Cities and Memory - remixing the world

Recorded by Stephane Marin - insect drones, birds and the village awakens in Unawatuna, Sri Lanka. Image by Stephane Marin.

Unawatuna, Sri Lanka reimagined by Michael Trommer. 

"This piece is intended as a commentary on the tourist industry’s marketing of ‘exotic’ foreign destinations, specifically, its tendency to reduce the historical, geographical, economic and social complexities of developing-world travel destinations to a series of Instagrammable photo-ops. 

The composition strips away much of the background ambience of the source sound – that of the morning chorus in the Unawatuna resort area in Sri Lanka – in order to foreground the biophony of the location. The digital ‘silencing’ process, however, lends an eerie and unnatural aura to the soundscape, one that is meant to reflect the socio-economic disjuncture of the site."

Image by Stephane Marin.

Part of our Sound Photography project - this sound is based entirely on the accompanying photograph, pictured here. 

By Cities and Memory. 

"This is a photo taken from the window of a house I used to live in, at the crack of dawn one morning as the sun was bursting perfectly through the branches of a tree behind the house, with just enough mist to obscure everything else. I can remember the feeling when I took this photograph was just one of gratitude at being able to see such a beautiful image on an average day outside my house. I wanted to convey that sense of gratitude through a combination of uplifting synth lines but also through words - so I invited contributors all over the world to send me recordings of themselves saying "thank you" in any language. The results were overwhelming, with contributions coming through in Russian, Italian, Arabic, Finnish, French, German and many other languages - voices of adults, voices of children. I wanted to cluster all of this gratitude together into one big swell of joy, representing in sound what this image means to me."

Part of our Sound Photography project - this sound is based entirely on the accompanying photograph, pictured here. 

By Riz Maslen. Photograph by Cities and Memory.

"I have always had a fascination with Lighthouses, and if truth be known if I had the opportunity I would live in one! I love the idea of being so close to something so dangerously beautiful. I love the sea, such an unforgiving force of nature, I am drawn to its depths of unknowing. Seafaring tales of love and loss and I think this is where my inspiration came from, the stark beauty of the solitude of the lighthouse, its glowing beacon guiding the blind. The steady heartbeat of the pulse of the light and the ebb and flow of the fog horn on stormy nights. keeping the wolves at bay. I wanted to create a stark piece with an underlying pulse/heart of the lighthouse. I also have a deep connection with the West Country having spent most of my childhood growing up in Gloucestershire, my Dad is original from Somerset and my Mum lives in North Wales."

Part of our Sound Photography project - this sound is based entirely on the accompanying photograph, pictured here. 

By Rob Knight. Photograph by Lauren Pond. 

"I spent a long time looking and thinking about the photograph, the feelings of those present and the emotion the photograph captures and about photographs and their relationship to life in general. It is all about time, hence the title of the piece. Our life's span time, some short, some long but in the time of life of the earth they are just flickers of time, just fleeting moments. I wanted the track to try and reflect that..different spans of times, weaving in and out of each other. I wanted the track to sound warm to reflect the beauty of the light in the photograph. I hope I have managed to capture what I wanted in the music and the essence of the photograph."

Part of our Sound Photography project - this sound is based entirely on the accompanying photograph, pictured here. 

By the Unsound Collective. 

"The sound composed for this photo is an improvisation inspired by the pictured elements, a long and evolving soundscape which wants to take the viewer through different moments of the building's life. The atmospheres require to view different areas of the picture and let that moment speak through the soundscape.

The photo offers the possibility to learn about an indoor and outdoor space, a continuous, calm and evolving environment outside and a decaying atmosphere indoor, we decided to narrate a story of the invisible protagonist, the floating dust particles which are always there, in a perpetual dance.

The soundtrack is made of 3 main parts:

Part I

Introducing the noises and atmospheres, scattered, warm and sporadically bold, it echoes the past events that took place in the abandoned space

Part II

Takes the viewer to a different moment, the sound is quieter and longer, trying to reach that horizon in the long distance, outside the window

Part III

Interference and static noises have witnessed hundreds of hundreds of people and events. This is what's left. Combined with the calm and vacuumed atmosphere pictured on the outside."

Part of our Sound Photography project - this sound is based entirely on the accompanying photograph, pictured here.

By Luis Pinto. Photograph by Cities and Memory.

"I began composing this piece immediately after I looked at the image, without searching for any information about jellyfish. The picture instantly triggers some kind of movement. When I think about these creatures, they are moving - they are elegant dancers as they drift and glide through the ocean. The composition observes these features. It tries to recreatethis elegant motion, with hovering sounds through the whole piece. I guess the experience of looking at a photograph with a soundtrack is a rich experience, because it entails multiple interpretations."

Part of our Sound Photography project - this sound is based entirely on the accompanying photograph, pictured here.

By Stephanie Merchak. Photograph by Alan Silvester. 

"The photo of the Drax coal power station, one of the most polluting power stations in the U.K., automatically made me think of something harsh and dark. That's what I tried to render with sound.

I also wanted to use sounds that would remind the listener of electric arcs and sparks.

In order to achieve that, I decided to use data bending.

I imported the photo into Audacity as RAW data and exported it multiple times as audio files using various algorithms. I then imported those audio files into Ableton Live and used them as the basis of my track, processing them, cutting them into small pieces and arranging them into a structured track."

Red Star Belgrade vs. Arsenal reimagined by Manja Ristic and Mirian Kolev. 

"The reimagined track is a wonderful collaboration with Bulgarian guitar/ambient artist Mirian Kolev (presenting himself under the acronym E.U.E.R.P.I.). We just published our firs collab few days ago: https://euerpi.bandcamp.com/album/further-east"

Recorded by Manja Ristic - "Although I am not an enormous football fan, still the echo of voices of thousands of people evokes something tribal in me, and there is always the history and culture around this particular place and the club... it is the recording of the football game Red Star vs. Arsenal from the high building set relatively close to the Marakana Stadium in Belgrade."