Soundscape: Fairbourne Railway

Rail Sights and Sounds (1:47) This short documentary is about the sights and soundscape of the Fairbourne railway near Barmouth. The railways is a 12 ¹⁄4 in gauge miniature running for 2 miles from the village of Fairbourne on the Mid-Wales coast, alongside the beach to the end of a peninsula at Barmouth. It was opened in 1895. Originally built to carry building materials, the railway has carried vacationers for over a hundred years. Click2Read more. Source: BBC.

Soundscape Installation: Stockholm Noise

Oljud Stockholm / Stockholm Noise was an exhibition at the Museum Of Music in Stockholm as a part of the Stockholm Culture Festival 2009. Håkan Lidbo and the ethnologist Elin Franzén asked five artist to make remixes of the most sounds that people in Stockholm find most annoying; The Underground, a kitchen at McDonald’s, a kindergarden at a small back yard, a noise café and a road in Old Town with passing heavy traffic. People in Stockolm were interviewed about these sounds and if their attitude to the sound changed after they heard it remixed into music. 

Oljud Stockholm / Stockholm Noise wanted to investigate how we can change our attitude to noise in the city and make it less stressful. By listening with your musical ears instead of your critical ears, one might not only be much less irritated by the noises of the city, one might also discover a new quality and a new dimension of the city. 

The artisits that made noise into music were Mokira (Andreas Tilliander), Noisebud (Sol Andersson and Johannes Ahlberg), Sophie Rimheden, Håkan Lidbo and Yourhighness (Johannes Wikström).

The entire work process, from the audio collection to delivery, has been documented in five short films. In the movies, we also hear the relationship artists have with their noise and what the locals think of their city's sounds and noises

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Soundscape: Lisbon Funicular

Elevador Lavra (2:44) The mechanical sound of this unique funicular has echoed in Lisbon's streets since 1884, when the Elevador do Lavra was heralded as the first such system in the world. 

It has a total length of 188 meters and an average gradient of 22.9%. The funicular was built by the Portuguese engineer Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard. The cable car, originally used a mechanism similar to steam locomotives, was later modernized with electric technology of the tram network. It is classified as a National Monument in Portugal since February 2002. Source: You Tube

Soundscape: Underwater seal calls

Seal Calls (1:49) Imagine being able to hear the sounds of unseen seals beneath your feet. This clip includes rarely-heard underwater sounds of seals swimming below the ice in Antarctica. Scientists can hear these sounds from inside their lab and out in the field. From Werner Herzog's 2007 documentary, "Encounters at the End of the World". Source: You Tube

Soundscape: English Canal Barge

Transitioning a Lock (5:15). A short video of a canal barge going through a lock near Workhouse Bridge, in Staffordshire, England. A pleasant soudscape of water and craft on an August day in 2010. Source: YouTube.

Soundscape: Bells of St. Joseph the Worker

Church Bells (4:25) The bells of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Beal City (Mount Pleasant), Michigan are featured. The large bell tolls noon, followed by a 90 second dwell, then the midday Angelus is chimed. Source: YouTube

Soundscape: Luperon Street Corner

Street Corner in Luperon (7:02) This is an interesting street corner scoundscape in which the camera is placed at ankle height and documents the passing life on an intersection in this small town. From the blaring music of an off screen source to the mix of people and traffic, life is paced at its own unique rhythm in  Luperón, a town in the Puerto Plata province of the Dominican Republic, which lies in the north of the country and is a small tourist center with one all-inclusive hotel and a coastal bay. Source: YouTube

Soundwalk: Vienna

Vienna listening walk (10:16) A listening walk through the Christkindl-Markt in Rathausplatz, on December 12, 2011, starting 18:06 h MEST.  This is an exercise in the course "Alltagsklaglandschaften" taught in the Department for European Ethnology at the University of Vienna by professor Justin Winkler. 

The video lacks obvious visual perfection and actually doesn't aim at achieving such. It simply accompanies a listening walk and accepts all kinds of glitches and jiggling. The agitation retraces the body movements of the recordist. The camera is held at the upper chest level. Therefore sounds which go past the recordist disappear quickly behind his back: the cloak's cloth insulates, and the body, in contrast to our ears, splits the audio world in audible "front" and absent "back". The recordist cannot see what the camera "watches". So he does not correct changes of direction and the skew position of the image. Source: You Tube