Sonic Memory | 2022 -

Intersections of Sound & Memory
Project Overview
More recently, I have taken an interest in what I call "Sonic Memory". I am exploring how we remember places and people through sound. And how these sounds can be & naturally are all musical.

I am approaching this concept from different angles/with different goals in mind. The three main perspectives are: The Documentation Perspective, The Composition Perspective, and The Sound Mosaic Perspective.
A Long-term Project
I plan to continue this project over the next few years, fully exploring all the different perspectives and documenting my work. Currently, the focus lies on sonic elements from local spots in and around Edinburgh. But I am hoping to expand this concept to explore sonic memory in connections with the sound of people. I think that especially in loss & grief we seek to hold on to any kind of memory and documentation of a person that we can find. I would like to document the unqiue sonic characteristics of people.
Edinburgh Castle In Black & White

The Documentation Perspective

Collecting Everyday Sounds

The Documentation Perspective aims to capture everyday sounds from all over Edinburgh and beyond. These sounds will then be added to a map of Edinburgh to display their original location. Eventually, the hope would be to create a hub that everyone and anyone could easily upload recordings to, thereby creating a more detailed sound map of Edinburgh. This map would then become a virtual sound-walk of Edinburgh.

Nani Porenta Demos Etc · The Crags (Demo)

The Composition Perspective

Sound Recordings as Musical Elements

The composition perspective takes the sounds from the documentation perspective and uses them to create musical compositions and arrangements. In these compositions, all sounds heard have been sourced from the recordings from the Documentation perspective, plus one musical instrument. "The Crags" is a demonstration of such a composition.

A Map of Edinburgh in Watercolour

The Sound Mosaic Perspective

A Generative Composition

Eventually, once enough recordings have been collected and uploaded, the Sound Mosaic Perspective will aim to create generative compositions with these collections. I hope to use the WebAudio API to create a piece of code that will automatically use nearby recordings from the map to create a generative soundscape for wherever the user might find themselves on the virtual map.

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