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Street life 2017

An array of daytime recordings made along street markets and other gathering-places which are pedestrianised by official design or unofficial habit. Playback of each recording is synced to a simple animation plotting the route taken.

Portobello Road 18:24

Map image extract © OpenStreetMap contributors, reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Time, date and weather: 12.20 pm, Saturday 23rd September 2017. Partly overcast; 18°C, wind 10 mph.

Description: Starting at the junction of Portobello Road and Golborne Road. Voices of stallholders and pedestrians; a man clears his throat; footsteps; recorded music from successive stalls; rustle of carrier bags; airplane drone; noise of traffic on the Westway grows louder; sounds take on a reverberant tone beneath the Westway, including loud music from record stalls; a growing hubbub of voices south of the Westway as the market becomes ever more crowded; a fruit-and-veg stallholder briefly raises his cry; a busker plays near the junction with Westbourne Park Road; passing traffic; more stallholders raise their cries; a busker sings and plays the guitar; the market becomes so packed as to make walking slow and difficult; a busker sings and plays the accordian; more recorded music from stalls; a three-piece buskers' band begin playing; a busker at the junction with Westbourne Grove bangs an improvised drum and sings before playing the guitar; traffic.