The project aims to be an experimental journey exploring different paths across the soundscapes of the cities where it will happen.
The project will work on two main axes: gardening and atmospheres.
Gardening sound: We take our inspiration from Gilles Clément’s work on “the moving garden”: In this particular gardening practice, the gardener does not follow pre-determined plans but he/she tries to work with nature rather than against it.
The choices the gardener makes to shape the garden result from the knowledge of how different soils accommodate different forms of li
fe, in which ways these species develop, grow, expand above and under the ground as well as how they interact with each other and the environment
Sounds, unlike plants, do not possess such developed taxonomy; nevertheless we expect to identify various forms of sounds’ “biotopes” [bios=life,topos=place]: where, when, and how do sounds do appear in the city.
We will propose different practices of listening of the urban sonic territories in order to develop a high sensitivity of the specific soundscape of particular locations.
As we won’t be relying on scientific measurements, but rather on perception and senses, we will try to define various given soundscapes in terms of the atmosphere they create, rather than formal units of measurement.
Atmospheres
We use the world atmosphere in many different contexts but when we have to define it, it becomes vaporous, cloudy, difficult to grasp. Atmospheres have no precise boundaries, nevertheless – as the german philosopher Gernot Böhme – “atmosphere is something you could enter” and furthermore it is “a space which has been emotionally tuned”. (1995 Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik. Frankfurt am Main states).
Our practices aim to observe, analyze and understand the relationships between soundscape and atmosphere in an urban contexts, and to propose actions to alter a given situations with a sound- designing ethos.
Sonic Gardening has already happened in Brussels and will travel to different cities. It is an ongoing project which manifest itself in different forms:
Brussels’ workshop VIDEO DOCUMENTATION, -performance SOUND OF EUROPE
workshop’s pictures
Alessandra Coppola 