Open Call How do you experience a quieter city?
How do you experience a quieter city? Or a silenced city? Our cities are normally filled with noise. The corona crisis has changed that. Few or no people on the streets, shops closed, much less traffic, hardly any planes coming over. The soundscape of the city has completely changed. Soundtrackcity, the organization behind Urban Sound Lab, therefore makes a worldwide appeal: How does the city sound in times of corona?
Share your sound impression with Soundtrackcity
How do you experience the quieter city? What do you hear? Soundtrackcity is curious – because not everyone hears the same. Share a description of what you hear in an email to info@urbansoundlab.nl How do you experience a quieter city? You can make it as long or short as you like.
They ask you to write something about the effects of the new soundscape on your wellbeing, on your health, on your mood, on your social life. What has changed? How does it feel? What is pleasant / unpleasant? What sounds are you missing? And: How should the city sound in the future?
Response and context of the call
Why is Soundtrackcity making this call? Right at the start of the crisis, Soundtrackcity realized that it is valuable to collect material that represents this unusual time. They decided not only to register current urban sound by making audio recordings but also and foremost to collect the impressions that the acutely changed soundscape has on the inhabitants of cities.
This call from Soundtrackcity is an encouragement to listen attentively to the urban environment now and to see what new insights this listening gives us. Insights that can lead to building a more just city. The more people listen the better, feel free to send this call to your friends and acquaintances.
Every week they place an anthology of the highly informative entries, currently mostly in Dutch, in their Urban Sound Lab.