London Structural Sound Project
| London Structural Sound Project | |
|---|---|
| Why | Artist Florian Tuercke together with arebyte gallery intends to transform the area of Hackney Wick, East London and its surroundings, to one with the highest density of public microphones in the world. The project is participatory in its nature and invites the public to take a crucial part in its production through the distribution of the microphones thought out the vicinity of the gallery and in return offers an unheard experience of their local area and of the city of London in general. |
| Where | arebyte gallery |
| Who | Florian Tuercke |
| More Info | http://www.arebyte.com/#/florian-tuercke/4583792754 |
| Tags | sound, art, urban, community, london, contact microphones, DIY, arebyte gallery, hackney wick |
"London Structural Sound Project" by Florian Tuercke
Artist Florian Tuercke together with arebyte gallery intends to transform the area of Hackney Wick, East London and its surroundings, to one with the highest density of public microphones in the world. The project is participatory in its nature and invites the public to take a crucial part in its production through the distribution of the microphones thought out the vicinity of the gallery and in return offers an unheard experience of their local area and of the city of London in general.
The Microphones are given free of charge on first come first get basis or reserved as part of the crowd funding campaign.
The artist will assemble 300 mini-contact microphones which will be handed out to visitors of arebyte gallery to be installed in different locations in the vicinity of the gallery. The contact-microphones record sound-waves within solid materials and enable the listener to hear sounds which are normally inaudible to the human ear. Each microphone will be packed in a bag containing simple instructions and mounting material.
This is how the project goes:
As a visitor of the gallery you will receive a bag that contains one microphone, mounting material and instructions (Few bags will be placed in community centres and libraries). You are encouraged to explore public space with the intention to find a suitable spot for mounting your microphone.
You send a photo of the installed microphone and a precise description of its location (street address or GPS-tag) by e-mail. Your microphone will then be published in an online map.Throughout the project, a recording-team will visit all microphones and record sound-samples which will later be published as well.
During the project a pre-amplified kits will be available for hire at arebyte gallery with which you can take along with you and visit the microphones and listen to them onsite.
The main participatory stage is with the distribution of the microphones; each visitor to arebyte gallery will receive one microphone and will be asked to install it anywhere they please (within 1km radios from the gallery). Each microphone will be visually documented by the same person or the project team and will be added onto an interactive map which will be displayed in arebyte gallery.
A recording-team, consisting of the artist and collaborators, will visit each site and take a unique field sample of each place.Each microphone will have its own characteristics; its location and the material it’s mounted on, thus giving a unique sound-scape of the city. The sound of the city will then be used by the artist (together with other sonic art collaborators) to be re-composed within the gallery space to create a macro sound map of the city. Another aspect of the public participation will be access to a series of guided tours with a set of pre-amplified headphones which will allow the audience to live hear the city’s breath and heartbeat (the audience will also be able to rent the equipment on individual tours using the maps).
The interactive maps (which will be online and projected in the gallery) will grow and expand as the microphones are implemented. The map will feature the sounds and will be as an interactive sound-installation in itself. The audience will be able play with the sounds, discover and compose as they wish. This interactive sound-map will remain after the project as online-version.
This project apart from existing for artistic endeavour will also encourage the public to engage with their local area, re-examine the streets and structure of their surroundings and eventually aims to deliver new experiences of familiar neighbourhoods and public spaces.
The project aims to achieve a world-record in mapping structure-borne urban sounds and to instil pride in all involved with the great ambitions of the artwork, which relies more heavily on public engagement than capital input.
The project is planned to launch on the 22nd of May and run until the 13th of June.
- Images are from a smaller project that was held by Florian Tuercke in Turku (Finland) in 2011 and from a workshop which was part of Tuerckes last years project in Zaragoza (Spain) http://urban-audio.org/zaragoza.html, which was dealing with the musical transformation of traffic noise.
You find more examples of previous works by Florian Tuercke on his website: http://floriantuercke.net/works.html
follow us on Facebook for news about the progress of the preparations: https://www.facebook.com/structural.sound.project
