Cross flow

"For centuries, the river Lech has played an integral part in the city of Augsburg’s water management system, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage. In this system, a network of canals carries water from the Lech into the city while a network of streams carries spring water from the forest south of Augsburg into the city for drinking. While the clear spring water is potable, the Lech water, carrying sediments, is more suited to industrial uses (watermills, power generation etc.). In order not to mix the different types of water, the engineers devised a series of culverts or siphons (Düker in German) where underground streams can cross each other without mixing their water. 

"This (and the fact that in the original field recording from the Flow project, the water from the Lech is completely inaudible because masked entirely by human-made sound) inspired the structure of this piece, which is based, both in time and in space, around the contrast of clear vs sedimentary, natural vs cultural: it starts with an unprocessed hydrophone recording we made in one of the local streams – water as the source of all life – , then introduces birdsong as a symbol of a natural landscape (which we also recorded locally near the streams in question), which then gives way to the sound of human labour, such as digging a canal (digging into mud.wav by Stefan21100190 -- https://freesound.org/s/593113/ -- License: Creative Commons 0). 

"This human intervention opens the main part of the piece, a long crossfade of our untreated (‚clear‘) and musically processed (‚sedimentary‘) hydrophone recordings. As these two flows of sound cross each other, they sonically represent the working of a Düker. In the final part of the piece, the gong-like sound of the processed recording fades into the very distinctly human-made sound of church bells. (Being based in Augsburg, we identified the recording location of field recording #22, near one of the canals which enter the city from the forest to its south, thanks to the characteristic sound of the bells of the church of St Ulrich and St Afra. For the long crossfade from the Düker sounds to the church bells, we made our own recording of the church bells). 

"As our sonic narrative follows the canals and streams through the southern forest northward into the city, the journey of the piece parallels that of the river Lech. The very last segment of the piece (church bells, voices, traffic) consists of the original Flow field recording #22 minus a few seconds at the end, but otherwise unedited. It ends with the sound of a car engine starting, which can be seen as a shorthand reference to human intervention in nature, which is also a central concern regarding the river Lech."

Section of the river Lech reimagined by KLONK. 

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Flow is a creative exploration telling the story of a river through the power of sound. The project is a collaboration between the University of Padova and the University of Würzburg, with support from Cities and Memory. Explore the full project at https://citiesandmemory.com/flow.