Cities & Memory

We’ve seen quite a few projects using geolocation lately, from Sterepublic which “crowdsourced the quiet”, to the URB project in Porto, also collecting sound data from locations. The Cities & Memory project is different in the sense that it wants to record the sounds of the actual space, as well as the poetic, underlying space.

Every faithful field recording document here is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. The listener can choose to explore locations through their actual sounds, or explore interpretations of what those places could be – or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.

I think the idea of having both the real field recording and the poetic interpretation side by side is very interesting. Of course this is an interpretation, so bound to be quite subjective. I’m especially curious if we, in time, could figure out a certain sound-vocabulary to describe the poetics of a place. If any, Cities and Memory is a good start!

How music provokes memories

It's amazing to experience how a certain song can bring us back to a place, a situation, a feeling from the past. This is a highly personal experience. Most of us probably have experienced this, and some of us might even avoid listening to certain songs because of this.

As the experience is different for every person, you will not recognize the example I'm giving. I want to share it with you none the less. It's amazing how our brains can bring together music and images, even after years and years.

I was traveling to Prague by train. I can't remember if it was '97 or '98. I was going to stay there for about a week, together with a friend, in the middle of the winter. If you've never been to Prague I can recommend going during winter, the city was so beautiful!

It's quite a long trip so I brought a lot of CD's and a Discman - it was still the pre-iPod era. After being listening to mainly metal for quite a few years I got interested in electronic music. First the Prodigy, via Chemical Brothers to drum 'n bass. Along with New Forms by Roni Size, Colours by Adam F was one of my favorites back then.

And apart from the question if I still like the music today, I see the image of a snow white eastern German landscape flashing before my eyes, each time I play Music in my Mind by Adam F. For a moment I'm back on that train, on my way to a new wintry adventure.

Do you have an experience like this? I would like to hear about it!

Photo by Iwan Gabovitch