Beijing Parks in Tempelhof: Sounds of Electric & Petrol Cars
Peter Cusack in collaboration with Udo Noll and radio aporee. The piece is designed to be heard on an android mobile phone using the free ‘radio aporee’ app. As you walk around the area shown on the map your GPS position triggers the different sounds.
(The map shows the area where Berlin Sonic Places Module 3 will take place, get a larger map here).
Beijing Parks in Tempelhof
Beijing’s Parks are amazing places in that they are in constant use by hundreds, if not thousands, of people who love to perform in public. This can be lone voices speaking poetry; mass Tai Chi; choirs of hundreds singing revolutionary songs; ballroom dancing and any number of instrumental and more traditional music groups. It’s often cacophonous and quite delightful. Nobody minds how well they play. Many are older people, who meet together to perform, enjoy themselves and socialise. There are some beautiful silent activities too, like calligraphy written with water and a brush on the grey stone pathways. The water slowly evaporates leaves ghosts of the writing before disappearing altogether. Walking around these parks is full of surprises.
Sounds of Electric and Petrol Cars compared
The sound of our cities, as almost everywhere else, is dominated by motor vehicles running on petrol or diesel. However the industry is slowly changing. Electric cars are supposedly the next future.
What will this sound like?
These recordings compare the sounds of 2 cars, passing at different speeds, reversing, parking, starting and stopping. Both are identical Smart cars, but one has a petrol engine, the other an electric. How do the differences sound to you?
All recording were made in April 2009 at the Millbrook test track in the UK, by permission of Smart cars and the University of Warwick.
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modul III | 18. August 2012