Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"This is an eco-poetic/mythic piece, a kind of swan song. Named after a line in the film IO, where, in a toxic environment, in a post apocalyptic time, you can no longer see swans. I was particularly inspired by the quietness of this segment of the river, and the description for segment 15 by the person who recorded it, that it was as if they had come upon a secret and secluded place, hiding in a dense stretch of forest, where one man pushes off on a boat, barely rippling the tranquil waters. 

"You can hear mute swans taking off. I re-imagine this lone man as the Swan Knight, or Knight of the apocalypse. I wanted to convey this feeling, of a separate mystical and magical place, as both real and not real. A place of myth but also as place of illusions and deceptive tranquility. I wanted to sonically disrupt that magical flow, of time and the sound of a lone rower, with the reality of climate catastrophe, water and sound pollution. Especially contrasting the clean waters of Germany with the sewage filled water in UK. 

"Fragments can be heard of news commentators speaking about global water bankruptcy. You can hear sounds of me filling bottles of water from my large metal water filter, as it is now no longer advisable to drink tap water in the UK. I wanted to also disrupt the notion of isolation, or that this lone man was really only barely disrupting the surface, when in reality we are all connected, cross-culturally entangled, and everything we do has consequences, often catastrophic, for all humans and creatures of the planet globally, beyond this seemingly peaceful stretch of a river in Bavaria. 

"I researched Bavarian and European mythology about swans and rivers, as well as swan and river mythology in other cultures. I looked for fragments of old recordings of European/German swan music, swan songs and swan poems (for example - extracts from poems by Orlando Gibbons, Jules Renard, and extracts from a poem by Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg used by Schubert for his piece Auf dem Wasser zu singen, , and Mein Lieber Schwan by Wagner, sung in 1930s in English by Walter Midgley ). I looked up scientific research about the river Lech, reservoirs and mute swans, local plant life, and infrasound. I was also very interested in the wider context of the area of segment 15 - the paper mill of Schongau, a Turkish cafe, and history of the executions of 'witches' and the creation of a memorial garden/ the role of gardens / plants, in healing trauma and the planet. Old photographs of the area and how the area had changed through time also influenced how I felt about this stretch of the river Lech. 

"A feeling of irreversible flow toward the end of everything, as we try to reverse the flow, we flow into silence. Through out the piece you can hear the flow of my voice reading extracts from my research and thoughts, the underlying constant sound of the lone man rowing, and sonic interludes and disruptions to unsettle us from our reverie." 

Section of the river Lech reimagined by  Salma Ahmad Caller. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"The river inspired the piece as a dreamlike walk. This composition focuses on birds as the first carriers of musical entities. The sound is shaped into an ancient story, told through evolving pads that mirror the gentle life surrounding the current. 

"Influenced by the figure of David in the Old Testament, where music is discovered through nature and spirituality, the composition unfolds as a quiet revelation, as if the birds themselves were guiding the emergence of music. It evokes an intimate promenade along the river, tinted with magical mirages."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Angela Tisner. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Viewed from above, on maps and in satellite imagery, Litzauer Schleife (‘Litzau Loop’) appears as a gracefully looping meander. Sonically, on the ground, the field recording makes a similar gesture with the sounds of gently flowing water and the calls and wingbeats of birds. We were intrigued to learn this section of the River Lech is protected by conservation legislation and is one of the very few remaining parts of the river that approximates a ‘natural’ riverscape. We dug a bit into the history of this place and learned about past times and people that both inspired and troubled our contribution.

"In the decades following World War Two, Litzau Loop was saved from being turned into a reservoir while under incredible pressure from powerful industrial interests seeking to develop entirely the Bavarian section of the River Lech. The word ‘pressure’ and sound of water rushing through a power plant in Ilaria Boffa’s preceding piece for Section 13 thus resonated for us and we brought it into the our opening.

"Another thread of continuity we introduce is historical. Today the person celebrated for protecting the Litzau Loop from destruction is Professor Dr. Otto Kraus (1905-1984). A famous line associated with him, from a film Natur in Gefahr (Nature in Danger) that he co-produced in 1952, is: "He who destroys nature, destroys himself". While being a stalwart force for nature conservation in post-war Germany, Kraus’s role was continuous in many ways with the work he did for the Nazi Regime but using then the language of primeval nature as essential cultural identity for preservation of the German volk: one argument for regional wetland conservation was the expectation of additional lebensraum to be provided for development by Hitler’s expansionism. As fascism rises again in the loops and returns of history, we have chosen to embed rather ignore unsettling links between nature and nationalist identity politics.

"Despite its protected status, we learned too that the Litzau Loop is still in danger of disappearing. The lack of hydrologic dynamics in the highly industrialized River Lech means that this section of the river no longer shifts its course. As silt accumulates, the riverbanks are becoming covered with vegetation, and this cultural waterscape is beginning a slow transformation into landscape. As the piece builds, we play with “accumulation” in terms of the layering of loops drawn from the field recording. We also layer in beats made from plucking TYΦA’s cattail cordage-strings to ultimately take the piece in a cacophonous direction, suggestive less of romantic idyll than existential uncertainty. Kraus’s phrase "He who destroys nature, destroys himself" is literally embedded as audible filtering processes in the second half of the piece, and the text can be seen when opening the piece in a spectral audio editor." 

Section of the river Lech reimagined by TYΦA. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Entrophony — fusing 'entropy' with '-phony' (sound) — transforms a hydropower plant's acoustic signature into a meditation on energy dissipation. The project captures the plant as an entropy generator, extracting rhythm and noise from a single field recording through granular synthesis and sampling techniques. 

"Hovering at the threshold between music and industrial noise, the composition positions both the power plant and the river it harnesses as technologies within an inexorable entropic system—each converting organized energy into increasingly dispersed forms."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Louis Möckel. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"The field recording and the satellite timelapse I chose speak of hydro-power, energy and discontinuity, they tell the story of a voice fragmented, amplified and impeded. 
There is magic and mystery in the life of these ancient water-beings. Is a river a portal? Is the myth still alive?

"Artist and researcher Elizabeth Gallon Drosde introduces us to the submerged at the beginning of the composition. Rivers are story tellers, they are memory. If we deep listen, we might commune with ghosts and tune our bodies to their whispers, we might become a vibration.

"The sound of wind accompanying this first part and the end of the piece is played on violin by violinist Ida Di Vita (Quartetto Indaco). A long whistle, the primordial element of air swirling and hissing.

"Later on I join the flow and embody the river, its deep ancestral sound. My poem and my pitched voice in English are there to remind us of the history of this more-than-human being, its force and path, its hunger. 

"Mystery and magic, and the Lech rivers in reverse. I proceed in Italian overlapping my reversed voice. I get hungrier and hungrier and I go deeper and deeper, till pressure slows down, till noise recedes.

Composition:
original field recording by Riccardo Fumagalli
wind sound by violinist Ida di Vita (Quartetto Indaco)
intro poem 'In the interstices of river-portals' by Elizabeth Gallon Drosde
English/Italian poem 'In the Arms of Weirs' by Ilaria Boffa
Sound effects, mixing and production by Ilaria Boffa

Poem, In the Arms of Weirs

'Deep-voiced white noise
progression of pressure 
spinning of shhh, turmoil.
It’s all you can feel in the fall.
 
It’s good to be at service
to move downwards and collect
to come a long way across
the Pleistocene moraines
 
the edge of Alps and gravel fields
to accumulate in the arms of weirs.
But I’ve seen algae disappear
under the law of no fish pass.
 
I get hungrier and hungrier
I go deeper and deeper
as to search for the Styx
as to swear by her water.

Way less than a good mother
my spawning grounds in degradation
my current impeded, my voice
broken, a life to gauge.

Flow continuity hiccups 
with drawn-out hisses and roars
it self-renders into a different language
it loosens and rivers in reverse.' 

Poem, Is a River a Portal?

'Living between languages, between the here and there
learning to become fluvial,
finding shores to breathe on,
more than a beginning or an end.

The portal, the waters, dams.
To remember with water is to submerge in the threshold —
this is how the river becomes a practice, a way of moving,
a framework for transitions
in the interstices,
Linking us to the collective,
to the territories that lie beyond, deeper.

Listening to the waters between the here and there,
becomes a space for what resists being said,
a gesture of attention,
where meaning slips through,
without words.

Communing with the ghosts
rivers always testify, 
are storytellers
this means tuning our bodies to their whispers
a hum, a vibration, an interference.'

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Ilaria Boffa. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Submerged is a music piece that focuses on the perspective of living organisms in Forggensee Reservoir. The work incorporates field recordings capturing gentle water surfaces, subtle shifts in currents, distant passing vehicles, and the faint presence of aquatic life. The field recordings are used throughout most of the piece as raw material with minimal processing. The composition is structured in three sections, each representing different layers and temporal states of the lake.

"The opening section evokes shallow waters, suggesting aquatic animals and the shimmering surface through minimal and delicate sonic textures. Through layered sounds representing both visual and auditory phenomena, subtle changes in the environment are expressed.

"In the middle section, the perspective moves deeper underwater, where darker and shifting sonic textures emerge. These sounds reflect movement and tension within the ecosystem. This section is also informed by human activity, such as tourism and recreational boating, as well as environmental changes including sedimentation and variations in water levels. Additionally, elements of local culture are introduced through the resonance of string instruments, evoking the atmosphere of a luthier’s workshop near the lake. These sounds form a layer where environmental and cultural elements intersect.

"The final section depicts both the exposed lakebed during periods of low water levels and a return to a calm, quiet state. While the surface appears tranquil, a subtle sense of unease remains, suggesting environmental and human-related issues that persist as unresolved conditions.

"By interweaving seasonal and temporal shifts, biological presence, cultural context, and human impact, the piece invites the listener to experience the lake as a complex and multi-layered environment. The title Submerged refers to the unseen ecosystem beneath the surface, as well as to environmental changes that are not easily seen."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Masako Yokouchi. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"After reading about the Lech and looking at the images, my first impulse was to change or add nothing - just let the sound be - like it is... It took a while until i thought: Ok Lech - I'll "visit" you and bring some silent sounds - like the sounds that might show up in your head, when you are in nature. 

"So I layered, spoken word, singing of different melodies that did not necessary fit, a bit piano and let it meet the Lech - but so, so silent that you can hardly hear it - is there something? or not? Did I hear something else? what was that? 

"I did not change the recording of the Lech, it is exactly like it was recorded, just a bit shortened, because I wanted this piece to be an instant, like a blink of an eye. 

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Judith Mann. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Some years ago, when we were still living in Poland, my partner and I drove to Füssen to collect a second-hand canoe that we had found online. Its name was Tukan. I’m fairly certain it had frequently travelled the River Lech with its previous owners who were keen canoeists and most likely knew their way around the water.

"These days, Tukan sometimes glides along the tidal rivers around Southampton, carrying those earlier journeys quietly within.

"In this piece, I used a field recording from the workshop in Füssen, alongside the sound of Tukan itself, which I captured with a contact microphone. I blended these textures with gentle synths and pads — small sonic currents filling the spaces in between. I guess my aim was to evoke a sense of interconnectedness: how places, objects, and moments echo through time, and how sometimes certain sounds, or memories, resurface." 

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Canis Arboris. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"Assigned the section of the Lech that crosses from Austria into Germany, I decided to travel to the area (near the city of Füssen) to listen to the river myself. I visited on the last Saturday of January, when the sun was shining over the (still very present) snow on the banks of the river. 

"With a few microphones, two recorders, and lots of time to be with my thoughts, I recorded in six locations while walking south along the river. I began at the bridge over the Lech Falls, found a few spots to capture along the way until I made it across the border into Austria, where the river was calm and flat - but the slick snowy bank was not - and the battery cover from my recorder decided to slide down and join the river. Alas. I'd like to think it's made it well past Augsburg by now:). 

"In composing the piece, I knew I wanted to structure it geographically--starting in Austria, and ending at the falls. Further, I wanted the piece to capture a bit of the contemplative mood that persisted within me throughout that day along the river. It had been a while since I had spent a full day recording, and being with the river gave me some valuable space to sit with my thoughts as I listened. Just as I started to lay out the piece, a segment from the preceding section, section 9, was shared by Giuseppe Cordaro. When I listened to his piece, it resonated as a textured breathing, reverberant, a bit haunting. I grabbed a small section that felt like a signal, a warning, and for me, a beginning.

"Starting the piece with a fraction of Giuseppe's piece gave it a bit of a framing--and as I layered small pieces of each section in geographic order, you could feel the rise of the water and the original field recording from the treetop walk gave it a sense of humanity and space. But the journey I was trying to communicate was not coming through. I removed some tracks, isolated the hydrophone and geofon at times, and extended the length of the church bells (which I recorded on the treetop walk near sunset) as they led into the swell of the falls. From there, I trusted my instincts, which led me to add some instrumentation. With a keyboard and synth, I added in a few notes and chords that felt to be in conversation with the river's sounds. It was too much, but after pulling some back and adding a bit of reverb and some little touches, it started to feel a bit like that day I wandered along the river. I hope it does some of that for those who listen as well."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Tim Wojcik. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.

"In composing Segment No. 9 for the Flow project, I explored how to translate the satellite imagery into sound and blend it with the provided field recording. I began by converting the imagery into raw data, which I then mapped to MIDI to trigger synthesisers.

"Listening to the field recording, I felt it told its own story, capturing the contrast between the free flowing River Lech and the sound of gravel at the extraction factory site. I composed a tertiary piece in a bid to combine these elements, feeling that my part was one of creating an emotional space where a conversation could take place between them.

"With this in mind, I reached out to the artist and curator of the Flow project, Riccardo Fumagalli, to see if he and his colleagues would be willing to share their personal reflections on the river. Both he and Dr. Martina Cecchetto of the University of Padua kindly provided moving voice messages. Their words inspired me to weave their voices into the piece conversationally, providing the final cohesion I had envisioned at the outset." 

Section of the river Lech reimagined by Cara Kelly. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.