He captures the sound of Svalbard's history:
“I was not prepared at all for what I encountered"

James Welburn is a musician, sound artist, and university lecturer. He is searching for the authentic sound of the Arctic island.

He hears his own footsteps in the snow, a dog barking, a snowmobile in the distance, and the sound of the wind tearing through abandoned industrial buildings.

Teaches sound design

The field recordings span several weeks and form part of an artistic research project.

Welburn is a faculty member at the TV School at the University of Inland Norway (INN), where he normally teaches sound design in the documentary programme. 

“It’s about storytelling and about expressing atmosphere through sound. I wanted to document Svalbard’s soundscape – both as sound art and in my own music,” he says.

Wants to find the genuine sound

Before he came to Svalbard for the first time, he had what he calls a romantic notion of the place.

He imagined quiet, peaceful nature. In his mind, the musician envisaged floating, almost clichéd ambient music.

“I was not prepared at all for what I encountered. Svalbard is a busy place with a lot of activity. Historically, it was a site of heavy industry with coal mining. Today there is extensive tourism. You cannot understand it or portray it if you haven’t been there,” he says.

Welburn was searching for the real, genuine soundscape – something that cannot be recreated in a studio or by artificial intelligence. 

He found wind and weather and human activity in a fragile natural environment, full of natural hazards, set against a backdrop of visible and dramatic climate change.

Cultural history told through sound

Welburn searches and listens among the ruins of abandoned coal mines in the icy Arctic wind. 

After two hours, he finds what he's looking for: the wind catches hold of a metal plate on an old machine and creates an uneven thudding sound.

“I was interested in how nature takes ownership of the ruins of the heavy industry from the mining era. The sound tells a story in itself. Where humans once controlled things, nature strikes back,” he says.

He explains that he experienced Svalbard as a museum, or an archive, of different periods of activity on the Norwegian island. Here he found buildings and machinery from different eras.

Sound art based on the recordings has now been published by Austrian broadcaster ORF Sound, in a 55-minute podcast.

At the same time, he composed music inspired by his surroundings. Welburn is a musician with a fondness for noise rock. He composes soundscapes and experimental music.

In Longyearbyen, he walked the streets to test whether the music suited the landscape:

Authenticity in film

His project is part of the initiative for artistic research and development at the Faculty of Film, TV and Games.

As a documentary film lecturer, he is passionate about realism and authenticity.

In a documentary film, every word is weighed carefully. The images must convey credibility. But on the sound side, filmmakers take greater liberties. They use music and sound effects as tools to steer the audience’s emotions.

Concerned about machine learning

He wants his students to think more deeply and holistically about the soundscape in the films they create.

“You can try to recreate a specific reverberation or a particular resonance from old machine parts on Svalbard, but I would say you have to have been there and experienced it to be able to imagine it properly. You need knowledge of the place you are portraying,” says Welburn.

The use of artificial intelligence in sound work is also something that concerns him. When soundscapes are developed through machine learning, what we get is a diluted, second-hand impression of how a place actually sounds.

He is used to the sound of London

James Welburn is probably more attuned to the sounds of his surroundings than most people, even in everyday life.

He grew up in London, a city he describes as a cacophony – noisy, harsh, and chaotic. He says he had a close relationship with the Underground and the distinct sounds of the different lines.

Welburn later moved to Berlin to explore sound and technology in the city’s musical underground scene. He considers the German capital to be more minimalist, structured, and distinct, much like the music associated with the city.

Is it quiet in Lillehammer?

Then he arrived in Lillehammer, a quiet Norwegian small town with forested hills, birdsong, and panoramic views of the mountains. Or is it?

“In Lillehammer we have a lot of nature, but at the same time we humans are taking up more and more space in nature’s soundscape,” he says.

He sits in his office with a view overlooking the construction machinery building the new four-lane E6 through the Lågendelta nature reserve. 

And what about the sound of Longyearbyen – how would he sum it up?

“The place is a fascinating paradox. It's massive and meditative, beautiful and frightening. Wild and desolate, yet at the same time full of life and activity. A bizarre blend of epic nature and a post-industrial wasteland,” says Welburn.

He finds it remarkable that people have existed in such an extreme environment for centuries.

Reference:

Welburn, J. Longyearbyen. Leben am Rande von Industrie und Wildnis (Podcast), ORF Sound, Kunst zum Hören, 2025.

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Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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