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URBAN AUDIO

Sonic Research - investigation of musical coherences of individual transport

The basic intention of URBAN AUDIO is the examination of the musical context of public space, and in particular of road traffic. Already John Cage realized that the self-organizing system of traffic contains an enormous compositional potential. ("When you listen to Beethoven or Mozart, you see, that it is always the same, but when you listen to traffic, you see that it is always different.")

The ending of a symphony

Today the western world has reached its peak in the infrastructural development of individual road traffic. After the Crescendo in the last decades of the 20th century the ecological change will cause a Diminuendo of this phenomenon, which will be accompanied by the ebbing of the compositional potential. By the rising oil-price and petroleum taxes the fuel-burning engines will loose their meaning in the inner-city traffic and will slowly be replaced by more silent hybrid and electric engines. These will form the audio environment of our future cities. The auditory potential of phenomena like the Tenuto (sustain) of a holdup or the Staccato of stop-and-go traffic will be bygone.

A Finale Furioso like in classical compositions will not occur. More likely there will be a Smorzando (expiration) to the equality of the rhythm of public transport. The Symphony of Individual Transport whose Ouverture had been played with the first Otto-engine, and whose Finale will be played with electric engines, now has reached its Foritssimo.

URBAN AUDIO

At this peak URBAN AUDIO honors Cage´s cognition of the compositional potential of the phenomenon of individual traffic we are all involved in. Brought back to musical parameters of tone and rhythm Cage´s cognition remains as a vivid musical copy of one of the most unique phenomena of the 20th and beginning 21st century.

The core of URBAN AUDIO is the sonic transformation, which is the transformation from noise to sound. This is done with special devices containing tuned strings, which vibrate depending on the surrounding noise. In this way a simultaneous musical image of the noise-situation is created.

The sound results are short musical pieces. Their dynamic, rhythm and tone are determined by the sound-situation during the recording. These pieces are specific musical images of place and time of each recording. The authors of the pieces are all the causers of the underlying noise-situation.