What does a street sound like? In this uni course about urban audio-visual experiments I decided to lay my focus on used chewing gum in its various places in town. I walked around Düsseldorf, exploring various streets. There's the Heinrich-Heine-Allee, a bustling night street with loads of restaurants and nightlife, the Königsallee (one of the most prestigious and posh streets with lots of high-end boutiques), and many more. My idea was to create one unique melody per street that would highlight what's usually overlooked. How does chewing gum usage differ per street?
After collecting everything I needed, I highlighted where people spat out their chewing gum, mapping spots that you'd ignore otherwise. Then I looked for melodic variations, interesting notes and started writing out a melody to play.
The lighter grey area above represents the main tune, the black splotches are accompaniment, to support the melody. I decided to play this melody on my harp. After all, this is going to be a fancy symphony, or a gumphony, so to say! Below there's a video attached of me playing one of the streets' melodies. I also put in some sounds I made with chewing gum itself: I added sounds of unwrapping, chewing the gum itself, clicking them together, and blowing bubbles.
Below you'll find the compilations of "Chewing Gum Sounds" I created for this gumphony.
