Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

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Cities and Memory - remixing the world episodes

  • 2432: Timeless Space
    Discovery wheel stop reimagined by Chow Ow Wei.
    "This space-themed sound piece is inspired by the alteration of time dimension. Two concepts are considered in space: duration is stretchable and thus the perception on earthly sound events is brought to a new view; electronic communication via the wave signal is the primary cognitive means of facts and resemblance of existence in space traveling. 
    The sound piece is constructed in a simple form. Each segment is marked with the entrance of print/ dial tones and audible speech such as ‘Beginning’, ‘Wheels On’, ‘Discovery Welcome Back + A Great Evening to the New Beginning’. Apart from the provided sound sample by NASA, sound manipulation in my work involves only two samples of a dot-matrix printer and a dial-up modem with which I created a number of variations mainly by digitally altering the sound properties of pitch, time and reverberation. All perceivable melodies, harmonisation, and ‘instrumental’ timbres are extracted and operated from these samples, as if time disappears and the sounds have almost lost their gravity in space. Therefore, the idea to imagine the so-called inaudible being of space is that we ‘hear’ the most delicate pitches clearer in such a dimension when time is virtually absent."
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    6 min
  • 2432: NASA / Liftoff
    STS-26 reimagined by Myroslava.
    The piece simulates by its structure the liftoff process; a rhythmical machine sound goes up, grows complicated and replicates itself. After it reaches a peak it goes down, keeping up the industrial volume cycled.
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    11 min
  • 2431: Voices From Somewhere Else (Liftoff)
    STS-41 reimagined by Sirpa Jokinen.
    "The space sound was inspiration for creating the concept of how sound from a different place or time is recognized by its texture."
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    7 min
  • 2430: Discovery wheel stop
    Recording by NASA.
    "A great ending to the new beginning."
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    1 min
  • 2429: STS-41D liftoff
    Recording by NASA.
    STS-41-D was the 12th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the first mission of Space Shuttle Discovery. It was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 30 August 1984, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on 5 September. 
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    1 min
  • 2428: STS-26 liftoff
    Recording by NASA.
    STS-26 was the 26th NASA Space Shuttle mission and the seventh flight of the orbiter Discovery. The mission launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 29 September 1988, and landed four days later on 3 October. STS-26 was declared the "Return to Flight" mission, being the first mission after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 28 January 1986. 
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    1 min
  • 2427: Of Particles and Plasma
    Reimagined by Rob Knight.
    "I always tend to use the source recording as an instrument and this is especially so in Of Particles and Plasma. The sounds captured by Voyager as it passed through the Magnetosphere were so haunting, a cry and whisper from the shield that protects us. All input was via Push 2 which I was running with Logic through an app called Shove. In some of the modes Shove and Push 2 work fine but in others it puts out loads of CC messages and even multiple notes all on one pad of Push. So I used that as my musical input to match up to the pitches and frequencies of the sounds recorded by Voyager 2."
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    8 min
  • 2426: Voyager plasma sounds
    Recording by NASA. 
    These melodious tones are created at a special frequency in a plasma with a magnetic field. The frequency is set by the number of electrons in a given volume (the electron density) and the strength of the magnetic field. Hence, the frequency of these waves, called upper hybrid waves, can provide a very accurate measure of the density of the plasma; a fundamental property of the Jovian environment of interest to scientists. These emissions were acquired by Voyager 2 as it passed through the outer magnetosphere in 1979.
    Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
    1 min
  • 2425: Church bells were the internet of the 1500s
    "Church bells were the internet of the 1500s, but churches didn't play them twenty-four hours a day. Back then they knew that as a species we're not cut out for endless noise from endless sources, yet in the past century I think we've maybe tricked ourselves into thinking we are. There's a message from those bells, or, rather, the absence of a message."
    * Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot
    This piece looks at the role of social signalling and information dissemination that bells played in societies around the world for centuries, only for this role to be increasingly sidelined and subsumed by technology, secularism and - above all - the internet. 
    Bells would have marked out the day for countless millions of people, telling them when to pray, when the working day was over, bringing them domestic news from their local area and summoning them all together. Today, our communities take the majority of our social signalling from smartphones and internet-enabled devices.
    For this piece, the sound of bells in Hanoi, Vietnam, are summoned by the sounds of the old-school internet - first, the slowed-down and effected sounds of the Windows 95 startup, then the crackle and hiss of the dialup modem. 
    For as long as we remain connected to the internet in this piece, we can tune into the church bells and remember the role they used to play - but when the connection goes down, we lose track of them once again. 
    There’s also an interesting subtext when we consider the specific location of the sound in a society that is steeped in tradition and still dominated by subsistence living in its rural areas, but by contract is also being described as the Silicon Valley of Asia. How far will technological progress push aside the old ways of life in Vietnam? 
    Bells in Hanoi reimagined by Cities and Memory.
    4 min

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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.