Locate to Listen is an Interactive Sound Map.
The program preserves, places and maps the sounds of Vogelsang Military Base in Zehdenick, Germany on August 26th 2020: a particularly rainy, unwelcoming, despondent Summer day.
The rain gifted life, movement, sound, a voice to the otherwise frigid and silent abandoned structures left behind by the Soviet army's evaporation from the area in the mid 1990s.
The Fauna which has started to reclaim the area gradually, back from human intervention, was also quiet and unseen, seeking shelter from heavy rainfall. Equally absent were signs of human explorers venturing into the forest to explore the vestigial past, save for the recordists, aiming to capture something worthwhile stuck in the worthless situation. Was it the rain or their unwelcome presence which had pushed absence into the space?
Through the rainfall the vacant buildings: gymnasium, cafeteria, theatre, bunker, home, were the only sources of sound; utterings of the stories, secrets, truths and lies ones housed and hidden from curious eyes.
Listen, immerse yourself, in the breaths of Vogelsang in the rain, or, in their mirrors: peering into distant futures which, may now never happen due to the sites ongoing deconstruction.
Locate to Listen's interface was built using Daniel Inglelia's MobMuPlat (Mobile Music Platform) Application: http://danieliglesia.com/mobmuplat/ The application allows the user to design interfaces which are capable of communicating patches structured in Miller Puckette's PureData https://puredata.info/. Both programmes are open source and freely available.
The application allows the user to listen to field recordings. Playback can be enabled by interacting with one of the "toggle" controls on the map interface; the toggle's position corresponds to the location at which the recording was made.
The first map houses the recordings made as they were, light EQ and levelling was applied to the files in order for the to work together when listened to simultaneously.
Recording Equiptment:
SoundDevices Mixpre-6 Recorder
Shure WL93 Lapel Mic
Soundman OKM-II Binaural Mic
Undranded Contact Mic
Eagle A17 Electromagnetic Coil Mic
The second map contains reproduced, digital approximations of the field recordings; each recording has a corresponding digitally reproduced sibling. The approximations were build using mostly FM synthesis: Madrona Labs' Aalto and Ableton Live's Operator, as well as limited applications of granular synthesis from Madrona Labs' Kaivo.
The digitally reproduced recording aimed to capture the textures, dynamics, forms and space of the filed recordings; they abduct the listener away from the organic site of Vogelsang into its deconstructed, flattened and repackaged future: only fleeting, imperfect, synthesized memories of the rich, dark, multifaceted history of the site have been left behind.
Multiple recordings are able to be layered and listened to at once, instantly transporting the listener to different locations in space and time.
The sound can be paused by again turning the toggle to the off position; playback will resume from the paused position if the toggle is re-engaged. All the sounds can also be completely silenced and reset by interacting with the "button" in the top left of the interface.
A master Volume slider is contained on the instruction screen.
To get the file onto your device (phone or tablet, IOS or Android) please follow the instructions here: http://danieliglesia.com/mobmuplat/doc/index.htm only the first section and "Loading it onto your Device" are relevant. if you have and Iphone and Mac airdrop can also be used to transfer the files onto your device.