Obsolete Sounds is the biggest ever collection of the obsolete and disappearing sounds of the world, covering everything from dusty VHS cassettes, vintage video games and old mobile phones to melting glacier ice and endangered traditional songcraft.
The interactive online exhibition features more than 150 obsolete and endangered sounds and can be explored in full here.
The project documents not just the much-missed sounds that evoke memories from the past, but also highlights some that we’re in danger of losing. It aims to draw attention to the world’s disappearing soundscapes, and what we can do to preserve and save socially and culturally important sounds for future generations.
The collection includes:
– Obsolete home entertainment such as VHS tapes, Walkman cassette players, video games consoles and film projectors
– Vintage military equipment like World War II codebreaking machines, warplanes and air raid sirens
– The evocative sounds of old typewriters, Teletype machines and printing presses
– The world of transport – steam trains, vintage racing cars, 100-year-old farm equipment and London Underground C-stock
– Domestic appliances from the past including hand mixers, Bakelite switches, fans, shavers and coffee grinders
– Reflections on the disappearing sounds of the natural world, industrial processes and cultural traditions
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Stuart Fowkes, founder of Cities and Memory, said:
“The sounds of the world are changing faster now than at any stage in human history and the lifespan of sounds is shorter in 2022 than it’s ever been before – we’re seeing sounds that only came into existence a few years ago already disappearing.
“Obsolete Sounds is designed to draw attention to the world’s disappearing soundscapes, to highlight those sounds that are worth preserving because they form part of our collective cultural heritage – and to help us think about how to save those sounds before it’s too late.”
Taking the world of disappearing sounds to an entirely different place, each recording has also been reshaped and reimagined as a creative composition by more than 150 musicians and sound artists from all over the world, in turn reflecting on the memories and feelings those sounds evoke as they think back to hearing them throughout their lives.
Obsolete Sounds is the latest project from Cities and Memory, one of the world’s biggest sound projects, which has more than 5,000 sounds covering more than 100 countries and territories, and more than 1,000 worldwide contributing artists, with the aim of remixing the world, one sound at a time. Previous global Cities and Memory projects have included #StayHomeSounds (a global mapping of the sounds of the Covid-19 lockdowns), Protest and Politics (the biggest ever collection of the sounds of protest) and Sacred Spaces, the first global survey of the sounds of churches, temples, prayer and worship.
