Schoolchildren in Latoue record the sounds of rural water

THE INFINITE LISTENING TO RURAL WATER
Listening and oral expression workshop
Led by Luís Costa

2 June 2026
Latoue primary school (Haute-Garonne, France)

An initiative of Eth Ostau Comengés in partnership with Binaural Nodar, within the Festival Tramontana / Total Festum, part of the Tramontana Network project, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme.

The coordinator of Binaural Nodar, Luís Costa, led the sound and oral expression workshop “The Infinite Listening to Rural Water”, which set out to prompt the young participants, who come from several villages in the French Pyrenees, to reflect on the ways water manifests itself in rural settings.

With the support of Mathieu Fauré, of the association Eth Ostau Comengés, Luís Costa proposed dividing the children into three groups to capture local sounds (the artificial lake, the river Noue, a rectangular community wash-house, the systems that draw water from the lake, and so on) using cardioid and directional microphones and hydrophones. The workshop ended with a story about the history of the wash-house and with the children singing in unison a local song about water: “La molièra” (“the miller’s wife”).