sound connections obsolescence rhizome city


Rhizomatic soundscapes is a project based on the investigation between what is no longer and what will no longer be.

What is no longer.

The research leads us to discover an exercise in urban acupuncture in 1924. With the outbreak of the development of interurban communications in the world, the city of Madrid, commanded by the National Telephone Company of Spain launches a physical connection project around the city. This connection is established through two elements: The tower (primary element), the wiring (joint element). As the connection of the city had to be physical (through wiring) and it was necessary to avoid the height of the adjoining buildings, the towers were raised in the public space as large-scale elements (30 to 50 meters high).

Technology was advancing rapidly, so much so that in 1929, with the construction of the Telefónica building, the network became obsolete, and the company itself proceeded to dismantle it.

What will not be.

The obsolescence of communication infrastructures is continuous. Research on communication networks in the city of Madrid reveals that this year, 2018, the management contract for public telephone booths in the city of Madrid comes to an end. With it, all the underground wiring that connects them will be unusable.

The evolution of communication. Polar, arboreal, rhizomatic

Social relationships between individuals are developed through a rhizomatic model. The new communication technologies allow the individual not necessarily to share physical space to connect with the other, thereby producing a de-hierarchization trough the communicative process. However, the city's infrastructure remains an arboreal model in which physical experience is reduced to the place itself.

Rhizomatic soundscapes proposes to update the infrastructure of the city at the rhizomatic level of contemporary communication. Taking advantage of the existing and unused underground wiring of the city, sounds collected in specific natural spaces of Madrid are transported to the new urban devices. In turn, the old towers are reused as a supporting structure. Thus, new spaces are created in which to hedonistically enjoy the sounds of the city of Madrid in live format.

The capsules from which the different sound teleports are experienced are conceived as technical patents. These space objects, due to their architectural composition, are capable of distorting and modifying the sound once it has been emitted. The echo, the reverberation, the vibration, envelop it, multiply it or distort it, thus obtaining a new natural soundscape.