Sound artist Renzo Spiteri is inviting the public to "listen in to" Valletta in a new innovative sound installation.

Between the Heard captures the mood and movement of the city through sound, pushing people to reconsider their perceptions and experience of Malta's capital city.

In this piece, the picture painted of the city is stripped of historical context and visual landscape, so that many of the associations we normally make with particular spaces are placed at a remove from our experience of it in the present moment.

Different stories surface as we overhear and listen to the noise, echoes, vibrations, and conversations of people passing through or residing there. What remains of Valletta if you strip it of its elegant baroque palaces and tight interlocked symmetrical streets? What remains if you unlearn the history of its birth and growth?

Between the Heard is designed as an audio sculpture emitted from five speakers in the round. It draws on the Modernist movement that experimented with artistic form and content in order to engage with the social and cultural fabric of the time.

Spiteri creates work independently and in collaboration with visual artists, cultural organisations, dancers, writers and galleries.

Between the Heard is set up at Spaces C1 and C2 (Upper Galleries) at St James Cavalier Spazju Kreattiv and will run until January 15. The 20-minute sound art piece is on a loop but can be experienced differently every time it is heard. The work contains explicit language.

It is part of the project ‘Quintessence’, a Valletta 2018 and Open Works Lab collaboration and part of the Valletta – European Capital of Culture 2018 Programme. It is also part of Spazju Kreattiv programme and is supported by Malta Arts Fund, Arts Council Malta.