The main question I raise with my work „Transit: Underground U8“ is: „How does the underground sound?“ and how does this sound relate or reflect on it.

The subway also described as the underground in everyday life is a zone of transience. It’s a place of being in-between. Different things come together in the Berlin Underground and therefore mirror the fabric of society. That’s what fascinates me.

The materiality carries meaning and it is constructed. I translate the materiality and reconstruct the underground’s acoustic ecosystem and therefore reinforcing the consciousness, purpose and meaning of its acoustic topography.

My approach to investigate the underground is by using the technique of reduced listening: „achieved by repeated listening, which enables the listener to focus on the intrinsic features of a sound, disconnected from its context. Reduced listening is a tool for investigation and for shifting listening attention intentionally, from the contextual to the inherent features of sound” - (Álvaro Barbosa, and Kristine Dizon. 2020. "The Film Sound Analysis Framework: A Conceptual tool to Interpret the Cinematic Experience")

This will helps me to decontextualize the sounds of the underground. For the production, I use the underground like an instrument. By using my self-build pocket operator the acoustic properties can be played, destroyed, disordered, reorganized and therefore rebuilt.

The pocket operator consists of two Audio-Recorder, a multi-usable music computer (Critter & Guitari Organelle M), a little mixer (Koma Elektronik Field Kit), a delay pedal (Boss DD-5) and power banks to have the mobility.

I think you can depict and capture a space only when you are on site. So the whole production of „Transit: Underground U8“ happens along the subway line U8, on the train, in the hallways and everywhere in between.

Feeling the surfaces of the U-Bahn and the Train Stations with contact mics, translating all the detailed everyday sounds, reorganizing them in a new context and using the reverb of the stations inspired me every time I went down the stairs of the stations.

Feeling my back and butt hurt after sitting on the train for two hours straight recording and resampling a train ride on the other hand, is not what I except it to be.

The Eight tracks reflect on the research and the investigation I went through during that time. It took me around three weeks to finish this project and I could not be happier with the result.