About World Listening Day
On 18 July 2026, the seventeenth edition of World Listening Day will take place. The date marks the birthday of composer, acoustic ecologist, and founder of the World Listening Project, R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021).
Organized by the World Listening Project, World Listening Day celebrates the practice of active listening to the sounds of our environment. It seeks to raise awareness of listening as a cultural practice, promote sonic stewardship of the environment, and encourage people around the world to engage with and reflect upon the soundscapes that surround them.
Learn more about World Listening Day: https://worldlisteningday.org/
To celebrate this year’s edition of World Listening Day, the OISTAT Sound Design Sub-Commission is creating a collaborative online sound artwork. We invite all members, friends, colleagues, and supporters of the Sub-Commission to contribute a field recording. We are looking forward to adding a new work to a series of sound exhibits made by our group in recognition of World Listening Day from 2010 onwards.
What we are looking for
Please submit a field recording that captures a sonic environment that you consider characteristic of the place where you live
• Is 2 minutes long
• Is recorded as a single continuous take
• Has no editing or post-processing
The project
All submitted recordings will be assembled into a continuous composition. The first minute of each recording will crossfade with the previous recording, while the second minute will crossfade into the next. The resulting chain of field recordings will create a sonic journey through our environments, revealing both the similarities and differences that shape our everyday listening experiences.
Above all, we hope this project will be enjoyable and inspiring. At the same time we hope to honor World Listening Day by encouraging deep listening to the world around us and to embrace the Sub-Commission’s motto of “Bringing the world together through sound.”
The completed work will be released on the OISTAT Sound Design Sub-Commission SoundCloud on World Listening Day 2026.
Visit https://soundcloud.com/oistat-sound-design-wg/sets to listen to former OISTAT Sound entries.
How to participate
Technical specifications
• Uncompressed audio format (.wav or .aiff), stereo
• 48 kHz sample rate
• 24-bit resolution
By submitting a recording, you grant permission for it to be used in this project without further conditions. All contributors will be credited as co-authors of the final work and your recordings will not be used for anything else.
