We’re happy to introduce the jury for the third Sound Development City summer expedition. An international jury of five will select about 10 participants from the submitted applications. The project initiators Gabriel Bachmann (Sound Development) and Martin Heller (Heller Enterprises) will be joined by three internationally renowned experts in art and culture:

Mikko Fritze is the director of the Goethe Institute Finland.

Solvita Krese is the head of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art since 2000.

Esther Eppstein is an artist, curator and founder of the project messagesalon in Zürich.

The jury meeting will take place in Zurich in May. The selection criteria are artistic quality, originality and feasibility of realizing the proposed project. The jury’s decision will be made public no later than May 30th, 2014. Read more about our experts.

Interested artists can apply here. Application deadline is April 25, 2014.

Current news on Sound Development City can be found on Facebook, detailed information about the project in the project report or on the project website.

This year, Sound Development City is entering its third round. From August 28th until September 13th 2014, ten artists are sent on a three-week-long expedition to Riga and Helsinki. Sound Development City is an experimental format for cultural funding: the «studio on the road» offers artists a unique, interdisciplinary experimentation and research trip.

Sound Development City is looking for interventions, sound surveys, performances, experiments, moving images and artistic research projects that will benefit from being on the road and will probe urban environments as sites of both playfulness as well as social involvement.

Interested artists can apply here through an open call process. Application deadline is 25th April 2014.

Visit Sound Development City on Facebook for current news and updates. Detailed background information can be found in our project report.

The retrospect of Sound Development City 2013 has been released as a collection of ten booklets in a slipcase. The nine art projects are represented in an own booklet each, while the tenth booklet shows the general framework of the expedition, based on the expedition logbook. Selected images, logbook entries and excerpts from the Radio Bus interviews make the working process and the progress of the expedition in Lisboa and Marseille tangible.

As in the previous year, the publication was designed by Hubertus Design; it is now available in our webshop for CHF 29.-. The single booklets are available as free PDF download on the Sound Development City Logbook website.

This evening, the Sound Development City 2013 expedition reaches its culmination with the final presentation in Marseille. The event features sound installations, audiovisual performances and interactive sould walks, created by the expedition’s artists. The final presentation takes place at La Friche Belle de Mai from 7 until 10 pm - here you can find out more.

Yesterday evening, Sandra Lang and Ana Bigotte Vieira presented the documentary «Bab Septa» (2008), a film by Portugese film makers Pedro Pinho and Frederico Lobo on the topic of migration and the European borders. The film and the discussion after the screening illustrated the link between the history of colonial expeditions and the economic impact of today’s migratory movements. Lang and Vieira believe that these issues have a resonance in France with its ambiguous relation to North Africa and especially in Marseille with its port and constant fluctuation of goods and people.

Stay tuned to the Sound Development City 2013 expedition’s aftermath on the project website as well as on Facebook.

The Sound Development City 2013 expedition has now reached Marseille. After an intense working week in Lisbon, the expedition participants departed individually, exploring various routes and means of transportation from Lisbon to Marseille. The projects have been coming to life, and all participating artists have been working on adjusting their concepts to the given framework.

Malose Malahlela documented the road trip on board of the Sound Development City Radio Bus cinematically. The first part of «Space Cadets 2013», covering their drive from Lisbon to Madrid and Barcelona, is already online – the rest of the trip will be uploaded soon.

The sixth Sound Development City Radio Transmission was the first transmission from Marseille, featuring Austrian sound artist and musician Wolfgang Dorninger. His project «text2field-recordings» is based on field recordings gathered by workshop participants and himself during the expedition, focussing on nature and technology. The recordings will be gathered in «Sound Containers», unveiling the sound patterns and –systems of the two cities.

Stay tuned to the Sound Development City expedition’s progress in Marseille on the logbook website and on Facebook.

While most artists already had left Lisbon, making their way to Marseille, François Tariq Sardi stayed a little longer, meeting architects, urban planners and musicians to take him across the city. On 30 September, he published the first part of his project «The Dream Committee» – an ongoing sound investigation process of an urban landscape which focuses on field-recording of soundscapes and open-mic conversations with local participants.

As part of his project, Sardi did several stereophonic environmental recordings earlier in Lisbon – as in the sound piece above, where he recorded the sea meeting the city.

The fifth Sound Development City Radio Transmission featured Lucas Norer, an Austria based sound artist and curator. In his «The Lisbon Route Project» he traces the accoustic paths of one of World War II’s main escape routes, on which thousands of people fled to Lisbon from the Nazi-terror via Marseille, hoping for a passage over the Atlantic.

The Sound Development City crew will come together again in Marseille on 5th October. Stay tuned to the expedition’s progress on the logbook website and on Facebook.

On the last working day in Lisbon, the expedition’s participants organized a fair with contributions from all artists, including sounds, music, books, performances and radio. Sandra Lang and Bigotte Vieira held their «Jeux Sans Frontières» book fair in the headquarter’s courtyard. Due to the weather, it had to be set up in tents, but this inconvenience only added to the inspiringly dense atmosphere.

The Maiden Monsters carried their project «the sound of crisis» once more out to the public, with a musical performance.

Some days before, they already followed the major’s election campaign and were able to persuade him to contribute to the song of crisis.

The Sound Development City crew is now travelling individually to Marseille, the expedition’s second destination. The artists will continue developping their projects while being on the road. Stay tuned to the expedition’s progress on the logbook website and on Facebook.