Did I hear the change? Can I hear it?

Welcome to the Soundscape Shift

Experience the 360° soundscape exhibition exploring Munich's near-extinct sounds in six unique tents through spatial audio dynamic head-tracking technology, provided by Apple©. Tilt your head and listen as audio objects move closer or farther away. Immerse yourself in the soundscapes and explore which sounds are potentially endangered of extinction. It's not about conceptually understanding what you're hearing, but about paying just a little bit more attention: Maybe you'll even be hearing your own neighbourhood.

The Story

The sounds we hear in our everyday environments change constantly. While we sometimes engage with these changes by putting on - or in - our headphones, rarely do we reflect on these changes and their effects on us personally or on us as a society.

This exhibition is dedicated to this reflective attempt, specifically concentrating on the sounds that we may not hear again for quite some time. This is no attempt to create guilt: Rather, it is an invitation to explore what soundscapes move us and can potentially characterize the way we want to live in this world. Besides, if we find something cool, we've always had the habit of bringing something back into our lives.

© Brigitte Werner, "ArtTower", 18.01.2019.

Our Tents

Step into six unique sound worlds, each tent telling its own story.

Biodiversity

As an adult, you may have noticed the change. As a young adult, you may have also already noticed the change. And as a child, you may still - unwantingly - experience the change: That is, the decrease in sound variation. I'm not talking about your TV here, I'm talking about your garden or the very gardens we like to go to in and around Munich and Bavaria as a whole.

While the Bayerische Schlösserverwaltung has initiated a substantial number of measures to improve biodiversity in the English Garden, we may still find some of our Garden soundscapes to differ across this spectrum. The recordings are all from different Bavarian biological habitats: What further differences can you hear?

Family

If you were to record the sound environment in the average family home in Bavaria, what do you think has changed over the years? Or put differently: What do you think you will rarely hear, that you may have heard quite often 10, 20, 30, or 50 years ago?

The soundscapes recorded here are dedicated to this question: Instead of Tonies, you may simply hear a children's story being told "live". Instead of the voice of one child, you may hear multiple. Instead of digital entertainment, you may hear physical games being played - or none at all. The question isn't about whether you're part of the change or not conceptually: it's whether you're a part of it through sound - and if you want to continue to be a part of it.

Home

Mobility

You know what's rare on Bavaria's streets? An old tractor without a modern engine. An old farm without modern vehicles driving around in the background. Or maybe anything that doesn't have to do with electrification?

Do you sometimes still hear someone sweeping the floor with a broom? Writing by hand instead of on a laptop? Having a tea kettle on the stove that shrrieeeksss? I thought so. But what do these sounds do to us?

Leisure

Work

Do you remember the sound of fax machines? Or of the paternoster lift? How about quite work on the field?

Shall we return to Flipper? Bars where people smoked? Bicycles without an electric motor?