Barcelona Confinement Soundscape

[Guest Blog post by  Ilaria Sartori and Gianni Ginesi]

Dear fellow Freesounders,

May we introduce Barcelona Confinement Soundscape, a collaborative soundmap and soundscape-related network of researchers, artists and neighbors who stay home and actively listen, record and reflect on soundscape during confinement by Covid-19 in Barcelona.

The confinement experience has changed our social practices and soundscapes. It is a turning point that will leave unpredictable consequences and will certainly be the subject of studies and reflections.

It is thus important to document -collectively, but from individual intentions and sensibilities- the sounds and sensory experiences of these days and to promote information exchange network in order to facilitate future discussions and reflections on the cultural and sonic dimension of confinement. We therefore promote an open participation project that collects sounds recorded from the balconies, windows, houses of Barcelona during the confinement by covid19.

In the framework of this project, we are creating a sound map which includes the different listening points of the participants. You can watch it and listen to it here:

https://freesound.org/browse/geotags/barcelonaconfinementsoundscape/

We would like this map to become a useful resource for research, teaching and artistic creation; a tool to strengthen networks and exchanges between people and initiatives that work around listening, soundscape and field-recording in Barcelona. If you live in or around Barcelona, please be welcome to join the Barcelona Confinement Soundscape project with one or more recordings, and if you wish, by providing bibliography or other information related to the practice of listening during confinement (link).

In order to appear on the map you must:

• Record a sound (or more) from your window/balcony/terrace
• Upload it to Freesound using this Freesound shared account. You need to provide a detailed description and geo-locate the sound. Specific instructions are given in the shared account profile page. To get the password please contact us.
• In your sound description you can add information about the author, and possible links to texts, websites, social, sound archives and related projects. See examples here and here.
• If you already have a Freesound account, you can also simply add the tags barcelonaconfinementsoundscape, confinementsoundscape and covid19 to the recordings you upload to your account.

In case you don’t live in Barcelona, you are still very welcome to build or share your confinement soundmap, sounds and packs as well as to get in touch with us and contribute to expand the network of confinement listeners. Make sure you use the the tag covid19 so all confinement sounds will be easy to find 🙂

Many thanks!

About Ilaria and Gianni:

Ilaria Sartori is a researcher, teacher, creator and disseminator in ethnomusicology and sound anthropology. She holds a PhD in History and analysis of musical cultures and a MA in Conservation of cultural heritage with a specialization in Intangible heritage. She is professor of Ethnomusicology at Escola Superior de M?sica de Catalunya (ESMUC) and leads interdisciplinary participative sound workshops for Phonos / MTG focusing on bioacoustics, art and interculturality. She is a member of Sons de Barcelona sound pedagogy team, directs Barceloneta Sonora sound art and anthropology project and collaborates in a variety of cultural, scientific, academic and artistic activities and productions related to sound, music, silence and listening.

Gianni Ginesi is professor of Ethnomusicology at the Escola Superior de M?sica de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona, holds degrees in Art, Music and Drama by the University of Bologna (Italy), Ethnomusicology by the University of Valencia and a PhD by the Universitat Aut?noma de Barcelona. Formal member of the research group ?Les m?siques en les societats contempor?nies? at the Universitat Aut?noma de Barcelona, he worked on some Mediterranean?s musical traditions and on popular electronic music. His researches focus on the relationships between music and society in a historical perspective and through cultural processes and the development of Ethnomusicology, notably its epistemological settings and ethnographic methodologies.

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This was a Freesound guest blog post. Do you have any project or something you’d like to share in the Freesound Blog? Let us know using our contact form