CITIES & MEMORY
Cities & Memory is a massive global project started by Stuart Fowkes which is cataloguing the world using sound recordings. But not only is it mapping the world sonically it also runs projects which take those field recordings and re-imagine them. I have been fortunate enough to have been involved in a few as listed below. Visit the website and have a listen - it's well worth the time.
Oblique Strategies Project. This was based on Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategy cards. I drew "Where is the edge? A very small object. It's centre." The sound file I got was Picton County crickets (in Canada). My re-imagining was called "Ambient Crickets from Canada" and can be found on this page.
Utopia Project. Based on Thomas More's Utopia this imagined what his island would sound like. My submission was called "Upon a Lonely Beach in No-Place" and can be found on this release.
Prison Songs Project. This project was based on the prisoners in the Mississippi State Penitentiary in the late 1940s and the songs recorded there. I picked the song "Old Alabama" and my re-imagining of it can be found here.
The Next Station. This is the latest project to which I got the field recording "Blackfriar's to Cannon Street" which I re-imagined as a piece called "Spirit of the Underground". Can be found here.
Sacred Spaces. This project concerned recordings taken in sacred spaces around the world. I chose a recording of the organ of Dilton Church in Wiltshire and called the piece Dark Church. It can be found on this page.
Siberian Tiger Park Reimagined. For Cities & Memory sound map. Can be found here.
Protest & Politics. A reimagining of a miners protest in Bolivia for the Protest and Politics project. Can initially be found here and here (under the name Fireworks and Miners).
Myanmar - a re-imagining of a dice game being played in Myanmar.