FontainaSound – the participatory sound footprint of a territory to be built together

FontainaSound is a participatory project launched by the City of Brussels, on Fontainas square (in the center of the capital, between the Stock Exchange and Brussels South train station) and its neighborhoods, the sound footprint of a territory to be built together over a decade.

Workshops, meetings, artistic events … soliciting the participation of inhabitants and local actors, will be carried out in the field by the Transcultures team, mandated by the City of Brussels, and particularly experienced in the field of sound arts in urban areas.

Fieldwork associated with a citizen and collaborative approach is at the heart of the project and future sound content will be produced by Transcultures mainly, from content collected or from the neighborhoods surrounding Fontainas square, particularly lively and rich in history, while ensuring to find there the cultural, social and linguistic diversity which characterizes it (with the help of the inhabitants, neighborhood committees, associations and various local relays), while also favoring a poetic dimension.

The sound content will be renewed regularly, and this over a period of 10 years (in particular through workshops with local residents, specific events, calls for participation and ad hoc contributions from other sound creators, etc.). They will be broadcast through one or more urban artistic interventions or urban furniture (s) installed on the Fontainas square from 2022. Certain sound content will also take place on the Web, to form an urban sound journey accessible via tablets and smartphones.

What purpose ?

Give an identity to Fontainas square, create a link through a participatory project involving the inhabitants of the district as well as associations over a long period of time, strengthen social cohesion, bring together communities and generations in a territory at the crossroads of several districts and which is also the pedestrian entrance to the City of Brussels … these are some of the points that the FontainaSound project will come to, at its level and in addition to other projects of the City and associations working on these subjects, to strengthen by a dynamic of openness, sharing and creativity.

Diffusion du contenu sonore

The preliminary draft, which will be handed over by Transcultures to the City of Brussels in mid 2021, includes a prototype sound diffusion matrix whose sounds will be integrated into artistic creations or urban furniture. The fundamental point of the contextual proposal of Transcultures rests on the fact of not adding what could be considered as “noise” to the sound environment of the square.

The imagined diffusion system is therefore based on proximity: a series of mini-panels will be placed inside the walls of the artistic creation (s) or urban furniture (s). To hear the sound content, you will have to, for example, either stick your ear to the urban work (s), or use small cones (or any equivalent object or form a cone with your hands). In this way, the sound content can only be perceived by people who want it.

Création artistique sonore

Phase 1 of the project led by Transcultures in 2021 is also used to establish specifications in order to launch a call for projects to choose the artist who will realize in early 2022 the artistic creation (s) or urban furniture (s) who will broadcast / have the sound contents. The winning artist will work in close collaboration with the Transcultures team and the support committee of the City of Brussels, in order to integrate the sound system into his work.