Sonic Heritage

Sonic Heritage is a project initiated by Cities and Memory, with the idea of preserving the ambient sounds of UNESCO World Heritage sites, as well as sounds that represent intangible heritage also protected by UNESCO. Two of my recordings were included in the collection, one from both categories: the ambient sound of Piazza San Pietro in the Vatican, and a recording of an Orthodox liturgy from the Church of St. Nicholas in Melenci, Serbia. Below is a copy of the text from the project’s website:

Sonic Heritage is the first collection of the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.The project presents the sounds of 270 UNESCO World Heritage sites and items of intangible heritage – all reimagined by artists from around the world to create a brand new way of experiencing these spaces. Sound is usually the poor relation when it comes to tourism – in our visually-dominated culture, everything seems to be about where you take the Instagram photo or the video clip for TikTok. As overtourism becomes a crisis for many cities around the world and Insta-tourism increases the pressure on tourist destinations and the focus on how things look, sound can help us to throw new light on these issues and how we might address them. Rarely does sound enter the equation when we think about tourism or what makes a place great – and this holds true for preservation too. There are no “blue plaque” schemes marking out sonic sites of interest, and even UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage lists serve sound poorly. In our view, this needs to change – so in this project we take a sonic tour to examine the role sound plays in these spaces deemed to be the world’s most culturally significant. We consider how sound affects our experience of new cultures and tourism, and why sound often assumes lesser importance when it comes to recognising and celebrating heritage. Sonic Heritage aims to address these fundamental questions:

What role does sound have to play in enriching our experience of the world’s most incredible places?

What are the soundscapes that accompany the world’s most culturally-important sites and spaces?

How should we identify, celebrate and preserve soundscapes around the world that are culturally or socially significant – before it’s too late?

While we acknowledge that no classification system or list can ever be perfect or complete, the UNESCO World Heritage list offers the most comprehensive and authoritative global overview of culturally-significant sites. This gives us a globally-recognised set of parameters for the spaces (and activities) of cultural, social and natural importance, upon which we can layer the depth and richness of sound to make Sonic Heritage a unique undertaking. This project is not affiliated or connected with UNESCO in any way – it simply uses the UNESCO classification system as a basis for establishing which sites, practices and activities we would examine.

 

https://citiesandmemory.com/heritage/

Mikroritmovi

Mikroritmovi is a silent documentary about collectors and their collections. It was made as a part of my doctoral project that had 'The sound of a modern silent film' for a subject, at Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad. Collectors are not the main characters, but the objects that are in their collections, from a sound perspective. Electrical and mechanical sounds that are produced while using the objects or maintaining and restoring, show the collector's passion from a different perspective, untypical for a documentary film, and together synthesize into a music.

This is the first time I was a director, editor and a producer of a film, as well as a sound recordist, sound designer and composer, but that is something I do every week.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20198398/

The film was a part of following film festivals:

1. Prokuplje Film Festival ProFiFest - Prokuplje, Serbia, September 2022
2. Serbest International Film Festival - Kishinev, Moldova, September 2022
3. Sound And Music Film Festival - Belgrade, Serbia, September 2022
4. APOX Film Festival - Veli Lošinj, Croatia, October 2022
5. The Triloka International Filmfare Awards - Coonoor, India, October 2022 - Best First Time Director award
6. KG Film Fest - Kragujevac, Serbia, November 2022
7. Festival Internacional de Cinema Escolar de Alvorada - Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, November 2022
8. Festival De Cine Infantil De Ciudad Guayana - Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, December 2022
9. 21114 Film Fest - Novi Sad, Serbia, December 2022
10. Festival du Film Étudiant de Québec - Québec, Canada, March 2023
11. Bifocal Film Festival - Philadelphia, USA, April 2023
12. ScenLab Bioskop - Novi Sad, Serbia, April 2023
13. Apertura Institute x TAB-LAB - Lisbon, Portugal, June 2023 - Honorable Mention
14. Expo Le FFEQ en prolongation - Québec, Canada, June 2023
15. Student World Impact Film Festival - Waldwick, USA, June 2023 - Nominated for the Best Documentary award
16. Lift-Off First-Time Filmmaker Sessions - London, UK, August 2023
17. The Hollywood Guerrilla Film Festival - Los Angeles, USA, September 2023
18. Live Soundtrack - Belgrade, Serbia, November 2023 - Nominee
19. Festival del Cinema di Cefalù - Palermo, Italy, September 2023
20. Daddy Deshmukh Film Festival Akola - Akola, India, December 2023
21. CineTech Future Fest - Opole, Poland, January 2024
22. First Frame Student Film Festival - Leicester, UK, April 2024 - Honorable Mention
23. Centrally Isolated Film Festival - Ithaca, USA, May 2024
24. WideScreen Film & Music Video Festival - Toronto, Canada, November 2024 - Honorable Mention
25. Kuala Lumpur International Film Academy Awards - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, April 2025

Xeno-Canto

I record sound effects every week. Most of the time I am outside, recording atmospheres, vehicles, various devices or animals. But sometimes animals, especially birds, end up in my recordings unplanned. Some of those sounds are quite good, they sound like I wanted to record those birds on purpose. So I decided to share them for free on my Free Sound Effects library and on Xeno-Canto. This is a large community and there are 699939 bird recordings at this moment! Amazing. Sounds I will post on Xeno-Canto are usually short but good quality. Longer recordings of birds that I record on purpose can be found on my Animals library. 

https://xeno-canto.org/contributor/MPUQUXTVIQ

More about Xeno-Canto:

www.xeno-canto.org ("Xeno-canto", "XC") is a website for sharing recordings of sounds of wild birds from all across the world. It was started in 2005 by Bob Planqué and Willem-Pier Vellinga. Xeno-canto is maintained by a team of 5 admins with the assistance of the xeno-canto community. Xeno-canto is run by the Xeno-canto foundation (or officially Stichting Xeno-canto voor natuurgeluiden) from the Netherlands.

Aims

Xeno-canto uses the ever evolving possibilities of the internet to popularise bird sound recording worldwide, improve accessibility of bird sounds, & increase knowledge of bird sounds. So, the recordings are here for enjoyment, education, conservation & science. More info: https://xeno-canto.org/about/xeno-canto

Luftrum Free Field Recordings

One of my field recordings became a part of Luftrum Free Field Recordings library. I recorded an suburban city atmosphere in my hometown. The idea of this library is to offer sounds of nature for free but with an option to donate a certain amount of money back to nature, since all donations are given to World Wide Fund For Nature. Below is the project description written by the project creator:

The field recordings in the playlist are free to download. There are 60 recordings and they serve as an excerpt of the full library which contains over 300 different field recordings and found sounds and is 22GB of size. The recordings are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0) which means you are free to share, copy, remix or otherwise transform the sounds for commercial or non-commercial use, on the terms that you give appropriate credit when using the recordings. You can also purchase a user license of the full 22GB library and gain access to over 300 recordings, including the recordings from the playlist. With a user license, the CC license is waived, so you do not need to give credit + you will receive a download link to the full library and your donation goes to WWF.

The full library is a collection of field recordings and found sounds from different places and locations, and include recordings of ocean waves, forest ambiences, busy streets, rain of different sorts, electronic circuitry, wind turbines, railway stations, gardenscapes, amazon rainforests, church bells, doors and room tones, dawn chorus, fireworks, water streams, trees, airport atmospheres, street markets, espresso machines, rain on leaves, different binaural recordings and experiments with hydrophones, coil pickups, LOM Geofon’s and other contact mics. Perfect as part of music, atmospheric background, sound effects, transformed to layered textures or otherwise.

What you cannot do with the recordings, is to re-release, re-license or otherwise share the library as a whole or in parts without altering the sounds first, we need the library to bring in some donations and please respect that. Not for us, but for the Arctic and the Amazonas. The library raised $2522 to WWF from October 2020 to October 2021.

https://www.luftrum.com/free-field-recordings/

Radio Aporee

My forest atmosphere recording recently became a part of the Radio Aporee collection. I bought a pair of FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones and went to a nearby Šumarice memorial park to record an atmosphere of a summer afternoon in forest. This is the first recording from Kragujevac on Aporee. Below is the project description written by the project creator:

the platform radio aporee is online since about 2000, the project radio aporee ::: maps has started 2006. it is a global soundmap dedicated to field recording, phonography and the art of listening. it connects sound recordings to its places of origin, in order to create a sonic cartography, publicly accessible as a collaborative project. It contains recordings from numerous urban, rural and natural environments, disclosing their complex shape and sonic conditions, as well as the different perceptions, practices and artistic perspectives of its many contributors. this makes it a valuable resource for art, education and research projects, and for your personal pleasure. in addition to aspects of collecting, archiving and sound-mapping, the radio aporee platform also invokes experiments at the boundaries of different media and public space. within this notion, radio means both a technology in transition and a narrative. it constitutes a field whose qualities are connectivity, contiguity and exchange. concepts of transmitter/ receiver and performer/ listener may become transparent and reversible.

https://aporee.org/maps/?loc=54242

Snippets.earth

Few days ago I (or the sound I recorded) became a part of Snippets.earth project. This is an experimental sound map project, comprising a collaborative map of the world filled with audio snippets of 30 seconds or less. I chose a sound effect of a spinning top from a Kinder Surprise chocolate egg toy. A friend of mine has a large collection of 4000+ Kinder toys. The sound is recorded for an upcoming experimental documentary film about collectors and their collection. I find it unique as a sound and as a part of my city since this is the biggest collection in this area, maybe in the whole country as well. Below is the project description written by the project creator:

Snippets.earth is a project which aims to answer the question; given a map of the world and 30 seconds to record audio, what will people create? In doing so, what can we learn about the relationship between place and sound and how has it has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic? And finally - does a stringent time limitation result in more engaging audio content, just as shortform video content continues to supplant traditional media? Snippets.earth is a final year Capstone project created by Eoin Blunnie, who studies English Literature and Music at Trinity College Dublin.

https://snippets.earth/

Until We Travel

This month I participated in a new field recording project called Until We Travel. It's goal is to analyze the sounds of traveling during the Covid-19 pandemic. The atmosphere was recorded on Friday morning at Autobuska stanica Kragujevac (main bus station). Friday is usually the busiest day of the week in Kragujevac, students are going home for the weekend, people travel for a short 3-day holiday, especially now in March for skiing. But, today is a day before the partial lockdown. On Saturday and Sunday only food stores, gas stations and pharmacies will work. Everything else will be closed - restaurants, mountain resorts, cinemas, shopping malls, schools... People have to stay at home. It will be a rainy weekend so no one travels for a nature trip neither. Only two buses were at the station, both with engines running on idle, which could be heard on recording. Few people are waiting for their buses, it is very quiet and scary. 10 years ago when I was studying in another city and traveling back home on Fridays for the weekend the situation was so much different. Endless lines of people waiting for their buses, noise, engine loudness, crowd talking. This atmosphere was recorded with Shure VP88 microphone and Sound Devices MixPre 6 II recorded, 32 bit 192 kHz. Below is the project description written by the project creator:

Almost a year has passed since the first global Covid-19 lockdowns, and the world of travel changed completely for us all. Until We Travel is the biggest ever showcase of the sounds of travel from all over the world. From the roar of aircraft engines to the hubbub of a busy railway station, the project functions as both a record of how much the sounds of our world have changed in the past 12 months, and a celebration of a potential return to a world in which we’re able to travel to new places and visit and connect with loved ones once again. We’re looking for artists all over the world to remix and reimagine the sounds of travel, using their own experiences, memories and emotional responses to travelling (especially in the current times) as inspiration. We have a database of travel sounds from all over the world ready to be recomposed, ranging from crowds gathering pre-pandemic in the world’s airports and train stations to the visceral, kinetic sounds of travel themselves – and sounds demonstrating how Covid-19 has changed how we travel in the present day. 

https://citiesandmemory.com/travel/