Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"Assigned the section of the Lech that crosses from Austria into Germany, I decided to travel to the area (near the city of Füssen) to listen to the river myself. I visited on the last Saturday of January, when the sun was shining over the (still very present) snow on the banks of the river.  "With a few microphones, two recorders, and lots of time to be with my thoughts, I recorded in six locatio...

"In composing Segment No. 9 for the Flow project, I explored how to translate the satellite imagery into sound and blend it with the provided field recording. I began by converting the imagery into raw data, which I then mapped to MIDI to trigger synthesisers. "Listening to the field recording, I felt it told its own story, capturing the contrast between the free flowing River Lech and the sound o...

"I approached the River Lech as a memory machine: wide air and landscape, close water detail, and the river’s vibrations. These hidden resonances became the harmonic spine of the piece.  "The composition stays faithful to the original source while drifting into abstraction: selective time-stretching and spectral sculpting reveal submerged textures; granulation turns droplets and foam into a fine a...

"A data sonification of the Lech River - the river as score "A river does not compose. It erodes, carries, deposits. Over centuries it traces a shape into the land — a shape that is the accumulated record of rainfall, geology, seasonal flood, and human intervention. This project begins with a simple question: what does that shape sound like? "Using computer vision applied to satellite imagery, I e...

"A crowded procession of singular figures, images and imaginaries, possible futures  "“Figures” is built upon a field recording of a threshold zone where the mountains begin to yield to the plains, and where the river itself is divided since a part of its water is withdrawn into a side channel for hydropower production. The underlying approach draws on Steven Feld's proposition that attentive list...

"What stood out for me in the data about the segment as well as in the sounds themselves, were two things: (1) the fact that the river was channelized at that segment, (2) the distant factory siren, very reminiscent of the sirens I have heard on my visits to Kyiv in these last years. The starting point was thus the anthropic forces, i.e. modifications of the banks, part of channelization processes...

"For the Flow project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the University of Padova, and the University of Würzburg, I composed an original piece of music based on a field recording made by researchers along the Lech River near Höfen, Austria. "Titled “A Sense of Place”, the composition brings together history, atmosphere, geography, and memory, reflecting the moment when the listener arriv...

"Upon first hearing the field recording, I struggled to locate the river in it — to connect the sound with the Lech’s path from alpine source to lowland plain. What I received seemed almost random: poor fidelity, heavy handling noise, footsteps as the dominant element. A crossing over a bridge in a gorge, vehicles faint in the distance, a fragment of a human voice. "Not a single drop of water coul...

"A bridge suspended, a crossing over point. I decided to keep the idea of the river Lech as an abstraction. I live on the other side of the world so it took on this imaginarium.  "The sounds of the hanging bridge floating brought to mind this liminal space of crossing worlds with the eternal flow of the river a metaphor for life itself . I thought about this being one of the first industrialised p...

"In “Strands/Textures”, I weave together the field recording (as the main strand), with other strands of sounds inspired by the descriptive phrases and aerial images in the materials describing this section of the Lech. This piece was created in VCVRack2 using a combination of the original field recording, field recordings/foley sounds created specifically for this track, and modules available in...

"When choosing our sources of inspiration, we allowed ourselves to focus exclusively on the sound of the river. We deliberately chose a very active track, rich in sonic events, in which the river sounds like a veritable orchestra. We spent hours listening to this natural improvisation, searching for melodic and rhythmic tendencies in the apparent chaos, as well as evidence of the interaction betwe...

"For the beautiful Section 4 of Flow, I wanted to celebrate the rewilding projects that took place between 2016 and 2022 under the LIFE Lech “Dynamic River System Lech” at Elmen-Nussau and Vorderhornbach. "I was immediately inspired by the photo of the sound being recorded at the bridge. Imagining being in that moment, overlooking the meandering turquoise braids of water, the gravel beds and the d...

Hope Carries Us | The moment I heard the section of the Lech that I ended up working with, I heard these beautiful overtones, and voices and decided I wanted to really bring that out in the piece. Listening to the field recording as I wrote the piece, it felt over time like a history of the river unfolding, the narrowing, the widening, the people using it for transportation in much earlier times,...

"To create this piece, I used the completely raw recording of segment 3. Then, I cut a few seconds from it and layered them, processing them with different filters, delay, and equalizer to create distinct textures. I also wanted to layer my own recording from inside the Rio Negro (the river in my hometown) to give another perspective to the subjective listening experience, as well as to understand...

"I used the data and story of the river section to structure my composition and build a narrative of the river's evolution through time. The composition is started with the sound of the field recording, which means to represent the river in it's free, unchanged state.  "Then an attempt to manipulate the course of the river is being introduced, first through the coarse manipulation of the recording...

"I was allocated a more traditional river recording of serene, meandering river (with agricultural sounds). This was the final “section” available in the allocation process after all other artists had chosen. A wild card approach.  "My starting point was the splitting of the field recording into 16 evenly split samples. I then created using a Roland sp404 sampler, 16 x 1 minute loops where I could...

"At the source of the Lech River near Warth, water and machinery sound together. "This piece grows from a field recording made close to the river, where flowing water blends with the steady drone and metallic clanking of a nearby ski chairlift. Rather than treating this as noise, it becomes the core of the music. The orchestra and percussion amplify its energy, unfolding wide harmonic fields and s...

We followed the Lech for its entire length, watching it change through different phases. Here we witness its latest step, as it joins the Danube in its long trip across ten countries until it reaches the Black Sea. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of...

Of the many hydropower stations we found along the way this is the most impressive. Behind the enormous building towering over the Lech waters, a Y-shaped pipe collects and funnels the water used to generate electricity. The power of the water running under our feet, as the sound suggests, is terrifying. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a...

Füssen, a beautiful town nestled along the Lech, is famous for its proximity to the Neuschweinstein castle. What most of the tourists don't know is that it's also famous for its Geigenbauer, the violin makers. One of them, Gabriel Reinhold, was kind enough to invite us into his workshop and showed us how a slate of wood becomes a violin. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative e...

Hiding between dense forest, in a narrow stretch of valley, we find a reservoir that looked like a secret, secluded place. One man unmoors his boat and rows away, barely rippling the tranquil waters, while birds sing all around us and a couple of swans loudly announce their take off. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the pow...

During our trip along the Lech we stopped, I believe, at every Wasserkraftwerk along the way. Each of them had something particular, either to the eye or to the ear. This sound of water could be a little mountain waterfall, but the humming of the power station in the background is telling us otherwise. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a ri...

 | Of the many reservoirs along the Lech, Forggensee is the largest. In summer it can get very busy, and the cruise boats are a controversial topic. When we visited, the holiday villages around its shores were deserted and a serene atmosphere dominated the area. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The proje...

The fish passage on this dam isn't particularly spectacular, it's a channel carved into the concrete under the road, but I found it particularly symbolic. The water is lapping peacefully, only the echo hints at the artificial nature of this structure, built to recreate conditions as natural as possible for the fish. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the...

The Augsburg Stadtpark is an enormous green area just south of the city of Augsburg. The calm waters of the canals criss-crossing the park are accompanied by the sound of families enjoying the Sunday afternoon at the park, while exotic animals from the nearby zoo make the atmosphere slightly surreal. Recorded by Riccardo Fumagalli. ------- Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a rive...