At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), a team of lecturers conducted hybrid workshops with design and art students from ten partner institutions on five continents. Our goal was to explore soundscapes from an interdisciplinary perspective, and we were deeply impressed by the quality of the results. The resulting soundscape recordings and their accompanying images and conversations dissolved geographical borders along with social, cultural and structural differences. In the common video conference room we experienced an atmosphere of connectivity we had often missed in face- to-face classes. We have attempted to understand these changes and integrate them into our daily work.

Today, we recognize that our teaching practices and artistic work have changed in several ways. We aim to share our personal experiences, insights and interpretations into this change, and we note that our aesthetic perception of “nature” is fundamental to it. Walks through rural and urban spaces, as well as journaling, drawing, mental mapping and other forms of notation, can all be understood as a return to the basic principles of creative teaching. Furthermore, a post- digital approach of merging physical and digital spaces, as well as a determined commitment to ontological diversity and a notion of worldliness as connectivity, transformed the perception of all participants. Such aesthetic experiences beget changes that serve connection rather than appropriation, and it becomes what it has always been at its core: existential.