When you hear this recording from Valdivia, Chile by Mark Wilden, you can hear a tiny, thin spitting noise, like rain on a car roof – but this sound has a much greater significance once you read Mark’s description of the protest he witnessed: “Here’s a sound from this week’s student protest in Valdivia, southern […]
A walkthrough of a tiny village in Laos today, recorded by Mark Wilden – you can hear a large vehicle drive past, the creaking of some kind of machinery, perhaps a water pump or similar, the voices of children, and the sounds of daily work. It’s a peaceful slice of everyday life in this typical […]
Come with us today to the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing, China, in which a crowd of people are singing what sounds like a celebratory song in unison (recorded by Mark Wilden). Long-time contributor Tim Waterfield has produced a technical, musical recomposition of the original sound, layering percussion and bubbling digital synths using the […]
Chattering birdsong today from Beihai Park in Beijing, China, as recorded by Mark Wilden. The sound has been given a rather special treatment by Oxford-based artist Richard Watts, who writes: “The inspiration for this piece came from a work by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar called ‘The conference of the birds’. “I used samples of […]
A cannon booms out into the sky, and then the bells ring out across the city of Zagreb, Croatia, in today’s recording by Mark Wilden. This sound was recomposed with a historical bent by Andy Billington, who explains: “The original field recording is still there in the background and set against it i transposed random […]
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"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros
