Ultrasonic city

“What do you hear in the city? What sounds are only perceptible in the ultrasonic realm, where bats and crickets communicate? Sounds which are so high, our human ears cannot perceive them. This acoustic world becomes audible in Ultrasonic City and they get their place in the sounds of the city and the world.

Director and narrator: Wendy Van Wynsberghe

Fieldrecordings: Marion Guillemette

Edits : Vincent Mattyn and yours truly

Thanks for your patience, support and tenacity: Acsr, Carmello, Clementine & Carine

And thanks to

acclivity
hanstimm
roubignolle
aguasonic
dobroide
cajo
Corsica_S
FreqMan
fons
Jovica
pera
klankbeeld
for their sounds under various Creative Commons licenses from Freesound 2013 Creative Commons Attributions Non Commercial Share alike

More:

The urban sound world is quite dense. By extracting the ultrasound I wanted to reveal a sonic universe or even add another layer to the field recordings. When you hear only the ultrasonic layer of the city, you hear a place devoid of human voices. They simply do not reach that high. Some very quiet sounds get enhanced, such as rubbing your fingers together, frottements in French. In a parc at sunset you hear the foraging bats, whilst at the same time, our human ears only register ducks, planes and other humans. A swimming pool gets reduced to splashes, you do not hear the children shriek nor play. Plastic, metal, water all produce ultrasounds. With the help of ACSR, I was able to record the same place in the city ultrasonically and with high quality “normal” microphones. This revealing/unravelling/hiding of layers of sound I want to present in this documentary.