In 2014 I spent nine weeks in Belgrade. I investigated the questions “What does this city sound like?” and “Is it possible to portray it acoustically?”

During numerous excursions in diverse areas I collected sounds and noise. In addition to this I conducted interviews about the sonic landscape of Belgrade with people of various ages and origins. I accumulated an extensive acoustic archive or memory, which now serves as the basis for the composition.

Typical for Belgrade are ist numerous peripheries: even in the historic center it happens, that all of a sudden you find yourself in a fringe area. The transitions are abrupt – from a noisy and loud area to a fragile and subtle one. I frequently encountered circles in various contexts, and the notion of time appeared to be more circular in comparison to the clocked and linear one in Central Europe. A further inspiration and metaphor for my composition project was a model of an induction motor with an egg-shaped rotator by Nikola Tesla in his museum. I created a score with the city map, assuming my apartment as the center and drawing eight circles around it. Each field recording was indicated with a dot on the map. All recordings on one “ring” were summarized to a layer of music in the composition.

Within the setting of eight speakers, selected field recordings (some processed, others raw) and electronically generated sounds create a dense lasting moment, a sonic condition of the place. The material for this sound portrait is taken from the acoustic reality of the city, however the composition process alters it and generates a new appearance. The structure is organised in smaller sequences, with smooth transitions between them.

---

---