Publication : The Sound Development City expedition
Sound Development City was initiated in 2012 by Sound Development with the aim of providing creative freedom to artists working in various disciplines.
Every year in late summer, Sound Development City sends ten artists on a three-week-long expedition between two European cities. During the expedition, artists can work on individual projects, explore new cities, cultures, and different living environments, and establish new connections.
Sound Development City is an adventure, a place for experimentation, and a research trip. It seeks to encourage the search for individual means of expression, provide new sources of inspiration within unfamiliar settings, and create opportunities for artists to exchange and collaborate.
Mind the Gap! is thematic focus of Sound Development City’s expedition in 2014.
The gap, it seems, is everywhere: between here and there, me and you, yesterday and today, between Rigaand Helsinki. It can cleave and unite; one either trips over or is inclined to leap. In fact these gaps carve out a proverbial space that can be used creatively and become a new artistic reality.
On that note, Mind the Gap! should be understood as an invitation to look inward and sharpen the senses to subtle in-between states, recognize ruptures, transitions and no-man’s-land.
The Sound Development City expedition was documented in several ways. The “Gap Station”, an in-house radio station, broadcasted online 24/7 from the radio bus. It offered a hetero- geneous collage of sound works by participating artist as well as content produced during the expedition, such as recorded performances, field recordings or daily interviews with the artists, which focused on their work and artistic positions.
A logbook website allowed the artists and the Sound Development City team to post texts, thoughts, images, sketches, snippets, sound pieces and videos onto a collective expedition diary. This collaborative expedition logbook allowed an interested audience to experience the expedition and follow the progression of projects. And last but not least, the expedition group was accompanied by an expedition writer, who documented and reflected on the on-going processes, the journey itself and the participants’ experiences. The content found in the following pages comes mostly from these sources, while certain reflections were added in retrospect.
