The Sounds of London
by
UNPLUCKED &
Pablo A. Padilla Jargstorf
A journey through the textures of sound of five of London’s most iconic landscapes.
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Piccadilly - Leicester
Southbank
Dalston
Portobello
Covent Garden
The Sounds of London
We all lead busy lives, running between things, meeting people in different locations, moving from one neighbourhood to another. And most of the time, we only perceive a fraction of what actually makes those spaces what they are. We are still guided by one of our senses, vision, as the main navigator of our environments, with smell and hearing following behind.
Sounds are indeed a constant presence in our life, but have you ever wondered what the sounds that surround you can actually look like? What sort of rich, voluminous landscapes they build? As the curious creatures that we are, we have explored some of these landscapes in more depth, starting with our own neighbourhoods, the streets of London.
SOUNDS OF LONDON is a collaboration between Unplucked and Pablo Padilla Jargstorf, architect, visual/sound artist, and composer. Through this collection, we invite you to immerse yourself in 5 of London’s most iconic landscapes, a vehicle to visualise the textures and volumes of the sounds and noises that are steady companions to our urban existence.
Unplucked brings you inspiring, useful, and ethically produced objects for the home. We channel designs commissioned from talented artists and designers into the production of interior furnishings. All designs are credited, increasing the visibility of the artist and designer through a different medium. And all products are manufactured, at small and medium scale, in the UK. The aim is to set in motion what is in effect an ecosystem, where all the components are supported by principles of sustainable production. Supporting good local design; supporting good local manufacturing. Welcome to our adventure!
About the Artwork
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Introduction to Sound Visualisation - How it works
Spectrograms are used to visualize sounds. A spectrogram is a 2d or 3d visual representation of the frequencies of sound as they vary with time. There are many types of spectrograms, but they normally look like this:
In a spectrogram one axis represents time while the other one shows the frequencies. The third parameter in a spectrogram is the amplitude of a specific frequency at a particular time. Amplitude is measured with a colour scale and also with height in a 3d visualization.
Five Walks Through London
'Sounds of London' is a series of visualisations of the field recordings of 20-minute walks around five separate areas of this city (Covent Garden, Dalston, Portobello, Piccadilly / Leicester Sq, and Southbank).
In all 5 visualisations, frequencies run from left (lower freqs) to right (higher freqs), while time goes from the top to the bottom.
UNPLUCKED MOSAICS
We like to consider Unplucked a collection of stories, boxes that once open transport you closer to one of those natural wonders we share our lives with. In the spirit of those cabinets of curiosities treasured by so many in the past.
All these stories are unique in themselves, and at the same time share a common place and a connecting thread.
To reflect that, UNPLUCKED brings you our own MOSAICS. Like looking through the lens of an observation instrument, before focusing on a particular corner of our world. Encapsulating both our curiosity to discover and our eagerness to collect.
Generated from each one of our collections, but all sharing a deep connection, MOSAICS distill some of the essence of UNPLUCKED.
