Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 2756: Lost in Entebbe
    Entebbe market reimagined by Ryan Little.
    "I wanted my piece to reflect the anonymity one can face in a city. Especially coming from smaller rural towns, moving to a city of 55,000 or more is a daunting thing and it's easy to get lost in it all. 
    "My piece seeks to explore that feeling while trying to also capture the rapid and languid pace cities fluctuate between."
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    8 min
  • 2754: Doorway effect
    Piece created in response to a photography, as part of the Sound Photography project, by David de la Haye. For more information about the project, visit https://citiesandmemory.com/sound-photography
    "The longer I stare at this door, the more I beg for someone to open it.
    Using the main materials present in the photograph as a starting point (wood, arid grass and the background hum of power lines) this is partly a surreal exploration of location-based recording and partly a technical exercise in using ambisonic microphones. The ‘doorway effect’ is a term used to describe the experience of memory being negatively affected by walking through a door. Here, doorways serve as portals to sonic memories and acoustic panoramas.
    The longer I stare at this door, the more I beg for someone to open it. Maybe they’ve lost their way. Tom Waits asked “What’s he building in there?”. Here, it’s maybe more a question of “What’s he remembering in there?”.
    The work is rendered as binaural audio, so is best listened on headphones."
    8 min
  • 2753: Final destination - Costa Rica
    Liberia airport, Costa Rica reimagined by Simon Woods. 
    "The airport for Liberia, in Costa Rica, is a long way out of the city. I used some of the field recording to make distant aircraft and insect sounds. This is punctuated by the announcement of “Final Destination”.
     
    "The sound of happy holiday makers arriving is represented by the ‘flute / guitar tune.’"
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    3 min
  • 2752: Airport announcements, Costa Rica
    The hustle and bustle of an airport in Costa Rica, with various tannoy announcements for the passengers. Recorded by Marcel Gnauk. 
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    1 min
  • 2750: Blumlein Blues
    "You've heard a million recordings of trains but this one's very specific. In March 2018 I got a pair of Sennheiser Ambeo headphones to do rudimentary binaural recording. 
    "I thought why not make a pilgrimage to the old EMI factory at Hayes in West London -- now the "Old Vinyl Factory" lofts, a £250 million redevelopment with 650 homes and apartments -- where Alan Blumlein once invented modern stereo recording with his famous 1931 patent #394, 325. 
    "The trains recorded here are thus a kind of homage; I stood as close as I could reckon to the same place as Blumlein was when he recorded one of the first stereo films ever made. 
    "Like all binaural recordings, it shows best in headphones. I recorded it with an iPhone 6 and Sennheiser Ambeo headset. It was a Sunday and the site was still under construction at that time, you can hear a busted safety light buzzing." Recorded by Neil Verma.
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    2 min
  • 2751: Ghost Station
    Old Vinyl Factory recording reimagined by Primitive Acoustics. 
    "This composition was inspired by Neil Verma’s binaural recording of passing trains in West London. His recording was made in the same Hayes location that Alan Blumlein invented modern stereo recording in 1931.  
    "This piece reflects on sounds passing as a life metaphor for the impermanence of all things and their dissipation into the ether.
    "Music and other sounds with the exception of edited terminal announcements by vflefevre at freesound.com were created by Tom Thompson (Primitive Acoustics) and were produced on a Fender Stratocaster guitar processed with multiple effects pedals."
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    6 min
  • 2748: Want a boat ride?
    At Muelle Prat in Valparaiso, competing teams of boat trip workers hawk for business, calling out for tourists to join a boat trip around the harbour. The rival teams are really competitive, and occasionally it spills over into a full-blown argument. Recorded by Cities and Memory. 
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    4 min
  • 2749: Deep dive into the Chilean voices from beyond the grave
    Chilean boat salesmen reimagined by Virgile Abela.
    "I've integrated the original sound into an audio program developed on Max / MSP made for the Pendule Acoustique project: a sound and generative installation combining acoustics and gravity. 
    "The program acts as a temporal and granular filter on the sound and governs its vitality, generating an imaginary landscape, as if the voices come from a beyond the memory."
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    8 min
  • 2747: Rota on Fire
    "Soft, slightly ominous tones play softly over sounds of the city treated through reverb and tape saturation.  
    "There was a spring type sound that became the initial loop but I liked the sound of the whole thing so much I kept the entire recording basically intact.  Lots of different sounds that drift in and out of focus."
    San Lorenzo, Rome reimagined by Whettman Chelmets.
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    6 min
  • 2746: San Lorenzo, Rome
    Recorded by Emiliano Venanzini.
    "San Lorenzo: a district built near the end of 19th century, originally inhabited by factory workers, rail workers and artisans. Lying beside one of the biggest university of Rome, La Sapienza, the district's population has been gradually replaced by students coming from all over Italy.
    The district has changed a lot: pubs, clubs and street food have replaced smiths, glass artisans etc. But the gentrification here is of a "cheap" kind and San Lorenzo is not a trendy area: it's where you drink for less and find easy weed; there are several forms of social unease, but it's also an area with a good integration of immigrants.
    0:23 a worker uses a jackhammer
    1:03 ambulance passing close
    1:12 in front of the university child neuropsychiatry building, students talk in English about immigration, one mentions the many immigrants gathered around the train station (Termini station)
    2:47 a man and a woman are talking about someone who has been rude or mean to them or to someone else
    3:10 another man, somewhat old and likely with same kind of problems of the two before, talks about something to do at Christmas. His accent is the one we call "romano verace" (truly Roman)
    4:00 the water noise comes from one of the typical Roman public drinking fountains, called "nasone" (big nose)
    4:35 a homeless woman, in full breakdown, starts shouting, crying and swearing in her mother language. She walks frenetically on the road and you can hear her incredibly quick steps: it's not possible to hear that, but part of the rapidity is also due to her shortness, shorter legs = quicker pace. One thing you can tell from the audio however, is that she is wearing plastic slipper on her feet, on a cold 16 December. After a while she starts swearing in Italian, shouting "bastard" and "shitty" to someone who wasn't there."
    Part of the Future Cities project - find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities
    6 min

About Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory remixes the world, one sound at a time - a global collaboration between artists and sound recordists all over the world.