Environmental Aesthetics and Urban Soundscapes – Lucid Dreams of Mr. William Heerlein Lindley

Abstract

This article describes the site-speci!c performance Lucid Dreams of Mr. William Heerlein Lindley in an acoustically unusual old sewage treatment plant in Prague. During this event, different kinds of sounds are combined: recordings from various places in Prague, those which are electronically generated, and actual concrete sounds produced by the participants. A part of the event was also a live EBU satellite broadcast Ecotechnical Museum in Bubenec,10/10/2009, 6 pm. The performance is presented as an example of conceptual music on one hand and as realization of ideas of the Canadian sound-ecological school by Raymond Murray Schafer (emphasizing acoustical characteristics of concrete localities) on the other hand. In connection with such an approach, John Cage and his basic ideas about the nature of sounds, silence and indeterminacy