Remixing the campus

This playlist comes from a recent event within Edinburgh University’s Festival of Creative Learning. The exercise, on the theme of mobile learning and the future of digital education, was delivered using the Telegram messenger service. The event was coordinated from a cafe in the basement of the University’s David Hume Tower, although participants were spread across different campuses, countries and continents.

​As an icebreaker activity, participants were invited to suggest a song that reflected their mood: 

Suggestions included songs by Arctic Monkeys, Fleetwood Mac, The Kinks amongst others:

In a separate sound-themed exercise, participants were invited to make an audio recording of their surroundings, before sharing it with the rest of the group via Telegram.

As conversation continued within Telegram, the nominated songs and generated audio recordings were played out into the cafe space in David Hume Tower. In this way, the sound of coffee-making and chatter was punctuated by music as well as feet walking through snow, computer white-noise, a conversation around traffic congestion and beyond. This was an intentional remixing of the campus: a way of bringing together the sonic traces of a broad range of learning spaces in order to question the hierarchical distinction between ‘on campus’ and ‘online’.

The playlist presented here brings together the nominated songs, interspersed with a selection of the field recordings. ​