Center for International Studies of Art / Belgrade
La Corte Arte Contemporanea / Florence
Outside Project is an independent study program dedicated to the observation of cities: an alternative mapping of the city of Florence through lectures, meetings and walks. Ongakuaw participates as a lecturer and proposes City_Scores a collective work to be carried out with the students. Read more about the project in the following.
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City_Scores Concept by Ongakuaw click on the image to watch the video |
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GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Urban
life consists of intermittent, often dangerous, sequences of random
walks through the ever-changing soundscape produced by the city
structure and activity. We often do pay little attention to the
astounding complexity of the 3D sound morphology that we penetrate as we
move. Gaining a sonic consciousness of our sonic environment can result
in a dramatic and creative experience.
The
idea we will explore consists of an operational
and conceptual level. The first is based on the choice of a
random initial position downtown Florence, within 1 km distance from one
of its architectural symbols (Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio, etc.), as the
start for a walk towards a fixed target point in the periphery, designed
to be the silent tomb of a disappeared tree in a place outside the town,
on the Arno river bank. Participants will randomly wander towards that
final target position, deciding their direction purely choosing the most
silent route at each crossing. As they go, they will sample the
environmental soundscape with their cellular phones, until they reach
the arrival point. The collected material will constitute the audio
record of a walkscape piercing the city from its most (urban) inner
parts to its extreme (rural) periphery, thus investigating the
ill-defined and liquid city borders
This material will also constitute the raw audio data to be
further elaborated as follows.
The
walkscape can also be interpreted in a more conceptual manner. The
random walks of the participants will be traced and mapped via simple
GPS techniques. These lines can now be understood as precise musical
parts of a virtual score once they are
superimposed on top of the underlining city map. We will use this
score to process the raw audio material into a full-scale composition, a
travel from noise/aggressive sounds to silence through paths that
reflect individual, free-will choices. Such ambient sound/field
experiment will eventually yield a novel perception of the striking
dichotomy of the city soundscape which we only too seldomly perceive at
the conscious level.
PROJECT
ORGANIZATION
FORMAT
Total of 3+1 working days with a. break in
between. Working hours: 11:00 AM to 4:00PM approximately, including
lunch break. Lunch must be self-organized.
DATES
July
14, 16, 17th and July 23rd, 2010
LOCATION
The
meeting point and main working place is the Ongakuaw studio in Florence.
For instructions on how to reach it see the URL: http://www.ongakuaw.eu/Studio/index.htm
EQUIPMENT
Participants
are encouraged to bring their own laptop if available; in addition a
mobile phone (possibly with GPS and/or sound recording capabilities) and
photographic cameras would be very useful.
WORK PROGRAM IN BRIEF
DAY
# 1: Self-introduction. Description / discussion of the project.
Survey of technical equipment and
past experience / skills. Introduction to soundscape concepts. Guided
listenings. Planning of the next day field recording campaign.
DAY # 2: Field recording campaign. Photographic documentation. Download audio files and metadata. Create archive of sound materials. Preparation of a web page with project description/documentation. [BREAKDOWN]
DAY # 3: Experiments in sound processing of materials.
Discussion of their organization and of the links and synergies with the
work of other students.
[BREAKDOWN]
DAY
# 4: Listening and discussion of the work done during the break.
Closing the work (cataloging and finalization featured in web page).
Presentation and discussion of the work by Ongakuaw. Final global
remarks and sketch of a theoretical
text on the project City_Scores (to be written later on). [BREAKDOWN]
PARTICIPANTS
Ongakuaw (coordinator), Sindi Biber, Nebojsa Gligoric, Jovana Kristic, Natasa Milutinovic
Read the detailed work schedule and access all the workshop documentation and materials
The ArXive contains all the field recordings along with ancillary materials (images, drawings, videos, texts)