Cities and Memory have just released their bandcamp compilation, “Sounds of the Year 2021”. I’m so stoked that track number 6 by Vlad Suppish was included. He used my field recording as inspiration and the only source material for his piece and the results are simply wonderful. The entire album is beautiful – well worth a listen, and is currently available for name-your-price.
Valparaiso city ambience reimagined (based on an original field recording by Stuart Fowkes).
I wanted to create a sound collage progressing from the most natural parts of the original recording through to the most man-made, representing the uncontrolled development of a city, getting louder and more chaotic, and eventually spiralling out of control.
A critical mass is reached leading to a sudden change and return to nature. Whether this change is due to a disaster or a breakthrough is left undecided.
Sound artists and musicians all over the world “produced a series of compositions inspired by individual works from the Smithsonian collection, the world’s largest museum complex – reimagining images and scenes of history, art, science and culture through sound” — Cities and Memory
The item I selected. Click image for more info on the Smithsonian website.
I chose the item pictured to the right. Since it was sheet music I immediately wanted to know how it sounded. I could not find any version of the music anywhere online, and trying to play it myself was a very slow process. So I downloaded some software that could scan sheet music to MIDI. The music was corrupted in the process and I decided to work with this and explore how the music sounded with different voices and with different tempos. The resulting piece is 5 minutes long but only represents perhaps 10-12 bars of the original. To add texture I incorporated an unfinished project which was my first attempt at creating an ambient/drone piece.
I contributed a sound piece to the Cities and Memory project “Three Words”.
Read more about the project and see the sound map on the Cities and Memory page: http://citiesandmemory.com/three-words. You can find my piece at the Reykjavik Art Museum.