Istanbul Sound Diary

Abstract

This is an account of Sonic Postcards from Istanbul, a sound project conducted in Istanbul in April 2003, as part of the City of Sings project cityofsigns). The project explores, in an artistic context, the capacity of sound design to intervene at the conceptual fringes where the materiality of sound and semantics meet, and new possibilities of meaning emerge in the form of ambiguous, multi-layered sonic texts. These sonic texts, in turn, become the object of a semiological reflection about language, meanings and their various manifestations, between sound and other media. Working in combination with photography and text, this sound project explores the capacity of sound to mediate between self and self, self and others, people and places: through its own medium specificity (the richness of the human voice and the infinite possibilities of its acoustic and acousmatic re-presentation), its staging as performance—in an acoustically rich and significant location [the sound of architecture]—and as an art installation, in which sound remain the primary vehicle for communication and artistic expression.