Due to the corona measures, the Amare Open Festival can’t take place. This program has been cancelled. A number of activities can take place in a trimmed down form. More information about this can be found at amare.nl.

Sounding the Spui is a project that gathers together ideas about music, ambient sound, listening and music in relation to the public space. It also brings together various ‘creators’, including composers, sound artists, students and schoolchildren in a programme targeted at various audiences: invitees and passers-by, experts and amateurs, the young and the old. The project is an initiative of students from the Royal Conservatoire’s Sonology, Composition and ArtScience departments in association with alumni. The aim of Sounding the Spui is to highlight the function of the Royal Conservatoire and the new Amare as integral elements of the city centre and as spaces for every resident of The Hague.

In Sounding the Spui, the geography of The Hague will be temporarily compressed into a small area of the city centre. The effect will be achieved by installing loudspeakers at various locations around Spuiplein, immersing the square in the acoustic environments of other parts of the city.

The modular time structure of the work allows for repetition and combinations of ‘pure’

recordings of sounds from different environments and musical works based on those recordings. This creates a constant dialogue between recognisable sounds or soundscapes and musical compositions. Creating a work like this for the public space requires a certain sensitivity for the existing sound environment. Sounding the Spui will therefore sound different at different times of the day.

As participants make recordings of their environment, they will ask themselves various questions. What sounds are typical of The Hague? What sounds are ubiquitous? What sounds can serve as markers to help in identifying a specific place in the city or a recognisable event?

The recordings will be grouped into overlapping, thematic categories (such as infrastructure, nature, markets, sport, work, signals, the harbour, languages, the sea, music, etc.) and can also be arranged according to the time of day, the season, the location, etc.

Sounding the Spui is also an educational project. The educational component will yield sound materials, but also represents a way of making contact with primary and secondary schools and families in various neighbourhoods in The Hague.

Students, groups of schoolchildren and alumni of the Royal Conservatoire will all submit pieces, each of which will form a module in this meta-composition. While the highly complex installation for the sound reproduction is being designed and adapted specifically for the relevant space (Spuiplein), the works will be produced in such a way that they can be broadcast not only with the Sounding the Spui sound system, but also in other formats (stereo, surround sound, Wave Field Synthesis).

Consequently, it will later be possible to perform the pieces at other locations and to make binaural versions for listening online with headphones.

The ultimate version of Sounding the Spui will take place during Rewire.

Click here to view the complete programme for the Open Festival.