Sonic Memories

Since I was 15, I’ve had a field recorder, and I’ve used it every now and then.
Listening to a recording months after visiting a place has always moved me—sometimes even more than seeing a photo or video from the same location.

Sound, without any visual context, invites you to reconstruct the scene from memory.

Maybe you recall exactly what happened. Maybe it’s more about the feeling you had at that moment in time. Either way, the memory has shifted—filtered through who you’ve become since then.
Whether it’s my hometown, a village in Senegal, an island in Finland, or the subway system of Stockholm, the feeling is the same: sound alone triggers something deeper. Photos and videos are wonderful in their own way, but they don’t evoke the same kind of emotional memory for me.

During my last trip to Senegal, I set out to capture the sonic landscape of the places I visited. But I also wanted to develop a new way of storing and navigating those soundscapes—something that felt alive and spatial.

The idea came to me in the form of circles.

I used a Max for Live device called Woods by Voct, which was itself inspired by Leafcutter John’s Forester. Both tools let you create a two-dimensional space for sound.
For this first Senegal trip, I created “locations” that I could walk through sonically—either in the order they exist in the world or in the sequence I experienced them.

Each sound is placed in a circle. As the pointer moves toward the center of a circle, the sound grows louder. Moving outward, the sound fades. By overlapping circles, I can create gentle transitions between sound zones. I can set the pointer to move slowly through several circles, guiding the listener through a shifting sonic landscape.

I have many ideas for how to develop this further—especially ways to make it interactive.

These are my memories, tied to my own recordings. But perhaps the experience of moving through sonic spaces in this way can offer something meaningful to others as well.