On Saturday, October 11, 2025, Soundtrackcity participated in 24 uur Zuid. The day was dedicated to all cultural enterprises, organizations, residents, and events in Zuid. Soundtrackcity contributed to the event with two guided audio walks starting at CC Amstel.
On Saturday, two groups took part in the audio walk Geluiden en Verhalen uit de Diamantbuurt. Everyone was moved and very enthusiastic about the walk. Afterwards, a discussion arose about why everyone found this audio walk so special. Huba de Graaff, who also took part, said that it was, of course, the voices of the people, which sounded as if they were really there, but also the additional ambient sounds in the audio. Because these are always recorded at the exact location where you are as a walker, you often cannot distinguish exactly what sounds “real” and what comes to you via the audio. According to Huba, this is exciting and wonderful.
Ina Boiten wrote earlier about another Soundtrackcity walk: A layer of sound that taps into new dimensions of time and space with sounds that are normally inaudible but may be present stimulates surprising new connections with reality. Afterwards, the participants in Saturday’s walks felt connected to the Diamantbuurt.
In his essay “From situated perception to urban ambiences”, sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud writes that we do not perceive an urban environment as isolated objects or events, but as a total experience, called ambience by Thibaud, which is created in a process of negotiation between humans and their environment, in which the various impressions are integrated into a whole. Being open to the aesthetic side of everyday experiences is indispensable in this process, both emotionally and physically, using all the senses. It was wonderful to see how all the participants opened up on Saturday and had a new, personal and more intense experience of the city.
Unexpected things also happened along the way; at times, it seemed as if reality was conforming to the audio. Just as Zakir, one of the residents, was talking about a kind of Viking boat passing under his window, we saw a sloop race on the Josef Israelkade. And just as we listened to a voice telling us about the committed residents who maintain all the flower beds in this neighbourhood themselves, that is exactly what was happening before our eyes: people were busily cutting and raking the greenery. It just so happened that it was Neighbour Day!
Did you miss it and still want to take the walk? You can! Download the app TRACKS for free and listen to all our walks on your phone.
This audio walk is part of Urban Sound Lab. Urban Sound Lab is Soundtrackcity’s travelling laboratory where we, together with residents and artists from various disciplines, investigate the sound environment of Amsterdam Zuid. Armed with a sound recorder, the artists of Urban Sound Lab spoke to residents – from the very young to the very old – about the sounds of their environment.
Something worth mentioning that an architect from Graz who also walked with us told us afterwards that this walk was the most beautiful thing he had experienced during his multi-day trip to the Netherlands, even though he did not understand a word of Dutch.
