Sonic Heritage is the first collection of the sounds of the world’s most famous sights.
The project presents the sounds of 270 UNESCO World Heritage sites and items of intangible heritage – all reimagined by artists from around the world to create a brand new way of experiencing these spaces.
Explore the heritage sounds in the interactive map and sound player below.
In the sound player below, you can filter by category, type of heritage listing, or search for an artist, location or any keyword.
The field recording is the first sound displayed, and the reimagined composition based on that recording is the second sound.
SONIC HERITAGE: THE ALBUMS
These two albums collect together some of the highlights of both the compositions and the field recordings from the project. They are available as free/pay-what-you-like releases, so please, download, share and enjoy!
ABOUT THE PROJECT
WHY SONIC HERITAGE?
Sound is usually the poor relation when it comes to tourism – in our visually-dominated culture, everything seems to be about where you take the Instagram photo or the video clip for TikTok.
As overtourism becomes a crisis for many cities around the world and Insta-tourism increases the pressure on tourist destinations and the focus on how things look, sound can help us to throw new light on these issues and how we might address them.
Rarely does sound enter the equation when we think about tourism or what makes a place great – and this holds true for preservation too. There are no “blue plaque” schemes marking out sonic sites of interest, and even UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage lists serve sound poorly.
In our view, this needs to change – so in this project we take a sonic tour to examine the role sound plays in these spaces deemed to be the world’s most culturally significant.
We consider how sound affects our experience of new cultures and tourism, and why sound often assumes lesser importance when it comes to recognising and celebrating heritage.
Sonic Heritage aims to address these fundamental questions:
- What role does sound have to play in enriching our experience of the world’s most incredible places?
- What are the soundscapes that accompany the world’s most culturally-important sites and spaces?
- How should we identify, celebrate and preserve soundscapes around the world that are culturally or socially significant – before it’s too late?
WHY UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITES?
While we acknowledge that no classification system or list can ever be perfect or complete, the UNESCO World Heritage list offers the most comprehensive and authoritative global overview of culturally-significant sites.
This gives us a globally-recognised set of parameters for the spaces (and activities) of cultural, social and natural importance, upon which we can layer the depth and richness of sound to make Sonic Heritage a unique undertaking.
- You can find a full list of 1,223 World Heritage sites here: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/
- There is a database of 730 Intangible Heritage items – from traditional song to handicraft practices – here: https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists
This project is not affiliated or connected with UNESCO in any way – it simply uses the UNESCO classification system as a basis for establishing which sites, practices and activities we would examine.