The project Hearing Sirens is based on two of the applications of the word siren. The siren is both a mythological     woman, having the body of a bird and the head of a woman as a noise maker, used to warn in emergency cases. The sirens as bird-women were known in Antiquity for their beautyful singing. It was unable to resist them and most of the men who heard them did not survive. The siren as a noisemaker is used to warn people for emergency cases and can therefore be seen as a survival tool. It uses a rotating disk with holes, to create its characteristic sound. I used both as an acoustic, visual and conceptual starting-point for this piece.

For this project I built so called portable loudspeakerhorns, consisting of a small mp3-player, a box with an amplifier and battery, and two loudspeakers in two big yellow horns. The construction is made to be worn on the back of a dancer or performer.The sounds used in the piece have been made with a physical modelling of the sound of an emergency siren, programmed in Max-MSP.

Due to their specific form, the hornloudspeakers diffuse the sound very directional. Therefore often the first reflections are heard instead of the direct sound and the specific acoustical characteristics of performance environment are revealed. Till now performances have been done in a normal concerthall, the hills, in the wood, in snow and in the city.