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Soundcities......by Stanza…. Description of project.
The cd soundcities is finally finished. Soundcities uses found sound from world cities made over the last three years. All the sounds will be put online on the web.
Introduction.
I am interested in the sounds of specific places, and how the sounds reflect this identity and re-impose characteristics back onto the location or environment. Cities all have specific identities, and found sound can give us clues to the people that inhabit these spaces, as well as provoking us and stimulating our senses in a musical way. The sounds of language impose a rhythm that the visual narrative can interact with. The aim is to create an online aural experience that evokes place, both as literal description but also developed musical composition. These sounds also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities. The sounds of cities evoke memories and as globilisation fractures our images of specific locations we find things that appear the same the worldover.
I have spent the last few years travelling to over fifteen worldwide cities presenting at media conferences in net art. During this time I have collected and recorded the sounds from these cities. I also took thousands of photos. I have been to sao paolo, london, paris, dresden, amsterdam, saltburg, graz, rotterdam, barcelona, san sebastian, manchester, liverpool, ljubiana, frankfurt porto, istanbul.
So I have recorded loads of sounds on mini disc. The sounds are used in the online mixing desks and will form the start of he online database. I have built the prototype mixing deaks and I have most of the technology in place for the first version. This version of the mixing desk mixes seven sounds at once. A database version of sound cities with thousands of sounds is being built that will allow users to save the mixes they make and upload them on to the database area where other people can listen to the results. When this happens a growing labyrinth, a community of aural cityscapes and collages will evolve.The website will be as a series on online mixing desks with visuals from these places. The will represent idealized aural spaces from these cities mapped onto the virtual world. Fused to this will be visual collages indentifying specifics of architecture, environment and the people.
The sounds also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities. The sounds of cities evoke memories and as globilisation fractures our images of specific locations we find things that appear the same the worldover. Rather than make a fixed artwork like an installation or cdrom I want to make websites that are permanently evolving for the public to engage and intertact with.
Some history In 1987 I made the LP conudrum which uses extensive found sound and again in 1995 I scripted a concept for a ‘symphony for europe’. This was to be a soundscape interpretaion of europe before it became the mass eurozone and before the millenium. These proposals where rejected by LAB the artcouncil and the BBC. Ive since developed all these works.
SOUNDCITIES WEBSITE
This interactive website called soundcities.com allows the audience as creative user the possibility to remix the hundreds of samples that I recorded on this project and then save their own mix. The website is a series on online mixing desks. This website represents idealized aural spaces from world cities. There is also version of soundcities that will allow users to save the mixes they make and upload them on to the database area where other people can listen to the results. When this happens a growing labyrinth a community of aural cityscapes and collages will evolve. Fused to this will be visual collages indentifying specifics of architecture, environment and the people.
SONICITY ‘webber’
Sounds are captured in real time and using the street and the urban space as an interactive interface .This is rather like playing the street or the city as music. The sounds of cities are an emergent musicality, a developing composition. The street is an emergent musical system. Sonicity captures these sounds via a series of microphones placed on webcams. The technology uses a series of small micro wireless microphones with gprs.. These sounds are uplinked to my server. This webcam sound hacker takes streamed live sounds and feeds them in my database then re - composes them. I have built online interfaces that allow you to connect directly to this system and make you own generative city mixes. A number of special generative code re- arrange these natural street sounds. This is the sound of the urban, the true sound of the street . Included online is a system which allows the use of generative audio systems to play online. So the city sounds are placed in a ongoing generative environment. The result is a worldwide generative audio symphony controlled by users input worldwide. The city as an instrument. The city as a constant emergent sounds system.
Listen here to the world generative mix.
SONICITY. (player event)
An adaption of this is to allow a user feed incorporating street walkers in real time. The masses or pedestrians as an orchestra. Future performances involve the soundcity wearable performance technology kit (SWPTK). Essentially the performers are connected via computers as they wander the city. The sound collected via body microphones and sensors are uploaded to a central server and remixed. Users online can hear the results as up to eight streams come in allowing the mixing of eight sounds in real time.
Listen here for version one.
SOUNDMAPS.
Soundmaps take the sounds and positions them to the location they where found. Here is a series of interactive soundmaps. Can be adapted for any city in the world and will grow into a multi map labyrinth based on the sounds of the street. The first versions where used in my central city porject in 1998, these new versions show detailed audio relationships to the sounds of the city and its urban structure. Depending on where you are at any given time the sounds of the city are reflected back onto the network of grids and diagrams.
SOUNDCITIES CD audio
The cd called soundcities, mixes founds sounds from world cities into a series of compositions from each city. The intention was to also make compositonal interpretation of these sounds. The sounds are arranged as finished compositions into nearly 70 mins of music that forms the basis of a 'world tour'. After more than a year of editing arranging and tweaking this is now finished. Co - produced with Pelado and reworked using generative max msp software called ‘Wavesync’.
Souncities has been performed at colchester arts Centre and Museum Tamayo Mexico. I have built virtual mixing desks and each desk has its own soundbank from a series of world cities. The cd is a mix of these sounds; each city is one track.
All the cities as linear mixes are online as mp3s.
SOUNDCITIES PERFORMANCE…."soundcities with inner city and the central city"
Performances during the last year have been heavily focused on the sounds of cities. The sounds of world cities form the basis of a performance piece as well the the cd audio "soundcities". These sounds are also fused with interactive images from the central city and inner city projects as well as earlier video work. The project "soundcities" is completely made up of found sounds and soundscapes from the thousands of samples I collected.
During the performance I operate the central city applications and websites on two laptops these generate sounds as well as images . If a third laptop is available then this is sent to another computer operating custom made applications, made using max/msp software.
The visual element either comes from the website the central city (www.thecentralcity.co.uk) "central city" and "inner city" or from the new "soundmaps" and "visual cities" series. The output sounds are then remixed. An option is to send the result signal back to the iinput computer and out again to the mixer again and this allows a continuous improvisation. This involves the use of a second performer Pelado operating Wave Sync software.
An extension to this setup is an installation set up using up to six computers and dvd videos of projects "return to order" and "conundrum" and "artitextures".
Performance time: around one hour.
technical requirements
2 - 4 video projectors for the laptops
One mixing desk preferably mackie 1202 VLZ pro
CD player.
PA System
EXTRA GEAR if possible
2 - 4 slide projectors and timers
2 - 8 videos or dvd to tv monitors or as many as possible.
I will bring... laptops.
Performances include.
Colchester art centre + Digifest Toronto Canada + Museum Tamayo Mexico + Open Digi Dog Star Uk + DeLux Gallery as part of Cybersonica.
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