WHAT IS THE MAIN IDEA OF THE PROJECT AND WHO IS THE TARGET GROUP?

Two boats simultaneously navigated upstream on the Rhine and Danube rivers from the North Sea and the Black Sea to meet in Strasbourg.

The European Sound Delta project aims to outline a new and singular cartography of Europe. Along the journey, the characteristic elements of each town and city's sound identity was recordered and archived, to be used subsequently in a creative piece. The artists collected audio fragments of diverse intrinsic quality: in the same way that a local language or music can express a cultural identity, a sound ambiance contained traces of its context and background. This sound geography is organised according to three topics:

• The soundscapes (sonic "landmarks" of a territory)
• The Music-City (a soundscape and resonating city, light melodies picked up by artists, the musicality of languages and dialects...)
• The social link established by each river (testimonies, recordings carried out along the river)

WHAT DOES THE PROJECT INCLUDE?

On board and in each of the cities visited, 30 international artists were invited to record their sound environment (field recordings, interviews, electromagnetic and sub-aquatic spheres...) and to use the shared sound materials to compose pieces and produce live concerts along the itinerary.

At the end of this trip, a floating listening lounge is unfolding as an Archipelago of creations: embarked on a specially fitted sightseeing boat (under the boat transparent 'bubble' roof: a 3,000 Watt, quadraphonic sound system!), one discovers there the sound pieces created on board by the residents but also the imaginary audio landscapes from some ten guest composers. These seven cruises along the Strasbourg canals were punctuated by a live performance taking place in a different background each time. At the same time, on the "Nuits Electroniques de l'Ososphère" site, the Mirror Ball installation displayed visual documentation of the two parallel journeys...

Both studio-boats navigated upstream on the Rhine and Danube rivers, stopping in various urban areas.

These stages enabled the local inhabitants to listen to the production of field-based 'sound objects' created beforehand: sound works, contextual audio fragments, documentaries, radio programmes.

Two Studio-Boats
The artists used these sounds as part of their compositions or their interventions. The studios installed on the barges acted as a kind of lab, the locus for transformation of this sound material. The small digital editing stations facilitated the production of objects later broadcast via a radio or presented in the various events organised in the stopover-cities. These studios were also the training spaces for the creative radio workshops.