Cities and Memory interview on ABC Radio Australia, 10.08.25
Interview with Cities and Memory creator Stuart Fowkes on the Nightlife show on ABC Australia, diving into Sonic Heritage as well as the ten-year history of the project.
"They say a picture tells a thousand stories, but how far does audio go?
That is exactly what Stuart Fowkes has set out to achieve over the last decade involving the contribution of more than 2,000 artists who are putting together sounds from all over the world.
He shares with Suzanne Hill about how the project came to be and why do the sounds of heritage sites matter."
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The ghosts of protest
"Taksim Square in Istanbul has a history of protests and social activism, most notably the Gezi Park 2013 protests, in which 22 people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.
"Listening to the soundscape from Taksim Square, life is going on as normal, with bustling crowds, but periodically we hear a police siren, which echoes through the square almost like a spectral reminder of the police brutality, protest and suffering that the space has been witness to in the past.
"The siren swirls through the composition like a phantasm, reminding us never to forget the social context of the spaces in which we inhabit, while the music is intended to evoke a slightly unsettling sense as it loops, repeats, and builds."
Taksim Square soundscape reimagined by Cities and Memory.
Original recording by Anders Vinjar.
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Taksim Meydani soundscape
Ambisonics recording at Taksim Meydani, site of the Gezi Park protests in 2013, a very busy city square, people jazzing around.
This soundscape-composition is part of the HEYR project, presenting 3-dimensional soundscapes from special locations, connected to special events. Find out more by visiting https://www.heyr.no
Recorded by Anders Vinjar.
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Acrospire
"This track started with an idea to use the title converted to Morse code and then to MIDI, using an online tool I wrote (https://constantpool.co.uk/morse-code-to-midi/). The raw field recording, captured inside the Pohjala brewery, was then chopped up and layered with effects to build a "wall of sound," which was all structured to create a shoegaze/alt-rock style track."
Pohjala brewery, Tallinn reimagined by Karhide.
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Beer-making inside the Pohjala brewery
On a visit to the Pohjala artisan brewery in Tallinn, Estonia, we were invited behind the scenes into the brewery itself to record the sounds of beer being made. This soundscape records the beer-making process, with loud industrial noises, drones and hisses coming from large brewing tanks and machinery.
Recorded in September 2024 by Cities and Memory.
Cities and Memory remixes the world, one sound at a time - a global collaboration between artists and sound recordists all over the world.
The project presents an amazingly-diverse array of field recordings from all over the world, but also reimagined, recomposed versions of those recordings as we go on a mission to remix the world.
What you'll hear in the podcast are our latest sounds - either a field recording from somewhere in the world, or a remixed new composition based solely on those sounds. Each podcast description tells you more about what you're hearing, and where it came from.
There are more than 7,000 sounds featured on our sound map, spread over more than 130 countries and territories. The sounds cover parts of the world as diverse as the hubbub of San Francisco’s main station, traditional fishing women’s songs at Lake Turkana, the sound of computer data centres in Birmingham, spiritual temple chanting in New Taipei City or the hum of the vaporetto engines in Venice. You can explore the project in full at www.citiesandmemory.com
Sverige