The Constellation app is now live! You can start creating your own scores for Festival City. These patterns and collections of sounds will contribute to the next stage of the project. Make sure you keep on submitting your sounds as next Edinburgh Soundscapes will be launching in June and July.
Tag: New Music
Festival City – Get involved!
In this introductory video, composer Tod Machover explains how you can collaborate on creating his new symphonic work. Here’s all you need to do:
- Sign up to receive e-alerts about the latest collaborative activities.
- Post a comment about your most evocative memories and impressions of Edinburgh. Or share an audio recording via the project’s SoundCloud account.
- Over the coming months, pieces of new music will be debuted here. Use our special apps to re-shape these sounds to your liking and share them back.
The Roots of “Festival City”
The idea behind “Festival City” — of inviting a community to collaborate on composing a musical work — developed over many years of musical and technological exploration at the M.I.T. Media Lab, as explained in this article in the Guardian. Composer Tod Machover describes his hopes for “Festival City”:
…he envisages it as a collaboration with anyone who loves the Scottish capital. The work will, he hopes, be a kind of “tone poem” that “feels and sounds like the city and its festivals”. Anyone interested can submit a recording, or simply suggest a particular sound that they associate with the city. Machover adds, somewhat darkly, “It may be hard to imagine avoiding bagpipes completely.” (GuyFromPortugal has already submitted a snippet entitled “The sounds of constant wind”.) From early June, via an app, there will also be the chance for members of the public to manipulate and alter the weight, complexity and texture of melodies composed by Machover, who will use the best in the final piece.
Read the full article here.
Get started! Send in your sounds of Edinburgh!
Where do you find the music in your life? The Edinburgh International Festival invites you to contribute sounds of Edinburgh and of the renowned festival that is held there every summer:
What is the first sound you hear in the morning? What is your favourite Festival memory? What does your street sound like? Do you regularly pass a busker? Do you enjoy the sound of crowded foyers or standing ovations? Climb Arthur’s Seat or take a trip down Portobello Prom? We are inviting people to record or describe these sounds and to send them in to provide composer Tod Machover with the basis of a creative work which he will then continue to develop through to the beginning of July.
If you have a smartphone, all you have to do is capture the sound and upload them to Soundcloud and add it to the Festival’s Soundcloud account. It will show up in the player below. Invite your friends to comment, and start a conversation! Details here.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/3992168″ height=”200″ iframe=”true” /]