thielenbrücke
2018 · acoustic documentation; speculative sound project; convolution auralisation
What happens to the acoustic identity of a place when the place itself disappears?
Thielenbrücke is a speculative sound project based on the acoustic documentation of a bridge over Berlin’s Landwehrkanal. What began as an accidental listening experience under the bridge became an investigation into urban resonance, acoustic memory and the possibility of preserving the sound of a place beyond its physical presence.
The project treats Thielenbrücke not only as a piece of urban infrastructure, but as a temporary acoustic chamber shaped by concrete, stone, water, curvature, distance and reflection. Through impulse response recording and convolution auralisation, its resonant qualities were captured and later reactivated in the fictional scenario of Thielenbrücke Music Festival 2025: a future event in which the bridge no longer exists, but its acoustic signature remains audible.
Listening under the bridge
The project began during a boat ride on the Landwehrkanal, under the bridge that connects Pannierstraße in Neukölln with Glogauerstraße in Kreuzberg. While passing beneath the structure, music played through a small Bluetooth speaker suddenly changed. The sound became deeper, more resonant and spatially coloured by the curved surfaces of the bridge, the canal water and the enclosed passage beneath it.
This brief moment of altered perception became the starting point for the project. Thielenbrücke appeared not only as a crossing point over the canal, but as a temporary acoustic chamber: a place whose sonic character emerges through reflection, proximity, material surface and movement. Its acoustic identity is not immediately visible, yet it affects how sound is perceived from within the space.
Listening under the bridge
The project began during a boat ride on the Landwehrkanal, under the bridge that connects Pannierstraße in Neukölln with Glogauerstraße in Kreuzberg. While passing beneath the structure, music played through a small Bluetooth speaker suddenly changed. The sound became deeper, more resonant and spatially coloured by the curved surfaces of the bridge, the canal water and the enclosed passage beneath it.
This brief moment of altered perception became the starting point for the project. Thielenbrücke appeared not only as a crossing point over the canal, but as a temporary acoustic chamber: a place whose sonic character emerges through reflection, proximity, material surface and movement. Its acoustic identity is not immediately visible, yet it affects how sound is perceived from within the space.
Recording the acoustic signature
To document this condition, the project recorded impulse responses under the bridge using balloons, a binaural microphone and a digital recorder. The measurements were taken from two positions: one near the centre of the bridge and another near its walls. These recordings captured the site's reverberant behaviour and enabled the preservation of its acoustic response as a sonic trace.
The impulse responses were later used for convolution auralisation, allowing other sounds to be played through the captured resonance of Thielenbrücke. In this process, the bridge becomes less an object to be represented than an acoustic filter: a set of spatial characteristics that can be reactivated, displaced and recomposed.
A festival for a vanished bridge
From this documentation process, the project developed the fictional scenario of Thielenbrücke Music Festival 2025. The imagined festival takes place in a future where the bridge no longer exists, but its acoustic signature has been preserved. Musicians perform through the recorded resonance of the bridge, allowing audiences to listen to a space that has disappeared.
This speculative frame shifts the project from documentation toward acoustic imagination. It asks how urban spaces might survive as sound after their material transformation or loss, and whether acoustic traces can become a form of memory. Rather than preserving the bridge as an image or architectural record, Thielenbrücke preserves a way of hearing.
