Venice a Thousand Echoes – Chiesa di Santo Stefano

4/7/2024

Venice a Thousand Echoes – Chiesa di Santo Stefano

7 April 2024

As part of the A Thousand Echoes: Listening to Venice project, acoustic recordings were made at 15:20 on 8 May 2023, using red balloon pops and a Sennheiser AMBEO VR microphone to capture the spatial characteristics of the church.

During May 2023, we recorded B-format impulse responses (balloon pops) at a range of iconic Venetian sites, including Piazza San Marco, Rialto Bridge, Chiesa di Santo Stefano, Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore, Ex Chiesa dei Santi Cosma e Damiano, and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute. Additional recordings were made at Campo Santo Stefano, Campo Santa Margherita, Campo San Apollonia, the staircase entrance at the Museo Correr, as well as in a number of narrow alleyways throughout the city.

The recording methodology followed ISO 3382-1 guidelines as a reference framework. Alongside impulse responses, we also captured environmental soundscapes, including daytime and nighttime recordings of Campo Santa Margherita, Campo Santo Stefano, and Piazza San Marco, featuring church bells in counterpoint with human activity, water movement, birds, canals, and boat traffic.

The aim of the project was to explore the echoes of Venice by documenting both acoustic fingerprints and lived soundscapes. This material subsequently informed two sonic compositions and the development of a sonic map. Our approach is grounded in the humanities, informed by acoustics, and situates sound as both cultural and spatial knowledge.

The recorded spaces are made audible via Acoustic Atlas, where they can be experienced directly in the browser. From there, we move into sonic composition as a form of practice-led research, reflecting on individual perspectives of body, time, space, echo, and listening. Acoustic fingerprints are treated as spatio-temporal data structures, and by introducing the listener as an active variable, we examine what is emotionally and perceptually evoked through parameters such as envelopment, magnitude, intimacy, distance, material properties of sound and space, reverberation tail shapes, decay times, and flutter echoes.

These questions are addressed through subjective sonic interventions, forming the artistic research component of the project.

Acoustic Atlas locations

Recorded by

Cobi van Tonder
Angela McArthur
Giulia Vismara

Measurement date

8 May 2023

#Venice #acoustic atlas #architectural acoustics #impulse responses #spatial audio #heritage #field recording