Unique sounds of unique places

[xmacex]

What if we had a thread for sounds and places? I am not thinking of generic sounds (waves crashing; train breaking; lofi chill ambient beats) in generic places (seashore; metro line; advanced stage capitalism), but unique sounds at unique places.

Such as the directed amplification of the Denge sound mirrors near Kent. It was built as an early warning system against air raids, and I guess standing there listening was someone’s job.

Or the Morske orgulje in Zadar, an artwork of urban sea organ played by waves by Nikola Bašić.

Or the reverb of University of Copenhagen new bike parking facility at the Amager “KUA” campus. What were the architects thinking? I cannot tell, but it sounds incredibly satisfying, I’ve only ever encountered that much reverb on ambient synth videos on Instagram.

Or the magnificent and also incredibly loud opera of sound as the tram 903 passes under the gargantuan Ruhrort harbour from Duissen to Auf dem Damm in Duisburg. The tram reaches formidable speed, becoming itself a character in the opera, and down under the harbor it is hard to say what composes the sublime and immersive soundscape.

I would be open for us to understand both “sound” and “place” with very open minds… Intentional, unintentional, misintentional… natureculture… but I would very much like to think of specific and unique sounds and places.

Two out of four examples above are both formed by concave concrete architecture for infrastructural purposes – a narrow start of a thread from me, apologies! Such a thread would not need to be about architecture, the above are just some examples I came up with from the top of my head. Maybe I should only mention the third and fourth, ones which I have experienced personally, and not the first and second ones which I haven’t (yet). Karen Collins speaks about “sonic fingerprints” in her stellar 2020 book Studying Sound, although what she writes about and invites us to observe include fingerprints of also e.g. people.

I also have a memory of a special hum, but I cannot remember where it is.

Can you think of some places like that? What does it sound like, and what is the connection between that sound and that place?

[bchampion96]

Oooooo, unique sounding spaces you say? Do I ever have a favourite!

More info in these threads:

Release: MODCAF - TESTCHAMBER
Monthly Event - The Modular Cafe Aldershot

Q121 is an heritage wind tunnel in Farnborough, England. Part of the route air would take is called the ‘Return Circuit’, essentially a giant concrete box with a sloping floor and ‘turning vanes’ at each end.

51°17'04.9"N 0°45'22.3"W

Wind Tunnel Buildings - Farnborough Air Sciences Trust

It’s the most magical feeling and sounding place I have ever been. It’s pitch black when the door is closed and there are some incredibly fast and long delays if you clap in between the vanes at either end, which approach a flanging quality. There’s a foam wall in there too, behind the vanes on the lower end. If you stand next to it, one ear experiences no reflections and the other HELLA reflections. This is such a weird experience it has affected a few peoples’ balance.

There are impulse responses which I’d encourage everyone to have a play around with. I’ll peruse my collections of (ambisonic) recordings when I have a moment and will upload some samples of people moving around the space (and hopefully dropping things).

[smonthms]

Place that comes to mind for me is Teufelsberg in Berlin. It’s an old soviet listening post which has since been taken over by artists. If you get to go inside one of the intact domes the reverberation from a mere click is absolutely magic

Teufelsberg

[slowsounds]

The Emanuelle Vigeland tomb on the edge of Oslo is a great space. Incredibly long reverb, highly sensitive room, incredibly dark, covered in wild paintings and the most metal looking urn ever. Well worth a visit if you are visiting and it happens to be open that day. They used to do a lot of concerts in there, not sure if they still do. I saw Mahan Esfahani do a concert in there - harpsichord sounded fantastic in there, and he did a version of Reich’s Paino Phase with tape playback, which in that room basically turns into a Phill Niblock piece.

One spatial installation I would have loved to have seen was Doug Wheeler’s Synthetic Desert- https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/4237

[_pete]

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the spot in Grand Central Terminal where you can whisper into a corner and be heard in the opposite corner of the arched hallway.

This brings attention to whispering galleries.

[dragonelixir]

thank you for this thread. so cool… i think about place sounds so much… feel i will be returning here often…

in the summer i was fascinated with a paper called ‘Is a Neolithic Burial Chamber Different from my Bathroom, Acoustically speaking?’ and spent a month traveling around the Cotswold’s burial chambers recording bells inside, and the same bells in bathrooms. They do sound different…. but it’s a very odd similar sensation

… Landhill burial chamber is my favourite!!

i also personally love fan noises. i record them a lot. there is a particular fan in the deep basement of the opera house that sounds like a symphony when you stand next to it… also i was on the 415 bus recently and the fan had so many harmonics and a deep tone, it felt like i had been transported to a magic drone universe. i was so sad i didn’t have my field recorder in me

i recommend the book sonic wonderland by trevor cox and his online sound map. super cool!

also Resonant spaces by john butcher is one of my favourite albums of reverberant site spaces!

[rvense]

@xmacex

reverb of University of Copenhagen new bike parking facility

These are so wild. I don’t understand how it works. It’s not just the amount of reverb, but also the… predelay? It just feels unnatural. I know I’m not going to get any guidebook to accept it, but if you are interested in sound and find yourself in Copenhagen, I’d say visiting is pretty much mandatory.

edit - do you have a recording, @xmacex? I made a post in the Field Recording thread some years ago but the link is broken.

[dandante]

Ambient reverb, no electronics required: The Dan Harpole Cistern at Fort...

TANK Center for the Sonic Arts

[xmacex]

I don’t unfortunately, but stop to listen whenever I am there. And always park in there! They really are quite uncanny, I don’t even know concepts for it. Any idea how intentional the soundscape was?

[rvense]

No idea at all.

I have heard that at least in the past it was possible to train as an architect in Denmark without getting even so much as one lesson on acoustics (in five years!), so it might be by chance… but it’s a little too crazy for it, I think.

[xmacex]

That would be a good story to investigate, or even write up either as a research or study project (the Copenhagen University Sound Studies Lab operates right there), or for the university newspaper (if it has not been done already).

It is super interesting when places, this one or others, have a special sound or a strong sonic identify but intentionality remains unclear.

[eesn]

In London, this railway overpass to St.Pancras, over Regent’s Canal, I’ve stood underneath and heard it “sing” right before a train passes by above. Something about the materials and construction just makes it sound nice.

Been trying to find a nice YT video. Alas…
anyhoo: 51.537176, -0.129221

edit: this vid gets somewhat close.

[robbie]

I wonder if there is a sub-division to be drawn between deliberately manifested acoustics and accidental (or even unfortunate) acoustics.

On the lasting negative-impression side, I remember visiting the Barbican Estate in the late 90s to view one of the split-level flats (sadly the flat itself was simultaneously stunningly architecturally beautiful, and shockingly poorly maintained). The flats are accessed on each floor from a single straight corridor, with a very large single door at either end, leading from the service core. The combination of minimalist design, unforgiving construction material, and weight of the doors caused a pressure wave whenever one or the other closed. It was an interesting sound, physical, deep and rolling, but also … unpleasant – especially if you were unfortunate enough to be mid-corridor at an antinode. Aside from the more complex psychoacoustic effect, I also remember the more immediate sensation of my ears popping.

[timp]

A few favourites:

GCans Tokyo absolutely massive reverb

trip report

Echo Point, Takaka NZ
First time I visited here there was a sign on a pole: ‘Echo Point - startling echo heard here’ - across the mudflats are some flat cliffs that bounce back a gorgeous echo
Vid shot on DV - 17 years ago:

Echo Point, Takaka

more recently revisited with full mic rig…

Box Canyon Cave, Karamea, NZ

Apart from the remote location this is an easily accessible and large open cave. But at the back of the main cave there is a side tunnel which goes in another few hundred metres as its height slowly decreases… When you go as far in that side tunnel as you can comfortably, it is the quietest place I have ever been. Equal to or better than the anechoic chambers I have been to…

[severak]

Few of my favorites:

Wheelchair accessible underpass at Prague Libeň railway station. This is your run of the mill railway station underpass with one twist - there are no stairs only elevators going to platforms (as stairs are on different underpass). So this underpass has backrooms vibe and unique sounding reverb.

I managed to capture it’s IR using Outsidify iPhone app:

Another of my favorite places with unusual accoustic is this seemingly ordinary street near my home:

It turns out that these houses are in right distance to cause interesting delay/echo type of sound when stomping loudly on ground:

[red_earth_cat]

Absence of sound is, these days, a pretty unique experience. I used to go to the Great Sand Dunes about once a year on family trips, and it gets extremely quiet there (Shhhhh. You Hear That? That's The Sweet Silence Of The Great Sand Dunes, On Track To Become The First 'Quiet Zone' In The US).

An escalator at the Ashby BART station in Berkeley used to make a sound that would make a very funky loop. I’m not sure I ever recorded it, and I think it has since been “fixed.”

[kevinpaulcahay]

You have this composition with a video by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto called Glass here is the wiki
Contact microphones on a glass house ? Oh yeah.

[groundforms]

I used to live in the Barbican, in one of those split level flats. The communal areas are exactly as you’ve described, but the sensation was amplified within the flats. Over the three floors of the apartment we had these huge, proto-doubleglazed panels made of teak and glass that hermetically sealed us in. The central core of the apartment contained all the service elements, including the garchey system that belched and washed and carried the buildings turns and sighs back into the space.

I struggled deeply with the auditory sensations of the place, but my wife at the time didn’t tune into it. This and other factors led us to separate and now I live deep in the mountains and she’s still happy in the haunted apartment.

This is one of those corridors (excuse the bins bags I took this to complain to the council)

[Jensu]

Still very much was when I was studying 5 years ago.

When the school was reprogrammed, from old military workshops, the main auditorium was designed with an amazing open roof structure, with perforated gypsum panels with acoustic dampening behind. We’ll thought through acoustic treatment.
But, the painters painted it with a spraygun, spraying paint through the holes, covering the material behind. It should have been painted with rolls, but the architect didn’t specify. So the acoustics are shit for lectures and gatherings now.
(Hearsay)

[bphenix]

The Phillip Johnson estate remains a space that I still remember vividly. The Glass House, along with a few Frank Lloyd Wright houses were some of the first pieces of architecture I remember and knew by name as a kid. What stays with me from visiting the Johnson estate is how the Glass House is almost the least interesting aspect of the estate as a standalone structure. Rather it is the stunning use perspective within the landscape design. I highly recommend a visit (though it does require a bit of pre-planning as tickets are sold in advance).

It would be interesting to expand on Johnson’s manipulation of perspective through field recordings throughout the estate.