Consider the vastness of the cosmos, composed of stars and galaxies, with differing modes of life and perception. Tungrel, a traveler from the planet Aurelium, undertook a journey to Earth in response to a growing crisis at home. Aurelium is a place where life is sustained through sound. For the Aurelians, hearing functions as a sensory faculty as well as a condition of survival.
In recent cycles, the sounds and vibrations that once maintained Aurelian life and ecological balance have been steadily diminishing. Prolonged conflict has altered the planet’s acoustic environment, producing forms of hazards. As a result, many Aurelians are experiencing progressive hearing loss; it’s a condition that threatens not only individual bodies but the ecological stability of the planet itself. Tungrel’s journey is therefore a quest and an attempt to discover whether other worlds had developed ways of producing, storing, or transmitting sounds that might be adapted to Aurelian lifeworlds.
Earth appeared in Aurelian accounts as a place where sounds could be recorded, composed, and archived. It can be consumed through various forms of mediation. In addition to this, Tungrel encountered practices of music-making that treated sound as a formal structure, memory, and form of expression. Over time, he learned how humans organize vibration into repeatable forms, how listening is trained, and how sound is separated from immediate necessity and turned into an object of leisure. While Earth’s sonic anatomy showed possibilities, Tungrel also realised that they were shaped by unique histories and natural, ecological and social conditions that are very different from those of Aurelium. Tungrel became increasingly aware that sound could not simply be transferred from one Earth to Aurelium without undergoing any form of transformation. His compositional attempts were therefore experimental. It was an attempt to test whether certain sonic arrangements could reactivate Aurelian sensory capacities without reproducing the destructive hazards that had contributed to the crisis.
As Tungrel prepared to return, the outcome of his efforts remained uncertain. Music, in this context, did not offer the promise of repair. Instead, it functioned as a speculative practice; it was a way of thinking through sound, survival, and responsibility across planetary difference. Whether Aurelium’s acoustic lifeworld could be restored was unclear. What remained was the pursuit of listening itself, extended across planetary boundaries.