About the project
‘Almost Sound Diary’ is a web-based archive that gathers a series of experiences from a two-month residency (May to mid July 2013) with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil.
The project explores the intimate connection between daily life and sound by inviting people I met while in Rio to collaboratively instigate different forms of listening and recording. Through this process I both encounter and articulate place.
Each sound recording is directly connected to the experience of the moment when one presses rec. However, as exciting as the moment might seem at the time, the audio recording only captures part of the experience. In order to create a more detailed and nuanced perspective, I wove a narrative that structured each experience by conveying a dialogue between image, text and sound.
The project inadvertently framed a special period in Brazil and Rio de Janeiro enhancing all its contrasts: such a strong series of protests hadn’t happened since the fall of the dictatorship in 1985.
About the residency
The research residency was supervised by Rodrigo Cicchelli Velloso and Samuel Araújo and funded by Santander Mobility Scholarship.
One of the aims of the residency was to try to know the city, and consequently, have a wider set of tools to prepare the outlines for a large-scale collaborative project to be developed and presented in Rio de Janeiro in 2014. This larger project, initiated by Pedro Rebelo, Tullis Rennie and myself, will be designed in collaboration with Musicultura Group based in Complexo da Maré; one of the largest groups of favelas in Rio.
Similar to the Sounds of the City project developed in Belfast (Northern Ireland), this project intends to explore the relationship between sound and everyday life through a participative and collaborative experience.
As Tullis and I were in Rio de Janeiro for roughly the same time frame, we decided to embark together on listening and recording as a way to get to know the city. You can retrace some of my steps and journey through this website. To complement the experience, you can find some of Tullis’s recordings at If Walls Had Ears.
A quick note about me
‘Almost Sound Diary’ is a project by Matilde Meireles, a sound artist exploring the conceptual and creative crossover between sound and visual arts encompassing areas such as site-specificity, field recording and design.