My Favourite Istanbul Sound

Submit your favourite sound of Istanbul

We launch an appeal to every citizen of Istanbul in order to suggest us his/her favourite sound of Istanbul. On the basis of these sounds, Belgian composer Guy De Bièvre will make a composition, in tight collaboration with our partner in Istanbul, the Yildiz Technical University. Guy de Bièvre, author of soundinstallations and works with city sounds, will also create a ‘soundwalk’ through a certain part of Istanbul during the Human Cities Brussels Istanbul festival.

Original idea: Peter Cusack.

The soundwalks

The concept of the Soundwalk finds its origins in the work of the Canadian composer and sound ecologist Murray Schafer (author of The Tuning of the World) and was later further elaborated by his assistant Hildegard Westerkamp (whom I had the pleasure to assist on a number of Soundwalks). A Soundwalk requires no technology, it requires only our ears and the sonic environment. This may seem too simple and unexciting, but the fact is that people never 'soundwalk' (except maybe for hunters or the like, listening for prey). Ideally the Soundwalk 'leader' explores the area beforehand and designs a route according to its acoustic properties (more than according to the sounds occurring along the route, as they usually are but one time events). The route should designed not to take much longer than 25 minutes of slow walking. Soundwalking is a tiresome exercise, because it calls for continuous auditory concentration. We may have the illusion that we continuously listen, because we have no “earlids”, but this is untrue, we can mentally “open” or “close” our ears.

Our sonic environment is quite different from our visual environment. The visual space is static (and therefore measurable) and non-transparent, while the auditory space is something dynamic without boundaries, very transparent (we can literally hear through the sounds). To people used to work with digital sound editing I like to explain the Soundwalk as a walk through a multitrack sound mix. We can hear most of the sound “processings” we can apply to sound data: volume (simultaneous sounds can have different loudness levels), fading (sounds fade in and out of the soundscape), panning (sounds can be to the left or to the right or can move from one side to the other), reverb (sounds can reverberate on certain surfaces), filtering (certain frequency bands can be absorbed by certain surfaces), etc...

Ideally up to about twelve people take part in a Soundwalk. They stay more or less close together and follow the 'leader' walking at a slow pace (the group can look strange to unknowing bystanders, like a funeral with an invisible hearse), focussing on all that can be heard (the obvious and the details), avoiding visual distractions as much as possible.

At the start it is good to first focus on ones own sonic presence and that of the other people in the group (it is not unusual that one or more sounds are taken along the entire walk, e.g. the clicking of high heels or hard soles or the rustling of synthetic fabrics, though these are preferably avoided). Often the fact of walking in a group where everybody listens in a concentrated manner will give the impression that the “listening” is stronger or deeper (in a way something related to what musicians experience when they perform in front of a very attentive audience).

We will develop a similar project together with the RITS (master in radio/audio art) in Brussels from October 25th until 28th. “My Favourite Brussels Sound” with a composition and a soundwalk in the city.

Staging the city's sound

The sounds of any city are an extremely rich and endless varying non-stop soundscape composition. One of the main shifts in the aesthetic theories in the 20th century is the shift from the notions between ‘music’ / ‘sound’ and ‘noise’. From the proto-techno experiments of the Italian futurists until the definitions of John Cage, via the sound experiments of early electronics music pioneers such as Varèse or Schaeffer, the frontiers between these categories got blurry and diffuse. What is music? What is sound? What is noise? According to John Cage music is “sound acting”. To him, all surrounding and ambient sound have a musical potentiality.

What should I send ?

Screeching trainbrakes, whistles, calls from street vendors, the voice of your favourite waitress, distant chanting, a teacups clattering against tabletops….. you name it. The city is the sum of its sounds and you are our guide in this subjective cartography. Anything audible goes.

About Guy De Bièvre

"In the first place I am a composer and musician. The last decade I have also been active as a sound art curator (Earwitness, Brussels; Interval, Gent or Cultuurmijl, Enschede). In the past I did work for different organizations related to contemporary and experimental music (e.g. Logos Foundation and IPEM in Gent). I published theoretical texts in various publications (e.g. on Charlemagne Palestine in the monography Sacred Bordello or on John Cage's 4'33” in the Centre Pompidou catalogue Voids). I spent two years as a researcher in the theory department of the Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and am currently pursuing a music PhD at Brunel University in London. I'm also a guest teacher, among others, at RITS in Brussels and the Academy of Fine Arts in Gent.

Partners

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