Listen To The World: Global Sound Map From Cities & Memory

An example of what you can listen to on the Global Sound Map. See below for full interactive version.

The interactive global sound map below is one of the cooler and more original map concepts we’ve come across. It let’s you listen to sounds from around the world.

The map is part of a broader global sound mapping and sound art project called Cities and Memory. It aims to present both the real sounds of the world but also their re-imagined counterparts, creating two parallel sound worlds of the real and the imagined.

This is why for every location you’ll see not one, but two sounds you can listen to.

Interactive map:

There are more than 900 sounds from over 40 countries and the project has had almost a quarter of a million listens since its launch in 2014.

Stuart Fowkes who runs the project told us that:

“Every location and every faithful field recording on the sound map is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. The listener can choose to explore locations through their actual sounds, or explore interpretations of what those places could be – or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.

The project is completely open to submissions from field recorders, musicians or anyone with an interest in exploring sound worldwide. The field recording and sound art communities have embraced the concept: more than 200 field recordists and sound artists from as far afield as Calcutta, Los Angeles and Cape Town have taken part, providing field recordings and radical reimaginings of global sounds.

We’ve also presented special sound and mapping projects based around the sounds of water, covering an entire city in 24 hours, focusing on Thomas More’s Utopia, using Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards for inspiration and currently using Dada techniques applied to sound mapping.”

To better understand how they re-imagine sound you might want to read How to reimagine a sound in ten easy steps and you can listen to the playlist on audioBoom here.

Finally, new sounds are being added all the time. You cna stay up-to-date with project by following them on their website: http://citiesandmemory.com.

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