CentrO Christmas market entertainment mall mulled wine Oberhausen shopping mall Soundscape

CentrO Oberhausen at Christmas Time IV – Soundscape of Mulled Wine Stall in the Rain

The CentrO Obehrausen is one of Europe’s biggest shopping and entertainment malls. Opened in 1996, there are now more than 250 shops on 2 floors and 125.000 square metres. A multiplex cinema, the aquarium sealife, a large musical venue and an amusement park compliment what has been called “the new centre of Oberhausen”.
However, the CentrO is a result of structural change. Since 1758 various ironworks had been located at the site and surrounding areas of today’s CentrO. As Gutehoffnungshütte it became one of Germany’s biggest ironworks and machine construction concerns in the 20th century. Its slow dissolution began in the 1980ies, partly as a consequence of the steel crisis. The MAN AG, to which the Gutehoffnungshütte belonged at that time, moved the headquarters from Oberhausen to Munich. The area became an industrial wasteland until British investors proposed to build the CentrO. Demolition of the ironworks and construction of the shopping mall and amusement centres began in 1992.
The sounds of the Gutehoffnungshütte have disappeared for good. Now you hear the sounds of consume and entertainment.
Each year there is a large Christmas market around the CentrO in Oberhausen. This is a soundscape recording of the mulled wine stall in the rain. Although Christmas markets are usually quite popular and crowded, on this evening the market war rather empty and only a few visitors had taken refuge from the rain underneath the plastic tent of the mulled wine stall. You can hear snippets of conversation and singing, clinking mugs, tinkling coins in the cashier and Christmas music in the background. The constant dripping of rain on the plastic tent accompanies the recording.
Sound Recordist: Kathinka Engels
Photographer: Kathinka Engels

Specs:

Decade:
Filesize:
Duration:
Channels:
2010s
99.9 MB
2 min 53 s
2 (Stereo)
Sample rate:
Bit rate:
Bit depth:
96 kHz
4608 kb/s
32 bit

Recorded on December 13, 2017
Centro Oberhausen
Oberhausen, GERMANY
Creative Commons License