Poli[s]ound is a multi-channel sound mapping of the urban soundscape that unfolds everyday chatter, conversations and noises into an engaging and immersive sound installation. This project allows urban dwellers to record on-site their sounds and messages that represent various locations or qualities of the city, and then walk around the installation to experience their own voices as they blend and contribute to the general soundscape, thus adding to the communal memory of the urban everyday activities. This installation therefore becomes a symbolic speaker corner, a hacker radio, an activist outlet, and a temporary means of communication that gets distributed in the urban environment through space and time.

The installation is composed of a portable setup that is easily replicated in different locations and settings. The system is split into two main parts: the recording ‘station’, which functions as the optionally-moderated broadcasting station, where people get to record their voices and messages. The second component of the system is the distributed, multi-channel sound installation that weaves the recorded sounds in the already existing soundscape that decays and renews itself as new input is broadcasted into the system.

Collaborator: Nina Bouchard