VOICITY

Voicity Voicity understands the City as a perpetual organizing field of forces in movement. The wildness of everyday Venice – millions of individual voice trajectories forming the cities collective social, cultural and economical identity are stored, captured and made visible through Voicity. The Ethos of disintermediation through the democratization of communications infrastructure penetrates into every aspect of social consciousness and ritualized behavior. Voicity opens ears to make these new behaviors visible and enables a democratic access to public realm.

Voicity allows the city to breath and collectively being inhaled by its inhabitants. Voicity inhales and exhales – Voicity is the excitable medium of Venice for anyone to access.

Proposal

The Idea of “Voicity” was triggered by Bill Fontana’s “Acoustical Visions of Venice” presented at the Venice Biennale in summer 1999. He created a dynamic, multi-layered, collective sound impression of 12 different locations in the city transmitted simultaneously in real time to a single site: the Punta della Dogana.

Voicity is a materialized urban resonator of the city able to store and amplify the multidimensional acoustic sound expression of the city. Located in the triangle between the Chiesa della Salute, the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore and the Basilica di San Marco Voicity in- and exhales the collective voice of the city on a concentrated spot.

Voicity is made out of a lightweight recycled organic transparent envelope that can generate energy by tracing solar rays and thermal flows. Voicity is floating on and within the Lido di Venezia. The permeable open trumpet like surface is able to map the sonar experience of the city of Venice – the bell tower sound transmission of churches, ship horns, underwater resonances, echoes, whispering voices of the cities visitors and inhabitants – a performative collective memory. The envelop´s organic matter absorbs light functioning partly as a gigantic solar panel, where the cavities circulate air and create a field condition of heat and cooling point where heat can be stored and changed into energy. All the energy generated feeds Voicity and Venice electrical system.