A red button is blinking on the aerial Google map of Worcester, England, where the image of a large medieval-looking church is located. Once the button is clicked, we hear a lady with a lovely English accent say, “I’ll just go see if they’re in there….Barbara…?” followed by footsteps echoing down a marble hallway and up a few stairs. A door is opened and beautiful music spills out, and then a large choir begins singing perfect, uplifting strains of some heavenly hymn. After a few stops and starts, we realize we are listening in on the choir’s rehearsal session. Five minutes later, the session ends, and the singers chatter, gather their things, and leave. Once outside, the cathedral’s massive tower bell strikes 12.
That is the description of just one of the nearly 70,000 unedited audio recordings of everyday life available for listening on RADIO APOREE. This is 'reality radio' at its finest.
Invented in 2006 by Berlin-based artist and media technologist Udo Noll, the one-of-a-kind online radio station functions as a crowdsourced sound map of the entire world.
The free radio app allows users to search for audio recordings by location using a map or by type of sound (forest, children, street noise, etc.), filter their results by date or length of recording, or even play around mixing some of the audio streams.
Listeners can also upload their own field recordings to the collection. Dozens of new recordings are added every day.
The range of recordings of urban, rural, and natural sounds in the Radio Aporee collection is endlessly fascinating, and -- a word of caution -- listening in can become an addictive pastime. A recent random playlist of audio experiences included:
Being Inside a restroom on a flight to Barcelona
Children playing in Piazza San Marco in Venice
Jazz sax riffing on a street corner in New Orleans
Freight train approaching in a raging blizzard in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Unknown animal braying on an unknown street late at night in Cambodia
Auction of horse saddles in Moscow, Ontario
Musical saw performance by Moses Josiah at Atlantic Ave.-Pacific St. subway station, NYC
Neighbors arguing in a courtyard in Madrid
Sled dogs panting at the start of a race in Manitoba
Person brushing their teeth in the morning in a home on S. Lucas Street in Iowa City, Iowa
Crowd singing “La Joya del Pacifico” at the funeral wake of Jorge Montiel in Valparaiso, Chile
Each sound recording in the ever-growing collection conjures images and stories in the listener's imagination, in the best tradition of radio. “Audio gives a very rich experience of being somewhere at a very specific place, so you have a kind of landscape that opens,” Noll says.
Radio Aporee recordings are also dynamically uploaded to the Internet Archive.
Photos: (Header) Radio Aporee Founder Udo Noll/Mediateletipos.net; (gallery in order) Musical saw player Moses Josiah/Flickr; Freight train in blizzard/Railpictures.net; airline lavatory/Daily Mail; Funeral of Jorge Montiel/Soundcloud; Sled dogs/Corbis; Village in Cambodia/Envato Elements; Piazza San Marco, Venice/Envato Elements; Stephen Shellard, Worcester Chamber Choir Director/Worcester Cathedral (Michael Whitefoot/)JDA Media.
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