Part 1 of 3

Walking through familiar streets and yet feeling completely out of place. Observing social distancing rules while weaving through a crowd. With this audio walk, you can discover a distant place, meet new people, and learn about a faraway country without ever leaving your city. The audio walk takes you virtually through the largest market in Central America, while you physically walk through the streets leading to the Leipzig Market.

The audio walk is a three-part soundscape composition. Ambient sounds were recorded using binaural microphones while walking, making it best experienced on foot. The real world with its soundscape and the soundscape of the virtual world interact uniquely depending on the time of day. Depending on which entrance to the market in Leipzig you take, you will experience different facets of the vast Mercado Oriental, which forms a city within a city in distant Nicaragua.

The creation of this work was made possible by a grant from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony. The soundscapes for this audio walk were recorded in 2015 and 2016. Since 2018, the political situation in Nicaragua has significantly deteriorated. For current information, please visit the Nicaragua Information Office: https://infobuero-nicaragua.org/