Composed City is an experimental workshop dealing with city sounds; using the public space as an instrument and initiating permanent changes to the existing soundscape. The „instrument“ to be played is the Wriezener Freiraum labor, part of the former train station Wriezener Bahnhof in Berlin Friedrichshain.

A lecture series on June 4th on sound art in public space will introduce the subject; the lecturing artists are Mark Bain, Achim Wollscheid, and Per Hedfors. Afterwards, the workshop takes place between June 5th-8th 2008. The results will be presented in a performance at the Berlin Festival „Tuned City - Between sound and space speculation“ on July 4th-5th.

Organisation: Staalplaat Soundsystem (Amsterdam, NL), Lola landscape architects (Rotterdam, NL), UDK Berlin (departement of soundstudies) TU Berlin (FG Feduchi, Fachgebiet Architektur) and TX-Architekten (Berlin).
More info: www.composedcity.org & www.tunedcity.de

For the 2008 edition of the SPOR festival in Aarhus we were invited to play a 24 hour yokomono set (may 9 - 10, 2008).

Music takes place in time. This fact has been investigated and challenged over the years where composers have worked with repetition and ‘endless’ processes, with very long sequences or extremely short ones. But music does not only unfold itself in time. Music also creates time. When musical sounds follow one another they provoke a particular sensation of time. Our experience of musical time depends both on that which sounds, the nature of the sounds and their connection with one another, while at the same time the experience is subjective and influenced by the circumstances in which it is experienced.

SPOR 2008 will explore and place emphasis on precisely these experiences with and over time - both musical time and the time that elapses during the course of a day. The framework for SPOR 2008 is at the same time a social action. The festival concerns itself not only with the relationship between work and listener but also between the listeners themselves. Instead of announced concert-times it will be personal choices as well as the public’s exchanges with one another that generate their flow through the festival. The public is challenged to lay out their own festival route, to go on an expedition of exploration in Musikhuset Aarhus (The Music House) and challenge the natural rhythm of the day - don’t forget your sleeping bag!

SPOR 2008 presents a wealth of orchestral music, performance, sound-installations, video-art and electronic music. Experience, amongst others,  Vienna Vegetable Orchestra (Au),Staalplaat Soundsystem (NL), asamisimasa (N), Rebecca Saunders (UK), Hanna Hartmann (S), Curious Chambers Players (S), Brandon Labelle (US/DK), Carl Emil Carlsen (DK), DYGONG (DK), SCENATET (DK) and Aarhus Symfoniorkester (DK).

For the Octopus festival in Paris (may 2nd 2008) we developed a new version of our avantilator performance using parts of the architone concept and other machine instruments.

We performed yokomono on april 25th 2008 at the beautiful goethe institute garden in cairo.
The 100LIVE festival was organised by mahmoud refat the founder of the 100copy label
MUSICIANS: adham hafez, bikya, croce massimo, hassan khan, magdi mostafa, mahmoud refat, ramsi lehner, staalplaat soundsystem, tarek atoui

Yokomono at alt.gallery from 28 february - 5 April, as part of the AV Festival in Newcastle 2008.

This is the first UK presentation of the award winning sound art installation Yokomono by Staalplaat Soundsystem. The installation is inspired by the experience of driving in a car close to the Funkturm (Radio and TV Tower) in Berlin, passing quickly in and out of different radio signals.

Yokomono consists of four toy car record players and a corresponding set of FM radios. The cars, known as vinyl killers, have been customized with wireless FM transmitters. As they spin around the vinyl, they transmit their signal to the radios which are tuned to a special Yokomono frequency.

By arranging the radios in groups it is possible to explore the architectural dimensions of the gallery space. Some radios are also mounted on a miniature train, literally driving through the interfering frequencies. An unstable sonic space is created as the vinyl killers run on batteries that will slow down during the installation, but not necessarily at the same rate.

Described as an ‘eclectic mix of techno culture and sound art installation’, Staalplaat Soundsystem use radio technology in a playful way to create a unique and adventurous installation.

In Composed City we want to show the direct relationship between public space and sound and place it in a broad perspective -historical, present-day, theory and praxis- by means of lectures, presentations and workshops dealing with public space in the city, approached from the view of sound art as well as landscape architecture resulting in a sound art work in public space. Composed city will take place in the preparation of the Berlin festival Tuned City - Between sound and space speculation in May and June.

Program
During the lectures a broad overall view is given on the position of sound and public space, historical and practical, then we’ll slowly focus on the points where sound art and landscape architecture interact. In practice: the first lectures begin with a historical overview of the entire field, the lectures on the present will be more focused on sound art in public space, and the presented artist will be specialized on a field were the architectural and public conditions of the space is a elementary part of their work. We have invited Mark Bain - Edwin van de Heide, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Carsten Nicolai.

The workshops will focus on the praxis and deal with artistic concepts and practical obstacles on the road to realization of a composition with urban facts. The workshops will result in a sound art composition - spatial as well as sonic - that reveals, emphasizes and uses the sounds of the urban landscape were in contact with local architects to select lacerations that will be the turned in to a urban instrument.

General perspective
Our perspective in the work shop will be dominated by our working philosophy and experience. In al our work we search for the reuse and abuse of everyday elements, in such a way that a composition emerges. This new context gives new life to old objects and urges to reflect on your environment, the sounds that surround you and the way you experience them. For public space, our main question is then how you can compose with your environment, in real time and real space: in the city itself.

With our past projects, we have made experience with sound art in public space.
We want to use public space as an instrument like we did with Architone in Kiel and Graz. Questions occur: How to play a building as a instrument? What is its character and its sound? How can you compose with these components? How does it differ from another building? How can construction, instrument sound and composition form a unity? As a guitar sounds different then a piano, how will a warehouse sound compared to a farm? Can you hear the volume and dimensions? Can you hear the material? Can you hear its character and function? These are questions that are more familiar to an architect then to a composer. Same questions occur when you work with open space like a park or a city square: what street elements can you use? Will you compose it into a city concert or is the square just an instrument, can you use dynamic elements like a train, street sirens or static construction noise?

With this approach we will work investigate several locations. One of them is Wriezener Freiraum, that we take here as an example. In order to make a site specific composition, the elements and characteristics of the terrain and the direct environment should be investigated.

1. the terrain: surface form, surface material, the railway tracks, adjacent street
2. built elements: central derelict building, a new building, metal containers
3. present functions: as a free space, park and play function, bicycle cross terrain
4. direct environment: adjacent building block and its inhabitants, supermarket and O2-stadium

During an intense workshop, 10-15 students will work on this. The workshop consists of collective work, discussion and individual work.
The students will start discussing different concepts for the cross-polonisation of sound art and landscape architecture. This results in a vast inventory of ideas and locations that will be checked for originality and viability; the best 3 ideas will be worked out. Then we’ll deal with the road to realisation. This will result in at least a model, an explanation and a budget. Afterwards, volunteers can help realizing the design on one of the locations. The result of the workshops will be published and presented at the exhibition of festival Tuned City, which opens on the 1st of  June.

Geert-Jan Hobijn and Peter Veenstra, February 2008
Composed City is an initiative of:
Staalplaat Soundsystem www.staalplaat.org, Lola landscape architects www.lolaweb.nl
in collaboration with: Tuned City festival www.tunedcity.de, Sound Studies, Universität  der Künste Berlin  www.udk-berlin.de/soundstudies , Technische Universität Berlin www.tuberlin.de