"Sound Cake, Sound Cabbage, Sound Banana, Sound Apple, U7"
On the occasion of the celebration of 650 years Neukölln the ohrenhoch-Kids undertake field recording excursions with the tape across the pulsating Berlin-Neukölln once a week in 2010. They stage and install these Neukölln tape rambles at ohrenhoch in three parts ('soundmap', see below).
They presented the first part at the festival '48 Stunden Neukölln' and the two following Sundays.
The presentation 'SOUND CAKE. SOUND CABBAGE. SOUND BANANA. SOUND APPLE. U7.' by the ohrenhoch-Kids is realised and conceived for the art and culture festival '48 Stunden Neukölln' 2010.
The ohrenhoch-Kids meet at ohrenhoch every Wednesday for an hour.
The ohrenhoch-Kids are a group that got together in 2008. The first presentation "The Journey through the Electric Noise Galaxies" was an audio play, "Nightdripsdragon" a Noise Box, "die ohronauten" a live performance, 2009 "Earthworm City and Mole Garden" an object and a Noise Garden Installation, "ohrenhoch is NOCTURNAL" a Noise Space Installation.
The work of the ohrenhoch-Kids is an attempt for a different dealing with electronic or electroacoustic music.
The theme and implementation are open and practice-oriented.
The Sound Cake is composed of sound recordings from the "Neukölln Arcaden" shopping centre.
The layers of the cake correspond to the floors of the "Neukölln Arcaden".
"Welcome to shopping, fun and recreational enjoyment in the middle of the county. On 5 floors a colourful world of experience with trading, catering, services, cinema, fitness, public library, culture and communication awaits you..."
The idea came from the ohrenhoch-Kids, namely to record a "babble" in a multilayer way, in the context of the project 'soundmaps' (see below).
Basement, ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd floor, 3rd floor, and the layer on top of the cake is the library.
The "Neukölln Arcaden" comprises five floors. The ohrenhoch-Kids added another cake layer - the library.
The audio recordings were made in the 'Neukölln Arcaden' outside the stores, on the several floors with the people circulating, "a babble" amongst shopping noises of many diverse people who with their mobile phones and shopping carts rush past through the halls, at this meeting point in Neukölln where diverse nations, cultures, "a rich cluster" gather. A polyphony of languages, a contemporary document of the multicultural vibrancy of Neukölln in 2010.
"soundmaps" route – on their way with 2 sound recorders with microphone, 2 headphones and 2 boompoles, a short and a long one.
Sound-space-installation Underground "U7":Besides the Sound Cake, Sound Banana and Sound Apple which are in the ohrenhoch-shopwindow-space, the ohrenhoch-Kids present the Sound-space-installation Underground "U7" in the ohrenhoch basement – from the basement stairs to the corridor.
– Narrow oblong cellar space: Inside U7 train, route Rathaus Neukölln – Neukölln / back: Neukölln – Hermannplatz.
Sound Banana = The way from 'ohrenhoch, der Geräuschladen' Weichselstrasse 49 to the 'Neukölln Arcaden' in Karl-Marx-Strasse.
soundmap is a work in progress project throughout the year 2010 which the ohrenhoch-Kids wished, discussed and decided among each other.
In the foreground of this project is the careful listening, the cognition that there are certain, distinctive, unrecallable moments, each a singularity.
Soundmap by the ohrenhoch-Kids consists in collecting sound recordings – the noises in the streets, squares, parks and in buildings – in the North of Neukölln with two mobile sound recorders with microphones, screwed onto a short and a long boompole.
These Field Recordings are an attempt, an experiment to record the environment and the everyday life in a big town, and to turn the recordings into different ways of presentation.
Another aspect of the project is about expressing the urbanity also in a funny and playful way, through objects or sound installations with the acoustic sounds.
Soundmaps actually consists of the collecting of routes that have been agreed by the ohrenhoch-Kids beforehand, rambles that we undertake with the two mobile sound recorders, two boompoles and two headphones.
Soundmaps is also a project to leave "open" the handling of the field recording rambles – how to handle the recorded sound material, how to evaluate it, change it and finally put it in a public context. Soundmaps is a flexible project through and through, a project which is not approached theoretically but which is practice-oriented explicitly. "The way is the goal."
The sounds surrounding us are extremely present, but our sensations concerning the (surrounding) sounds are virtually no issue. Unfortunately, the sounds have a subordinate significance to the present. I am referring to the fact that the everyday sounds are acting upon us incessantly, but only in the last phase, when we are a nervous wreck so to say, they become an issue.
Identities, cultures, uncountable nations in a city or a neighbourhood send off in a manifold manner a certain audible ambience and atmosphere.
Everyday sounds are important contemporary witnesses causing and revealing something – for instance the importance of a change. Sounds reflect a prevailing mood in our pluralistic society which is still completely underestimated and regrettably not a cultural historical political issue. For example the complexity of a multicultural society documents in Neukölln specifically that a climate oscillates, namely a melting pot, that a chaos in the positive sense: a "megapolyphonic" "fat cluster" is blowing through the streets, and should actually affect us positively. This impression evokes in us a new behaviour that will certainly open up a future society, forms of societies, and changes.