ABSTRACT
Media technologies in the contemporary neoliberal society of the masses offer all kinds of personalised sounds and images, also as a means of escaping the common reality or at least of balancing it with different perceptions. The artistic use of portable audio devices, in particular, has led to media practices that reflect the change in the perception of urban environments. By intensifying the simultaneous experience of multiple places, times, cultures and contexts, audio guided tours and sound walks tend to question the binary logic of oppositions that still constitute our understanding of the urban, such as inside/outside, private/public, own/foreign, present/absent, reality/fiction. Thus, they contribute to a politically engaged intervention in the public sphere by reflecting upon its fragmentation, referring to exemplary works of the German theatre and media performance groups LIGNA, Rimini Protokoll and plan b.
