The BBC Wants Your Sounds

I find myself strangely inoculated to pictures.  It is not that I don’t appreciate pictures.  I have a great fondness for images, but they do not easily transport me to another time or place.  I imagine my condition is not unique to me.  A picture has the handicap of being framed by other sights which remind you that you are only looking at a picture.  We have also, for the most part, become sophisticated enough about pictures that we can see it not merely as a representation of something that exists or existed in space and time, but we evaluate it’s qualities as a picture: the framing, the color balance, the resolution, exposure, etc… which detaches us from the reality of the thing represented.

Sound is quite a different experience for me and I would wager others as well.  Perhaps the most notable reason is that if one closes their eyes and places headphones over their ears, there is considerably less sensory data to alert the mind to the fact that one is not where the ears suggest.

All this to say that the BBC is compiling a “Sound Map”.  They are collecting sound submissions from all over the world and placing them in their respective positions on a global map.  It does not take much imagination to come up with a great many  sure to be rejected submissions.  I am not sure what the filtering process is.  The BBC’s stated objective is not only to provide a way for visitors to experience the world, but also to preserve sounds that are going extinct.  So if you are looking to experiencing a little bit of the world while relaxing on the couch, or if you have some sounds that represent where you are, pay the sound map a visit.