From 2012 – 2016, Sound Development City invited artists from all over the world to join a three-week expedition through two or three cities in or near Europe. Every year in late summer, new cities were visited by new participants as the travelling artist residency set up temporary headquarters and studios in places like Helsinki, Belgrade, London and Athens. Heller Enterprises, producing the residency, realised early on that a print documentation wouldn't be enough to capture the eclectic, experimental and dynamic nature of the project, and in late 2012 they asked us to create a "something online" to funnel all the material and impressions gathered during the trips. Through intense discussions and workshops, we arrived at a system allowing for multiple parallel and overlapping narratives, both through a CMS, and by automatically gathering material from the artists' already active social media accounts, such as Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Facebook and more. This allowed for a minimum-effort contribution by the participants, and highly curated quality content from the organisers, tying it all together. We also arrived at the conclusion that there would be no conclusion to arrive to. Heller Ent. and the funding body – Sound Development City – set aside a dedicated pot of gold every year for the evolution of both the print publication (created by Hubertus Design) and the website. This fact, paired with incredible collaboration the producers resulted in one of the most alive, wild and creatively free A/Z projects to date.
Client: Sound Development
In collboration with: Heller Enterprises
Project Link: sound-development-city.com (latest Version)
