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This paper explores the meaning-making potential of cultural sites of historical importance within the current framework of human communication that now seamlessly intertwines digital, electronic and organic forms of contact. The paper argues that the computer-guided communication prevalent now favours the systematic and programmed and that has repercussions in terms of our sense of identity as organic beings living in a physical world. A response is to reinforce a sense of place via direct experience in cultural sites that are invested with a strong sense of place, referred to as “zones of intensity invested with desire” (this term was coined by Russell West-Pavlov and referenced by Darko Radovic to address the visual bias of urban planning). The argument follows that there needs to be a conscious reconnection with all the senses, overcoming the current visual bias encouraged by communication via the printed word. Art as alternative modality of relations has a strong role to play to reconnect us to the meaning-making elements in physical sites and reinforce the sense of place so crucial in our existence as organic beings.

As a series of yearly exhibitions emerging from an organic process, Sound Proof represented an active cultural memory of the development of the Stratford site of London 2012, from 2008 until the opening of the Games. Through its twenty-eight artist commissions over a five-year period, the series reflected on changes to the site and expressed the evolving mood as the event neared. Sound Proof had heritage concerns at its core. One of the key aims was to retain a record of a moment in time highlighting the tangible cultural landscape and the intangible dimension of memory while the site was still in a state of becoming. The memories generated during that period are expressed most directly by the seventeen original sound works produced for the series, works which threaded physical sound with sensed experience so as to convey feeling and intent. The works fall under four general categories: sound as field of interactions, sound as experience, sound as active cultural memory, and sound as memory track. The key link between the exhibition series as a whole and the individual sound works produced by the artists was the context for the works: the locations, settings and communities that engendered those works. Some key works in the series isolated sound as pure experience; others conveyed active cultural memories of the people and places affected by the arrival of the Olympics. And a number of pieces built up a sense of time passing through the build up of a memory track, unfolding as layered historical records. Through the various works, Sound Proof developed a comprehensive catalogue during the period between 2008 and 2012, thus preserving sonic memory traces of London 2012 as it evolved over time.