Just released: Future Cities, a new project from Cities & Memory. From the website, “Future Cities is the largest ever survey of the sounds of cities around the world, examining how the soundscapes of our cities across 81 countries are changing and what that means for us all.” Participants first submitted field recordings from around the world (the “city version” on the website), and then participants had the opportunity to reimagine these recordings (the “memory version”).
I remixed K.A. Laity’s “Pile Driver on O’Connell Avenue,” Limerick, Ireland, in “The Irish Pile Driver In Isolation.” For this work, I attempted to situate myself in the brain of an Irish pile driver operator as they momentarily transcend into a few moments of tranquility. I only used the original field recording in this piece–no extra sounds. The dangers of noise pollution are ongoing and severe, particularly for construction workers. With this work I hope to model how urban “noise” can be made more palatable.
Explore more by navigating the map on the Cities & Memory website.
Elizabeth Joan Kelly 