Dada Sounds launches today!
With today marking the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Cabaret Voltaire, and thus the beginning of Dadaism, we’re delighted to launch our latest project, Dada Sounds.
You can explore the sounds from the project in full on the Dada Sounds sound map page.
The project, housed at www.citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds, features:
- 28 countries, taking in everywhere from Iceland and Canada and from India to Vietnam.
- Iconic Dada locations including Berlin, Paris and the very doorstep of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.
- 77 sound artists, musicians and field recordists taking part from across the world, each bringing their own interpretation to the project.
The Dada Sounds project sees artists applying Dadaist techniques to field recordings from real locations to create a reimagined, Dada-influenced sound world.
The result is a collaborative sonic imagination of a world in which Dada defines how the world sounds.
The sounds use a huge range of Dada-inspired techniques to reimagine the sounds, from collage and abstraction to sound poetry and pieces based around the lives and experiences of some of the key figures of Dada.
Examples of techniques and approaches include:
- Introduction of extinct languages including Ubykh, ancient Assyrian and Gothic;
- Reimagining sounds using specially-made Intonamuri machines;
- How to Make a Dadaist Field Recording – a rewriting of Tristan Tzara’s method How to Make a Dadaist Poem;
- Multiple sound poems, written by artists themselves or drawn from Dadaist history;
- Pieces bases around the work and lives of key Dada figures including Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Kurt Schwitters and Francis Picabia;
- Pieces inspired by Orson Welles, David Bowie, Duke Ellington and myriad other sources.
Contributing sound artists come from locations all over the world, as far afield as Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Finland and Australia.
