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Oct 09, 2022, 07:26 PM
"What grabbed me about the original recording was a section that reminded me of a clock and although the piece is about the well-being and sustainability of cities, we can’t escape the fact that from an ecological point of view, the clock is ticking – hence the use of that part of the original field recording.
"I wrote over 8 sketches for this, that ranged from sci-fi Metropolis style pieces to just field recordings and I found nothing fitted. So, I went back to the start and though what is a city? It’s an enclave, it is different things to different people at different times but for all that, all that it could and should be, for a lot of people it is just…. Home.
"In the final piece I used elements, sounds and music to try and represent organic elements of cites for an individual whist as part of a harmonious landscape. To be honest I don’t feel I addressed all the issues of sustainability or well-being, I think in that I failed even though I called on elements of what they should be reflected musically and in the field recordings, for all the notions of what a future city should be, without humans it is just a shell."
Amsterdam pedestrian crossing reimagined by Rob Knight.
IMAGE: Steven Lek, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Part of the Well-Being Cities project, a unique collaboration between Cities and Memory and C40, a global network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis. The project was originally presented at the C40 Cities conference in Buenos Aires in 2022. Explore Well-Being Cities in full at https://citiesandmemory.com/wellbeing-cities/
"I wrote over 8 sketches for this, that ranged from sci-fi Metropolis style pieces to just field recordings and I found nothing fitted. So, I went back to the start and though what is a city? It’s an enclave, it is different things to different people at different times but for all that, all that it could and should be, for a lot of people it is just…. Home.
"In the final piece I used elements, sounds and music to try and represent organic elements of cites for an individual whist as part of a harmonious landscape. To be honest I don’t feel I addressed all the issues of sustainability or well-being, I think in that I failed even though I called on elements of what they should be reflected musically and in the field recordings, for all the notions of what a future city should be, without humans it is just a shell."
Amsterdam pedestrian crossing reimagined by Rob Knight.
IMAGE: Steven Lek, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Part of the Well-Being Cities project, a unique collaboration between Cities and Memory and C40, a global network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis. The project was originally presented at the C40 Cities conference in Buenos Aires in 2022. Explore Well-Being Cities in full at https://citiesandmemory.com/wellbeing-cities/