lisboa.reloaded takes upon where Hans Ulrich Werner and Michael Rüsenberg left off. For 10 days in June 1993 Rüsenberg recorded daily life in Lisbon, accompanied by cameraman Uli Sigg. The video footage is released here for the first time. The audio material was made into a radio-documentary and the CD Lisboa - a soundscape portrait, released in 1994 both with co-authorship by Hans-Ulrich Werner.

As the title suggests, this work belongs to the category of soundscape composition, understanding the genre not merely as the acoustic equivalent of landscape but as a musical interpretation of environmental sound. Everyone who has ever visited the Portuguese capital or lived there might re-discover in the album a great deal of what can be heard in the city. Lisboa - a soundscape portrait more or less followed a documentary approach.

The CD caught the attention of Carlos Alberto Augusto, Carcavelos composer and in 2003 organizer of "Coimbra Vibra!", a sonification of the ancient Portuguese city by World Soundscape Project founder Murray Schafer. The event had been recorded by Rüsenberg and Werner for German Radio.

By coincidence, 2003 marked the 10th anniversary of their initial Lisbon recording and inspired the trio to renew the project. A title was easily found - lisboa.reloaded because that´s exactly what is is. It should not repeat what had already been done, but broaden the picture (in the literal sense of the word) by departing from the documentary approach, allowing more artistic freedom and last not least to make of the project a German/Portuguese partnership.

A late night dinner in Coimbra in October 2003 made it clear that personnel would not be a problem. The obvious people to win were - the then absent - artists Zingaro and Korn. Carlos Zingaro is Portugal´s most internationally acclaimed improvisor and electronic musician; Christoph Korn from Frankfurt has strong ties to Lisbon with three awards for film music which he won there. Both of them have also contributed to Rüsenberg´s CD "Roma - a soundscape remix" (1998).

lisboa.reloaded features audio-visual projections of the Portuguese capital, which is also known as "The White City" (cidade branca): two audio and three video works with a variety of expression hardly to be labelled with one term.

The starting piece "MetaSon Lisboa" by Hans-Ulrich Werner directly links lisboa.reloaded to "Lisboa - a soundscape portrait" . Apart from a few additions the audio parts remain unchanged, most importantly: video editing follows audio.

"Cine Lisboa" by Carlos Alberto Augusto sonically draws from similar sources, but involves more sound processing in order to support to the narrative role of the Portuguese guitar, played by Paulo Soares.
Christoph Korn´s "Stern" basically forms the centreline of this project, being both rooted in the Lisbon soundscape (a street musician´s melody) and simultaneously removed from it with Carlos Zingaro´s augmented rendition of the same melody on violin. Then there is the video: words only, among them notes on locations who´s sounds have been recorded...and deleted.

Both "Dr Musserts Landing" by Michael Rüsenberg and "Storia Intramuri" by Carlos Zingaro reveal themselves as dreamlike excursions to certain locations in Lisbon : the former to a jetty at River Tejo, close to Cais do Sodré and to the gigantic Bridge of the 25th April; the latter to structures very likely to be overheard and overseen - Lisbon´s facades.

lisboa.reloaded, both representational and abstract, pays hommage to a place known as The White City.

translated by Maresa Pooler

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