Soundwalk in Granada

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Walking piece details

This sound piece is the result of an experimental work carried out in the city of Granada (Spain) in February 2020 by Laura Apolonio and Mar Garrido, just before the lockdown due to the Covid 19 pandemic. The streets were still full of tourists and no one was afraid of physical proximity. The recorded sounds are brimming with an affectivity that now seems distant in time.
The work is part of the Granada Sound Mapping Project which offers, in a series of 6 eBooks, a guide to sound walks to discover new, less stereotyped aspects of a city as touristy as Granada, showing the many suggestive sounds it has in its daily life that we do not normally hear. From natural sounds (birds, fountains, rivers…), to human sounds (voices, foreign languages, laughter…), to music (street artists, flamenco guitars,…), to the sounds of religious rites (bells, Muslim muezzins, religious songs, …), to the peculiarity of the sounds of some objects (suitcases, brooms of the sweepers, bicycles, …).
Our ultimate aim is to rescue the sense of hearing as opposed to the predominance of sight, showing how listening to sound broadens our aesthetic sensitivity. This innovative aesthetic of listening is an invitation to passers-by to stop for a moment and listen to “the extraordinary in the ordinary”, in George Perec’s words, to become aware of the richness of an invisible world that runs parallel to our hurried life and is always within our reach, even though we often do not perceive it.