Name: Manja Ristić
Nationality: Serbian-Croatian
Occupation: Violinist, sound artist, curator, researcher
Current release: Among Manja Ristić's most recent releases, two stick out: Kuda plovi ovaj brod?, a two-part immersive sound piece “built from hydrophone recordings of underwater sound pollution.” And Štrada od Sigurate, a 46-minute meditation on the soundscape of Dubrovnik and noise as a "silent killer."

If you enjoyed this Manja Ristić interview and would like to know more about her music, visit her official homepage. She is also Instagram, ello, Facebook, and Soundcloud.

For further reading, we recommend our earlier 15 Questions interview with Manja Ristić and a deep conversation on the topic of sound.



Acoustic ecology, the biophony, and even the acoustics of public places have drawn a lot of attention. How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

I personally take working with sound very seriously and believe sound can have serious health implications. General low awareness of the effects of sound pollution will generate more and more problems in the future.

Once research and technology are able to find models for implementing sound as a healing tool applicable in everyday life, the paradigm of noise pollution might shift. People might pay more attention to the subject. I often say that noise pollution is the tip of the iceberg of the Anthropocene, but that is more a metaphor than an actual case because noise pollution is in many cases the heart of the problem.

In my work, I am concentrating a lot on the underwater noise pollution of the Adriatic. The general knowledge gained from the available research about the effect of underwater noise pollution is clear about the fact that this sort of environmental devastation is not only causing long-term damage to marine life but to humans as well.

For all of the marine fauna sound transmission within the seas and oceans are the primary means of orientation, communication, and a predominantly important aspect of social and developmental interaction, such as breeding, feeding, protection, and various other reasons for shoaling. Which simply means that underwater noise is compromising their full life cycle.

If the frequency pattern of the noise is overlapping with the particular frequency range in which a certain species are communicating, they simply are not capable of finding each other anymore. They become vulnerable, unprotected, and with significantly less chance to breed. If the frequency pattern of the noise is overlapping with the hearing range that enables them to use biosonar, they get lost or disorientated, unable to avoid solid obstacles and follow the group they belong to. The noise is literally blinding them. If the frequency pattern of the noise is overlapping with their inherited “database” of sound-detecting predators they are constantly moving away from the potential danger, prioritising being safe over feeding.

I think this excerpt from a research paper by professor Lindy Weilgart from OceanCare & Dalhousie University, says a lot on the subject:

"Noise impacts on the development of marine life include body malformations, higher egg or immature mortality, developmental delays, delays in metamorphosing and settling, and slower growth rates. Concrete “anatomical impacts from noise involve massive internal injuries, cellular damage to statocysts and neurons, causing disorientation and hearing loss which can lead to a fatal outcome.

Damage to hearing structures can worsen over time even after the noise has ceased, sometimes becoming most pronounced after 96 hrs. post-noise exposure. Even temporary hearing loss can last for months. Stress impacts from noise are not uncommon, including higher levels of stress hormones, greater metabolic rate, oxygen uptake, cardiac output, parasites, irritation, distress, and mortality rate, sometimes due to disease and cannibalism; and worse body condition, lower growth, weight, food consumption, immune response, and reproductive rates. Studies also confirmed compromised DNA integrity.

Behaviourally, animals showed alarm responses, increased aggression, hiding, and flight reactions; and decreased anti-predator defense, nest digging, nest care, courtship calls, spawning, egg clutches, and feeding. […] Schooling becomes uncoordinated, unaggregated, and unstructured due to noise. Masking reduces communication distance and could cause misleading information to be relayed. […] Once the population biology and ecology are impacted, it is clear fisheries and even food security for humans are also affected."

I think contemporary society will come to the point of noise saturation which will bring to the surface the realisation of how the micro affects macro, in both environmental and socio-cultural contexts.

For now, in the hectic society which at the moment looks more like an entropy than anything else, this perhaps echoes as a radical holism. But eventually, we might end up being forced to pay more attention to our intrinsic connection with the environment, on chemical and further down on molecular and even atomic levels. That is where sound has great potential, because of its capacity to transform and transmit.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold from your point of view?

Discourse on silence extended a bit with the pandemic I think, and we collectively experienced the “other” side of silence, its unsettling and eerie nature. I often highlight that the human hearing range is pretty limited as opposed to many other animal species, which created this social construct of “silence,” while in reality, noise of all sorts is constantly present, only we cannot attune to it so easily.

For me, silence makes space for introspection and reversed listening, listening to oneself, and the body. I also believe that we are deeply dependent on sound for charging our neural networks, our ears doing a very important task of receiving and transmuting electrical stimuli into the energy needed for the organ of Corti to keep neurotransmitters going. So there is this quite important function of the ear that is exposing our central nervous system to sound, in a quite direct way.

Yes, I agree it is wonderful to be surrounded by music and sound, it sounds like an ultimate celebration of life but perhaps also speculating in the background that there will be no sound in death? I read Glenn’s statement as a metaphor tough. The human genetic environment is shifting and we need to shift our mind-body paradigms too.

What I am trying to say is – in my case, it is not easy to be a passive listener. After a lifelong musical and abstract sound practice, I need to make a slight effort to “turn off” my listening structures. Being present and absorbing the sound every second of the day inevitably drives the nervous system to a state of overwork and can produce issues like meltdowns, an emotional, sensorial, and mental overload. This, as an example, isomething autistic people experience since their psycho-physical background, due to neurodiversity, can not choose to “switch off”.

That situation is very far away from the ultimate delight.