Spooky sounds from Saturn today, courtesy of NASA. Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which were monitored by its Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet – these auroras are similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. This is a recording of radio […]
Stuart Bowditch sent us this recording from Reykjavik, Iceland, where protests were taking place over the banking collapse: “Recorded on the same trip as my previous submission for Sacred Spaces, I stumbled upon this protest about the banking collapse outside the Icelandic Government Building on Kirkjustræti. “There were many people continually banging pots, pans and […]
A quite lovely recording and recomposition today from China. Mark Wilden recorded the sounds of birdsong as heard from up on the Great Wall of China – with the ever-present throb of traffic from a nearby town pulsing beneath the recording as an inescapable reminder of the country’s ongoing industrial growth. Stephanie Merchak’s version of […]
Stephane Marin sent us a series of beautiful binaural recordings from his travels in Myanmar, which unsurprisingly proved popular among artists keen to explore their sonic potential. Here are four pieces from the country.
Copyright ©2026 Cities and Memory, Oxford, UK. All rights reserved.
"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
