Photo: Mediamatic, Halil Turaçtemur
The DOEN Foundation recently awarded a grant to the project 'The Sound of the Netherlands', in which the archival sound collection of the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision will be published online and will be complemented by contemporary sound recordings. To this end, the public will be asked to participate and collaborate on the project.
The collection of Sound & Vision contains about 2,000 sound recordings that encompasses a time frame which begins in the '50s and runs up until the ‘90s. It includes sounds that range from horse-drawn streetcars and street vendors to the noises of the industrial age. Stichting Nederland Kennisland [Netherlands Knowledgeland Foundation] will be coordinating the project. Sound & Vision manages a unique collection of sounds that by now have disappeared. It testifies how the Netherlands must have sounded throughout the years. With this project, the collection will be published online and will become accessible for consultation and reuse under a Creative Commons license.
Uniting sounds from the past and the present
Within the project a map interface will be realized, to which the historical sound picture of the Netherlands will be mapped. Besides the interface, a mobile application will enable users to add contemporary sounds to the archive. Digitizing and providing access to the sound archive creates a great overview of how the tones and timbre of the Netherlands have changed in the course of time, which has a high level of interest for - amongst others - historians and researchers on the topics of the social and technological significance of sounds. The main purpose of opening up the sound archives online is to encourage active participation of a broad audience. Professionals and sound designers, media artists, producers and other interested parties can create, produce and upload new creations based on this archive. It also offers visitors the opportunity to add sounds and/or add metadata ("social tagging") to the collection.
For reuse, it is important that the collections are well described, which makes them more searchable ánd findable. To improve these descriptions, cooperation with research partners De Auditieve Dienst [The Auditory Department], STEIM and the Faculty of Arts and Music Technology at the HKU [Utrecht School of the Arts] has been set up. The project Het geluid van Nederland is supported by the DOEN Foundation. The archive materials have been digitized as part of the digitization programme Images for the Future.
Links
- Mediamatic lab: Een breder en scherper plan dankzij DOEN clinic [NL]
- Beelden voor de Toekomst: Online geluidenarchief brengt heden en verleden samen [NL]