About

Bootleg Spatial Recall is an archive of the reverbaration of public and common spaces.

The site is a public sourced archive, and is a tool for listening closely to parts of our environment that gets ignored and forgotten.

It uses convolution reverb which digitally simulates the reverbaration of a physical space by blending two audio files together. You can use the site to do this without having to have access to certain specialist equipment or software. By using lo fi and often uncontrolled parameters (background noise, recording level, sources of sound), the impulses are recordings of spaces and certain moments. A bootlegged approach, recognising that each of us may hear different things in the space places, and that spaces and their reverberations change and respond to different things.

As well as browsing the reverbs you can also submit your own impulse recordings via the 'upload' page, and there is an information page with how to do that. You could submit an impulse recording of any space you like, but there is a gentle focus on public and common space that is shared.

The reverb impulses in the repository can also be downloaded for personal use.

The site is part of a project by Otto Willberg which includes a record called Barbaric Mystical Bored, which can be heard here.

The website has been made possible with support from Sound and Music's New Voices programme, Arts Council England, PRS and RVW Trust. It has been built by Sam Andreae.