● Sound Map Europe [2:27]

During the planning phase I had a lot of funny and entertaining telephone conversations with people all over Europe. Very seldom someone refused or didn’t have the possibility to help. Everybody was very kind and cooperative. In the video you can hear a small portion of a talk with a Ukranian journalist.

But ‘Sound Map Europe’ was a total failure. After months of work I had succeeded in making appointments with 25 European journalists who would read the headlines from their local newspaper via telephone. At 9 p.m. on November 6th everybody was ready and in position. Each voice was connected to a separate loudspeaker placed in a grid at the main square of Copenhagen and thus forming an auditive map of Europe along with a special composed soundtrack by Jesper Løksa.

The sound installation flopped due to breakdown of the electronic devices so only half of the voices were heard by the audience and only some of them were captured by the multitrack recorders. What remains is hours of recordings on DAT tape with all the first negotiations, huge piles of fax sheets and the imagination of a gigantic project.

Niels Plenge and Jesper Løksa 1996, sound installation