Interstitial Sound

“Prat, prat, prat.” – A frog at El Prat de Llobregat

Interstitial Space is a research project that focuses on the differences between the natural world and the urban world. It captures existing reality through sound recordings made at the intersection of the two, and tries to bring out current issues in field recording and soundscape practice. The aim is to build a sound archive of these ever-changing areas and to produce sound and graphic documentation of landscapes that are, in many cases, zones of strong contrast and a reflection of the changes taking place at the social, political and economic levels.

Thresholds and borders are impossible places, full of new possibilities: new landscapes, new blank pages on which to imagine new ways of listening. From this iconoclastic view of the Romantic, bucolic landscape, the project presents a series of recordings made in the natural spaces around the Llobregat Delta and Barcelona International Airport, both in El Prat de Llobregat, unquestionably one of the areas with the sharpest biological and urban contrasts around Barcelona.

Blind Cinema, the sound documentary that came out of the project, explores the dark areas of the soundscape, where those social, political and economic changes find expression. It focuses on ambivalent landscapes, borderlands and marginal spaces with differing sound qualities, and questions the stereotypes of the soundscape. This podcast is a stereo radio version of the original eight-channel piece produced for the public premiere, in 2014, of the Phonos grant awarded in 2012. The presentation mixed concert, installation and sound documentary, and favoured clairvoyance in confusion.

Performances

Phonos Foundation Auditorium, Barcelona (2014) – premiere as a blind film, with eight-channel sound

Broadcasts

Radio Web Macba (2017) – stereo podcast

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Mª José Albaladejo, Marta Ardiaca, Elena Asensio, Miguel Ayesa, José Manuel Berenguer, Sonia Ciriza, Sonia Espí, Pau Estevan, María Fusté, Andrés Lewin, Lluís Nacenta, Rafa Milán, Albert Montori, Xavi Santaefuemia, Blanca Rego, Luca Rullo and Miguel Soria.