systems worldwide over the past decade, the work introduces: (1) a locative compositional method that maps a global underwater archive onto a specific urban environment, grounding planetary data in local place; (2) a compositional approach treating water as both subject and material, responding directly to the festival's interface theme; and (3) an embodied, participatory listening format that invites festival audiences to engage with water as interface within transient, everyday public space. Research Significance Hydrology 2.0 Sound Walk was commissioned by the Croatian Metamedia Association and premiered as part of Media Mediterranea 27: H2O Interface (2025), curated by Darko Fritz within an international program examining water as interface across art, science and technology. Media Mediterranea, presented by the Metamedia Association, has run annually since 1999 as a leading international media arts festival in Croatia, hosting international artists alongside a free public program for local communities. The work was commissioned for inclusion in this curated program as a leading example of creative practice research, with Barclay delivering a public lecture on creative practice research as part of the program. The work is now a permanent installation at NOVO gallery in Croatia.