The project

The music of the landscape: topophonies

Half a century after its formulation, the concept of soundscape can now be said to have entered the everyday lexicon, just as curiosity and sensitivity to the sounds around us are generally spreading among the public.
Soundscape is the attention to the sounds in which we live immersed and their consideration as elements of a “symphony of the world.”

Tourist guide for listeners

With this project we want to collect and narrate the attractions of the area in the form of a “tourist guide for listeners”. It is an invitation to explore the rich and varied sound world of the Upper Adriatic by making known the most curious or unusual sounds, the most acoustically interesting situations, in order to make people appreciate the landscape with the attention of the ear.

The website topofonie.it is not intended as an archive of recordings, but as an invitation to the real exploration of the territory with its beauties. The recordings collected, although made with the most modern technologies, are intentionally brief because they offer a modest and sometimes misleading portrait of what is the real listening experience. The invitation, therefore, is to try it for yourself, in silence, to transform yourself into a passionate musician wandering into the territories of world music.

Acoustic treasures

There are many places that are surprising to an attentive listener; some of them are man-made constructions, others are immersed in the natural environment and the result of morphology and geology. Some acoustic phenomena are related to seasonal events or depend on weather conditions, others are occasional or unique events.

Have you ever listened to the sound of the frozen lake in Cave del Predil? Or the concert of water drops in Goriuda Cave? Or the roaring of deer in love in Val Resia, or the echo of the Ara Pacis monument in Medea? Do you know the soothing pleasure of the white noise of a waterfall? Have you ever wondered where to hear the most tuned bells or what is the quietest place in the region?

Sound art

There are acoustic phenomena that can be listened to passively (wind, water, forests, birds, insects) but there are also many phenomena that must be “triggered,” requiring a voluntary act to manifest themselves, such as echo or resonance effects. To this category belong all man-made or natural architectures capable of significantly influencing sound.
We bring live artistic and playful interventions to these places to provide audiences with original listening experiences made by sound artists from the international scene.

A participatory project

The platform is open and invites the public to report the existence of acoustically interesting places or phenomena to the editors, feeding the growth of the archive over time. In addition to descriptions of various sounds, the platform can convey historical, wildlife, geological or architectural notes where relevant. We also invite any links to other routes and forms of travel – cycle routes, taste routes, pilgrimage routes, and so on.

An ethical project

We support environmental issues, especially that of acoustic ecology against noise pollution. We are convinced that the issue of acoustic ecology requires first and foremost an education in listening.
We support the issues of eco-sustainable tourism and “slow tourism,” which places attention on details and takes tourists through a journey of discovery of hidden places and phenomena, while fully respecting the environment.

Let’s network

Several projects similar to ours can be found on the net. From the Italians I luoghi del belsentire, Vacuamoenia, Rimini Sound Map, Venezia Soundmap, to the international ones Lisbon Soundmap, Montreal Sound Map, Cities & Memory, Soundcities, Locustream, to the grand Aporee, which collects more than seventy thousand recordings from over sixty thousand places on the planet. For the most part, these are collections of ambient recordings powered by the voluntary work of thousands of sound artists. Topofonie advocates and encourages twinning with related projects, with a view to collaboration and integration. Report your project to us, we will include it among them.