The third semester of the project had the topic of awareness. The outputs were presented at the BHROX bauhaus reuse. Surrounded by the sound of the cars in the roundabout, we brought this exhibition to the center of the Ernst-Reuter-Platz. The BHROX is a participatory urban laboratory for research, education and performative practices, situated close to and in cooperation with the university. The Soundscape Project TUB spent the last months reflecting upon noticing the sounds of the campus and urban spaces; perceiving the social and psychological effects of the sonic; and accessing other sonic imaginaries.
Through listening practices, questionnaires, group dynamics, soundwalks, field recording techniques and compositional approaches, the students developed different pieces working together. The outputs of the cooperative process are exhibited on 24th of March, 2023, as installations, research outputs and a performance.
The pieces deal with sonic awareness within concrete or re-imagined terrains. They make us aware of the places we inhabit daily through surveys; they manifest potential changes into the soundscapes around us through mapping and imagined interactive devices; they amplify, filter and modify the existing internal and external spaces into an alternative immersive scenario; they invite the visitors to combine and compose in real time collected sounds of the campus. Whether closer to a scientific or artistic approach, they welcome us to listen and re-think the sounds of the city and the spaces we inhabit everyday.
The Modular Soundscape Project >
interactive installation
by Florian Ulbricht, Mert Zeybek and Nils Haala
The project aims to explore the impact of noise and sounds generated around the campus through an interactive modular soundscape that can be shaped by the users using a mixer.
To achieve this, we recorded soundscapes around the TU Berlin campus and identified the sound objects. Then, we rebuilt these soundscapes using foley and more isolated sounds.
The listener can now control the rebuilt soundscapes by adjusting five faders, which represent five categories of sounds. Through this project, we can explore, for example, what a more environmentally friendly campus with less heavy traffic could sound like, or which elements of our daily soundscape we enjoy or dislike. The recordings and some reimagined soundscapes can be found on Cities and Memories and Aporee.
< Uni Café Soundscapes
research outputs and questionnaire
by Josefin Conrad and Sebastian Schröder
In order to characterize the soundscape of some university cafes and how far the general atmosphere is perceived, we made up a survey concerning those aspects. It approaches the principle of so called "place-making", by raising questions after implementations of urban design principles (of TU campus), and therefore, eventually, the well-being of people who work and/or hang out in those places. Results of this questionnaire are visually displayed.
Soundscape Instrument >
interactive instrument and performance
This is a Ableton based keyboard instrument which uses recorded sounds from all around the TU Campus. This instrument is not made to be played like a traditional instrument. It is made to explore the soundscape it creates. Press some keys, turn some knobs and listen to how it changes the soundscape!
< Soundscape influence experiment
experiment
by Martin Hahn
In this experiment we find out, if having influence over a soundscape alters our perception of them. The experiment is made for two participants. One of you can adjust the knobs and alter the generation of the soundscape, while the other one listens.
How pleasant / unpleasant do both of you perceive the generated soundscape?
Masking chaos into harmony: Zooming into the everyday noise and its possible transformations >
4-channel installation
by Giulia Davila, Philipp Reitz, Maximilian Wehner
While it is impossible to eliminate noise in urban environments, the project encourages creative ways of transforming unwanted sounds into something positive. Through this project, the audience is invited to think critically about the impact of sound in urban environments and imagine new possibilities for the future.
The project aims to create an interactive experience by using microphones to record urban soundscapes from the outside and bring them into the room. Once inside the building, different effects and microphones are placed in random places and invite to create new soundscapes. The auditory is encouraged to interact with the effects and generating interactively unique compositions.
