We’re very happy to launch our first project of 2016 today – Dreamland.

Last year, we were commissioned to record and reimagine the sounds of the newly-relaunched amusement park Dreamland, as well as capturing and presenting the sounds of the town of Margate in Kent.

We spent three days recording the sounds of the park and the town, and here we present a special four-part project celebrating the sounds we heard:

• Dreamland Welcomes You – A reimagination of the sounds of the Dreamland amusement park in Margate, constructed around samples from the park gathered at its relaunch in 2015.
• Margate sound map – a map capturing the soundscapes of the town
• Sonic postcards – interactive sound postcards from the town of Margate
• An Attempt at Exhausting Dreamland – an hour-long record of everything you can hear inside the amusement park

The full project can be found at www.citiesandmemory.com/dreamland, and more detail on each part follows.

Dreamland Welcomes You

An 18-minute sonic reimagining of Dreamland, incorporating elements from its illustrious past through hours of searching through old news footage about the town, and recordings we captured of today’s Dreamland.

The piece is built around the following aspects of Dreamland:

00.00 – Super 8 films and old news clips
02.25 – The hydraulic-powered Hurricane Jets and Jumping Ships rides
07.20 – Inside the vintage video game arcades
08.07 – The Wall of Death Show
11.18 – On board the Chairoplanes: screaming and fun
13.55 – Margate by night
17.15 – Ladies and gentlemen, one and all… Dreamland’s street performers

Margate sound map

A comprehensive sound map of the town, which you can explore here.

Sound map of Margate

Sonic postcards

The traditional postcard has been part of English seaside holidays for over 100 years, so to celebrate Margate’s status as one of Britain’s oldest holiday destinations (it’s been a leading resort in the UK for over 250 years!), we present a series of interactive sonic postcards. Just click on the postcard to listen to the sound behind it.

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An Attempt at Exhausting Dreamland

Modelled on Georges Perec’s An Attempt At Exhausting A Place in Paris, we took his principle of writing down everything he saw and applied it to sound. We wrote down everything you could hear in the centre of Dreamland for one hour. You can listen to the sound and read our written report – the piece is a fascinating exploration of how our ears hear differently from any recording device.

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