DITA Visits: The Listening Biennial Singapore

Art and design has been an inseperable part of DITA Audio's identity since its conception in 2012, so when Kah Gay and Alecia, the curators and organisers of Listening Biennial Singapore, asked if we wanted to be a part of it, we immediately jumped on board with the project. 
 
DITA Audio is immensely honoured to be part of the Listening Biennial's Listening tours, helping audio pieces move about walk routes in the heart of Singapore and immersing listeners in the realms these pieces and their curators aim to bring the tour's participants into.

Meeting Saskia: Curator of "I Hear You, You Hear Me: Listening While Coexisting"

 

We had the pleasure of being invited to a preview of the Listening Biennial's program on 23 August 2025, where Saskia, one of the two curators of the Biennial's walking tours, took us through a different side of Singapore's Waterloo Street, one shaped by the content playing through each participant's Prelude earpieces. 

Saskia's tour was called "I Hear You, You Hear Me" and began with Saskia passing out hand- bound journals with which we were told to record any in-the-moment feelings about the artwork.  

The tour started in the calm, at the Stamford Arts Centre with a visual and audio installation by Hear and Found, a collective from Thailand. The piece incorporates song from the Karen tribe, shining the spolight on two pieces, one called "Mae" a lullaby song sang by Karen elders that celebrates the tribe's reliance on rice farming and another called "Lay Lay Tae Na Gu" by Karen musician Deepunu, who, through his song sheds light on the symbiotic relationship the tribe sees themselves in with nature.

Living with the forest, we take care of the forest
Drinking water, we take care of the river
Eating frog, we take care of the mountain
We eat fish, we take care of the stream

Excerpt: "Lay Lay Tae Na Gu"

We were gestured to the benches in the area, in the shade of trees growing in a little courtyard at Stamford Arts Centre, the sounds, sights and scents transporting us into the psyche of someone who might have sang these songs. 

Immersion on the Go: With the DITA Prelude

The next part of the tour was a deliciously immersive one. Staff passed out little clamshell cases, in which sat the DITA Prelude.

We would spend the next half-hour or so traipsing around Waterloo Street with the earphones in our ears, allowing the sights and extraneous sounds from the cityscape to add to the pieces Saskia picked out for us. 

The first piece presented in this manner was Questions of Jailani by Imaad Majeed, featuring religious chants from different religions woven together and recited, beginning with a level cadence before rising to a feverish, affecting pitch. This was an exceptionally poignant and appropriate piece to listen to as we walked down Waterloo Street, across religious buildings, markets, alleyways and joss stick shops.

The way the piece draws from multiple religious sources speaks to the human and nonhuman need for coexistence, which Saskia mentions as something necessary in and beyond what is immediately visibilt to the human eye. 

The second piece is Jacqualine Nova's Creacion de la Tierra, a piece alternating between moments of silence, near-primordial whirring and human chants in reference to the creation of the world. Starting in the silence of the Stamford Arts Centre, the world around us added to the piece as we walked further and further into the city, allowing the silences in the piece to be punctuated by noises of modernity and life. 

Our walking tour ended at 42 Waterloo Street where we were invited to sit down and share our thoughts on the pieces.  

It goes without saying how major a part listening plays in DITA’s ethos, and to carry out the act of “listening” in a manner drastically different from what we do in our studios in everyday life is something we hold as precious.

While their listening tours are currently sold out, the rest of The Listening Biennial Singapore's amazingly curated programme is available to experience for the duration of the Singapore Night Festival from 22 August to 6 Sept 2025. See more details about the experience on their Eventbrite site here: https://www.eventbrite.sg/o/the-listening-biennial-singapore-113944731641