Imaginary Sardinian Games presents: Flamingo Rising!

An Audio RPG · Episode One: Level One

A bit breathless, enthusiastic, slightly unhinged.

The year is unclear. What is clear: Sardinia is salt now. The hills, the roads, the vineyards. All of it, crystallised under an indifferent sky. Overexploitation swallowed the land, and what remains is beautiful in the way that only dangerous things can be.

You are Player One. Player Two didn't make it.

Your quest is simple. Find drinkable water. Your boots are already dissolving. Somewhere ahead, forty-seven flamingos are waiting.

Flamingo Rising is a one-of-a-kind audio RPG set in a post-apocalyptic Sardinia: part game, part elegy, part fever dream. It is narrated by a GM who is doing their best under difficult circumstances. Roll for initiative. Bring something to remember.

Level Two begins at the edge of what was once a vineyard. The vines are salt now. They are beautiful.

Flamingo Rising. Created for Audio Flux 07, the flamingos own it now.

The GM is Romeo M. Minutolo who also created the image.

Story, recording and sound editing by M. Cristina Marras.

Sometimes magic finds you when you least expect it. That's exactly what happened when, among the many sounds from the Pitt Rivers Museum, I stumbled upon a recording of a night forest in the Central African Republic. I was immediately drawn to the sound because it felt magical. Without even reading the description to know the background of the sound, where it came from or how it came about, I selected it as a basis for my creation, trusting my intuition to guide me toward something special.

The Sound Weaver's Incantation is part of Cities and Memory's A Century of Sounds,an ambitious project celebrating the Pitt Rivers Museum's extraordinary audio heritage. This global collaboration brings together artists, collectors, and listeners to reimagine historical and contemporary field recordings, creating new sonic landscapes that honour the past while embracing the present.

As an artist who often searches through recorded sounds for inspiration to tell personal stories, I expected this to be just another backdrop for my reflections. But this time it ended up being different. As I began reading about the origin of the sound, chosen purely for its magical quality, I found myself lost in the discovery of a real-life hero.

I met legendary ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno – a fantastic human being who devoted his entire life to the collection, protection, and conservation of the sounds and culture of the Bayaka people. From that moment, I knew I couldn't simply use the rainforest sound as a backdrop for my personal musings. I felt the profound need to bring back to life the magic of the forest and the love and passion that Louis Sarno poured into his life's work.

Through this piece, I hope to honour Louis Sarno's legacy and the enduring magic of the Bayaka sounds he so lovingly preserved. In a world where so many cultural voices are at risk of being silenced, this incantation serves as both tribute and promise – that with patience, reverence, and a touch of magic, the music of life shall never die.

Photo by Jack Taylor on Unsplash

Asylum is an immersive piece that takes listeners into a disorienting world of raw, urgent, whispered confessions layered on a cinematic soundscape worthy of your best psychological thriller. Listeners are left with a vague sense of uneasiness, and one piece of advice: do not look in the kitchen sink.

The piece was created for Small Audio Art, the online space by Phoebe McIndoe where audio artists respond to simple prompts, like a kitchen sink, every other month. It's a low-pressure spot for short, creative audio pieces that connect makers worldwide.