For the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the audio platform SoundCloud made an audio-visual memorial, because its headquarter is located on the former site of the Berlin Wall. Without the fall of the Wall SoundCloud wouldn’t exist. The objective was to give the young post-Wall generation of SoundCloud an experience of the tragic events during the decades of the Berlin Wall, and to communicate that SoundCloud is not only a simple music platform. With the electronic dance music-like title Berlin Wall of Sound the audio track was a Trojan horse surprising the audience with an unexpected experience: not electronic music but an acoustical reconstruction of the Berlin Wall. Typical for SoundCloud is that you see the sound wave form of the music. Thus our core idea was an audio track with a sound wave exactly mirroring the shape of the former Berlin Wall. The 7:32 minutes length of the experience equals the time sound needs to travel the 155 km Berlin Wall. Original propaganda and lies of former GDR politicians and original voices of border guards on patrol are embedded in ultra-low frequencies to make you feel the discomfort of a real barrier.

Core of the idea is an audio track with a sound wave form depicting the exact shape of the Wall. The 7:32 minutes length equals the time sound needs to travel the 155 km Berlin Wall. The audio includes original GDR politician propaganda and border guard voices, embedded in ultra-low frequencies to create a feeling of discomfort and facing a wall. A 30 years old Soviet synthesizer was used to create the sounds. Tagged with the track were portraits of all victims of the Berlin Wall. The experience became the global landing page of SoundCloud for one week.

Within four days after its launch the demanding 7:32 minutes long Berlin Wall of Sound was experienced by more than 100,000 people, liked by over 1,000 and reposted 400 times. Journalists and influential musicians around the world mentioned the experience. The idea reached its target – post-wall generations. An unpopular topic became popular through a pop culture media. Music channels posted it, DJs used the track in remixes. But also the Federal Bureau for Civic Education Germany listed it.