Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Reimagined by Eliza Bozek.

"As the recording I got to reimagine evolves around water sounds, the composition I created fluctuates around the aquatic theme. I attempted to create a multi-layered, abstract marine soundscape, inspired by movement, repetition and disintegration. The piece has been imbued with sounds of various origins; from underwater recording of a pier in Icelandic Hofsos, to recordings of Greenlandic melting glaciers in Ilulissat."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Photo by Dylan Freedom on Unsplash

Reimagined by Robert Dansby. 

"Much of my work is a combination of location recordings, which are quite site specific, and ambient music composed with that location in mind or actually on location. I particularly like water environments and birdsong so this location was perfect. What I have tried to do with this piece is introduce an abstract of time and process based on a recording of ducks in nature done by Noé Mignard in Troyes Wood, France transitioning into location recordings of maritime traffic and synthesizers to make this mix. As the piece progresses the sounds of propellers, engines and sub sonic frequencies sourced from the maritime traffic, bring to mind military sonar & weaponry, large turbines and propellers and oil industry thumper equipment slowly impinging on the sound of the ducks."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash

Sound recording of photosynthesis underwater with hydrophones, recorded by Denes Dobai. 

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Reimagined by Geoff Gersh.

"The source is a recording of photosynthesis underwater made with a hydrophone. The rhythmic sounds produced by the photosynthesis process inspired me to use two prepared guitars to create rhythmic tracks that play with and against the source sound."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Reimagined by Georgia Golebiowski.

"After choosing a recording of the strange and unique sounds of an underground creature I decided to focus on producing a piece that develops this as a concept, creating an underground environment that is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Researching the tuco tuco, I discovered that it is mostly a solitary creature with little evolution over the 10,000 years of existence, and living 90% of the time in a network of self made underground tunnels, coming to the surface only sometimes to eat. Departing from here, I started to imagine the space these animals inhabit, how sound travels, and how sounds from this subterranean realm interact with the soundscape of the surface, that is - the world that these animals encounter when emerging. 

And so, I wanted to create the sense of a large underground space, transforming small tunnels of dense soil into large sonic areas, in which sounds become distorted with spatial reflections, the small tuco tuco transcends its own size, and notions of near and far are brought into question. 

Following the reworking and editing of the original recording into several tracks (with no added effects), I played and recorded the sounds emplaced within a large ground floor room with tiled brick floors and vaulted ceilings. The reverb, feedback and muffled sounds of human/non-human activity in the final piece are all naturally occurring phenomena of the aural landscape in and out of this room. From here, it was a simple process of composition - layering the installation recordings with the clean tracks, producing a new kind of environment that aims to bring different or separate realms and elements together (subterranean/surface, animal/human, ancient/contemporary, plain/mysterious, natural/digital, geographical…)."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Recorded by Noé Mignard. "Waves, water flowing in a cave of the shore of Marseille, lapping water, with a mysterious blowhole sounding like a respiration."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Photo by Dylan Freedom on Unsplash

Recorded by Noé Mignard. "Ducks swimming and quacking, sparkling water, recorded very close."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Photo by Andrii Podilnyk on Unsplash

Recorded by Keila Zaché. 

"In this recording we hear the sounds of an underground rodent, known as Tuco-tuco, whose species is Ctenomys torquatus, in a specific environment of southern Brazil known as Pampa. I don’t know exactly what the animal was doing at the moment because I was recording inside its burrow and I couldn’t visualize the animal."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Reimagined by Jay Kreimer.

"I've been going to Mexico for many, many years. Three times in Oaxaca in the last two years, including field recording for a film. Sensitized to the birds this was natural to work with."

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Reimagined by Mike Rucinski.

"The original recording of the seals was quite chaotic, a little like a scene in a horror movie, but thankfully not in a bad way, and there were some key sounds that took my ear; the clearer grunts and evil chortling choruses. These were the sounds that would mostly inform my composition. There was a lot of background noise throughout the original recording, which did initially put me off track when deciding how to approach production of this piece. The angle i took was to create a space for the seals to live, outside of their original habitat; a new space with low bass, saturation, locked loop rhythms and enveloping delays, all in all combining what i liked about the original recording, with the addition of selected weather and woodland sounds from my own field recordings to accompany and embellish. Initially the vibe was ambient, but the feel was dark, so gradually more rhythmic content was created. I suppose this piece represents an moderately twisted immersive journey to seal-ville... Disney it is not!"

Part of the Sounding Nature project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/sounding-nature

Photo by Karen Lau on Unsplash