Artists Space

Listening to the LES

Listening to the LES is a new media art project at P.S. 140 with special education students in Grades 5 and 6. It is lead by Robert Sember, member of sound art collective Ultra-Red. The project introduces students to inquiry-based art practices, and builds a shared historical awareness of the fabric of the city and the lives of those who live here. Students use oral history, site recording, and archival materials to explore their Lower East Side neighborhood. Students conduct interviews, make and edit audio recordings, and plan and facilitate listening sessions and contribute their compositions to the annual Young Artists Perform (YAP) presentation.

At the heart of the Listening to the LES project are our shared connections to place and community. In the spring of 2022 we stepped out of our screens back into the classroom. Being in person was a good time to start something new. “Let’s learn about SpongeBob” was the response to my question, “What shall we do now?” We learned about the real creatures that inspired the SpongeBob characters:crabs, squid, starfish and plankton. We studied sponges, coral reefs, and we watched My Octopus Teacher for deeper inspiration.

We recorded the sound of life under the water in the East River using microphones attached to fishing rods. We collected materials on land and thought about their shapes and the shapes of objects in the water. We created a listening room called What is the Sound of Water? and created a place where students can go to listen to life underwater and feel as if they might be tiny animals living there.

– Robert Semper, Teaching Artist

Students working with light and found objects, 2022
Students create cyanotypes from gathered and found materials, 2022
Developing cyanotypes, 2022
Fishing for sound in the East River, 2022
Fishing For Sound Team on the East River, 2022
Octopus and water paintings, 2022
Spongemation: water paintings and sponge characters, 2022
A cropped image of a group of students smiling for the camera in Tompkins Square Park. One holds a recording device, which has been overlaid with an opaque orange image of a lampshade. Green digital circles emanate out from it, as if to simulate a doppler-effected sound
P.S. 140 students recording sounds at Tompkins Square Park, 2019 [A cropped image of a group of students smiling for the camera in Tompkins Square Park. One holds a recording device, which has been overlaid with an opaque orange image of a lampshade. Green digital circles emanate out from it, as if to simulate a doppler-effected sound]

A recording from the project What is the Sound of Water? in 2022.

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P.S. 140 students participating in Listening to the LES discuss the COVID pandemic in 2020 in a segment titled Fears, Family and Friends.

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In the recording African Burial Ground, P.S. 140 students participating in A Map of Echos speak about and engage in sound restoration on-site in 2018.

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Frankie, one of the P.S. 140 students participating in Listening to the LES, explains the difference between equality, equity, and liberation.

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To listen to Frankie speak more about equity, visit this link:
Examining Equity with Robert Sember and Listening to the LES, Children’s Museum of the the Arts CIVICKIDS blog, 2018.