Mixing Cities

Mixing Cities brings together the real-time ('live') sounds of several cities in an audiovisual installation. The interface consists of two speakers and a panel with five faders and five lamps. The environmental sounds at five locations are picked up by microphones and directly transmitted to Mixing Cities. One can adjust the volume of the incoming sounds by using the faders. In this way it is possible to listen to the sounds of one or more cities at the same time. Apart from the live sound, the current lighting at the locations is registered with sensors and directly translated into the light intensity of the lamps. By choosing and switching between the cities one can make his own journey between the cities and get a different experience of distances and space.
I want to encourage the audience to look at the concepts distance and space at a different angle. Mixing Cities presents another way to perceive the relationship between the physical and virtual distance. The installation tries to capture the subtle changes in the sound background of everyday life. One of the questions I ask myself in this work is how an individual is affected by the surrounding sounds, which often go unnoticed because of their familiarity.