Projects and cases

See samples of previous summer school project work

Projects and presentations

Every year, we choose a different theme to frame our exploration of the soundscapes in and around Struer, and to target wicked problems from new perspectives.

Scroll down to see and hear a few examples of project work, prototypes and presentations from the previous years.

You can also listen to a wide range of projects on Sound Cloud.

Breathing Herbarium (2022)

Breathing Herbarium

In the 2022 edition of the Sounding City Summer School, the students researched how residents in urban quarters, urban wilding environments and the landscapes surrounding the city, may interact with and through soundscapes and sonic interventions and become aware of sustainable cohabitation with the more-than-human life.

The title Breathing Herbarium points out that every small entity needs a position, a place and a link to function in the eco-system.

A sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. What will happen if we listen with the environment at the allotments at Fjordglimt at Vralden in Struer? Is it possible to make a sonification of everything breathing at the allotments.

The audio aspect of Breathing Herbarium is a collection of recordings made at the allotments of Fjordglimt, at Vrallen in Struer. You hear the voices of people tending to their gardens and describing the concept of breathing. Breathing is something that we all do, but perhaps rarely think about in detail. In the background, you will hear rain, the drawing of breath, a robotic lawn mower, and a dog sniffing. Repetitions of certain words and sounds create a poetic expression that tells a story of hidden connections between people, flowers, and the Earth.

The Herbarium consists of flowers, plants, and strains of grass, either donated or gathered from Fjordglimt and the area surrounding Sound Art Lab in Struer.

Breathing Herbarium is about gathering and arranging different materials in unexpected ways. From this gathering, new meanings between language, plants, and Earth emerge.

Listen to Breathing Herbarium at Soundcloud.

Sonic Mirroring (2022)

Sonic Mirroring

Working with the "The Harbour" as a theme, the team worked with the following:

Design Question: How do soundscapes affect our experience/perception of a specific area? How can we connect the contrasting areas in Struer and aim for a safer, more active, and attractive inner harbor in Struer?
Challenge: One challenge of the inner harbor area is a lack of safe infrastructures and spaces for cyclists and pedestrians. Therefore, we changed our design to focus more on connecting areas and added lightning to the installation concept to create a feeling of safety.
Design Concept: Sonic Mirroring

The Sound-Mirror Bench has a reference to acoustic mirrors, a sound technology formerly used in wartime to ‘scan’ for incoming flights. The Sound-Mirror Bench combines a bench with an acoustic mirror – one such installation will be placed at a small tip in the inner harbor, and another next to the beach area at Bremdal. You may sit in front of the acoustic mirror, look across the harbor and the bay, and listen to a sound scape mirrored to you. The sound-mirror bench will be possible to always visit. The location of the bench is at the first part of the industrial harbor but can be placed in another area where you have close access to the bay. The other bench at Bremdal beach, faces the bench at the harbor front directly. By integrating light in at the benches, we make the design attractive to visit at night or after sunset.

Benefits to promise

a sonic experience with a visual add-on which creates a bearing line across harbor and fjord, connecting locations by sound
awareness of the locations of Struer – the different parts of the city may seem unfamiliar to some inhabitants, but can be demystified through listening

Listen to Sonic Mirroring at Soundcloud:

Sortestien (2023)

The sonic ecology of "Sortesti"

A pathway which is over a hundred years old, wedged between an area of houses and a strip of land owned by the national track system which goes relatively unmanaged. Benches covered in grafitti, trains screeching by. What’s worth to stop and listen to here? According to me, the whole path is a magical place full of plants, sounds, and images that catch my attention. I want to share my experience with you. In our 3 week programme, we’ve been introduced to some core texts from the 1970’s about sound studies, from which I have drawn inspiration for both my theme and approach. First off, a key text describes a theory of sound in terms borrowed from how we speak about nature, such as landscapes, ‘soundscapes’, or ‘sound ecologies’.

Therefore, I have both listened to the pathway and treated it as a genuine ecosystem in which sound plays a part. Secondly, several of the texts we read work with attention and presence through listening, such as going for a walk with a focus on the sound of your surroundings. This gives a whole different way of experiencing a place, and feel yourself in those surroundings. I thought that these thoughts — of distracted minds which don’t sense their surroundings — are increasingly relevant now compared to when they were written. I have been present at the pathway in many ways; hastily making my way through stormy rain and wind, slowly walking with the microphone listening for sounds, biking in the sun with jars of blackberries clinking in my bike basket. All the mornings, afternoons, hours I have spent there have informed my experience of this pathway as a very special place. When I stood there on the first day, looking around, I got the thought that the world was humming, and I wanted to join in. Not just observe, but become part of. The sound piece is a result of all of this and more.

Listen to the sonic ecology of "Sortesti" at Soundcloud.