In this episode of Flowcast, the podcast of the project Flow, we spoke with Jeff Düngfelder, author of the composition “A Sense of Place”.

To know more about Jeff and his work, visit his website: https://umlaut.work/

Here’s a little teaser of his creative method, in his own words:

For the FLOW project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the University of Padova, and the University of Würzburg, I composed an original piece of music based on a field recording made by researchers along the Lech River near Höfen, Austria.

Titled “A Sense of Place”, the composition brings together history, atmosphere, geography, and memory, reflecting the moment when the listener arrives inside the landscape. Ambient and restrained, the work carries a quiet archival weight, its textures shaped by the crackle and patina of early 78-rpm recordings. Rather than describing the river directly, the piece allows sound itself to function as a record, letting meaning emerge slowly and intuitively.

The Lech is one of the last largely free-flowing rivers in the northern Alps. Its mineral-rich waters and shifting gravel banks have shaped both the surrounding landscape and the cultural identity of the Lechtal for centuries. This continuity—between past and present, place and memory—forms the emotional core of the piece.

Within this context, “A Sense of Place” is intended to feel less like a composition and more like a discovered artifact—something uncovered rather than authored. Timeless and quietly resonant, it invites the listener to inhabit the river’s memory and allow the sound to do the storytelling.

Jeff has also been kind enough to create the cover art, which is this image here above. A perfect companion piece for his composition, which we can listen in the podcast, at the end of the interview.

The cover image is not a literal depiction of the Lech River; rather, it reflects my emotional and imaginative response to it after studying its history. I like to immerse myself in the background of a place before beginning a project, as this research feeds my imagination. While thinking about the continuity between past and present—place and memory—I became especially focused on the river’s flow as a metaphor for time. This landscape holds an immense accumulation of memory, and I came to envision the river as layers of time moving together, much like the idea of past, present, and future existing simultaneously. I sought to convey that sense in the composition. There is a profound richness embedded in the water, and I believe that anyone who spends quiet, attentive time there can sense its enduring, timeless presence.

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Flow is a project by Dr Martina Cecchetto, with the scientific contribution of Dr Florian Betz and the artistic curation of Riccardo Fumagalli, in collaboration with Cities & Memory, the University of Padua (Italy), and the University of Würzburg (Germany).

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