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German installation explores urban soundscapes

An innovative new sound installation project in Berlin is connecting cities worldwide in an attempt to challenge the way people interact with their aural and urban surroundings, writes Matt Robinson.

German installation explores urban soundscapes

A lead car of Berlin’s U6 underground train drags carriages underneath the German capital’s traditional shopping boulevard of Friedrichstrasse. While travelling between the stations of Stadtmitte and Kochstrasse, the train passes a short pipe-shaped object connected via cable to a computer terminal in a nearby gallery, which records and interprets the motion of the passing train.

So sensitive is the sensor that it can also detect the footsteps of shoppers on the pavement above. These signals not only record the spontaneous rhythmic activity of the immediate urban surroundings but also their intensity. The high-tech device is part of the Sound of Cities installation at the Magix Multimedia Gallery on Friedrichstrasse – just metres away from the former Cold War crossing point Checkpoint Charlie.

Conceived by Croatian sound artist Henry Stag, the project is being supported by some of the biggest names in music production software, including not only Magix, but also Arturia, Max MSP, and Applied Acoustic Systems. The installation uses a custom-built, microphone-style receiver system to register vibrations and sounds from subterranean Berlin, which are then used to trigger preset instruments simulated by computer software. This means the music is actually being performed and lead by the city itself. For example, the louder the U6 train is as it trundles along underneath Berlin, the louder the installation’s instruments in the gallery will be played.

Nursing a winter cold with a frothy glass of Hefeweizen beer at a bar in Berlin’s eastern Friedrichshain district recently, Stag enthused about his aural urban baby: “The purpose of this project is to be on the cutting edge, to use the technology we have to the full extent of its capability. I call it terrestrial symphony – the artist provides the colour, but this is the music of the earth.”

The first instrument presets at the Berlin gallery were configured by some of the biggest names in German experimental music. Joachim Irmler from Krautrock pioneers Faust, Dieter Moebius from Cluster, Markus Detmar from Klangwart and John Weizierl from Amon Düül 2.

But the project is not limited to the gallery on Friedrichstrasse. It will also be broadcast live online at www.soundofcities.com, from where web surfers will soon be able to access the Berlin stream and play around with the existing presets to create their own audio just as visitors can at the actual exhibition. Gallery openings are also planned for Zagreb, Paris, Los Angeles and Tokyo in order to connect the urban audioscape streams from other cities.

In each city, the sensors will be placed in different locations. For example, in Tokyo it may be placed against or inside a window and tuned so it is sensitive enough to respond to gentle rain against the glass. In Los Angeles the receiver might be cast into the foundations of a building and capable of recording and processing the musical makeup of seismic activity in the earthquake prone city.

The project is currently in the process of being linked with the Theremin Institute in Moscow, where a gallery full of Theremins – an early electronic instrument working on a similar principal to the Sound of City’s sensors – will be used to detect and interpret the motion of visitors.

“With this project, we can further define the way we interact with sounds, by further making the sounds interact with us and our surroundings,” said Andrei Smirnov, director of the Theremin Institute at the Moscow State Conservatory, in a telephone interview from the Russian capital.

The audio product of each Sound of Cities stream will be saved for the entirety of the project, meaning that any moment in the installation can be retraced, reheard and rediscovered. Any profits from the project will go to charitable donations to both UNICEF and the International Campaign for Tibet.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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