Jardins Efémeros

Invisible Places, Sounding Cities
Invisible Places, Sounding Cities

Sound, Urbanism and Sense of Place.

Download Proceedings
Invisible Places program
Sounding Cities program

A city is a place of diversities. Its rhythms are sometimes contrapuntal, sometimes synchronous. We live in a city of multiple destinations and routes—spaces populated by sounds, smells, gestures, visions, exchanges, encounters, and feelings. We have a better a city experience with all the senses awakened. However, modern cities have been designed, built and determined by visual aesthetics. A strict regime of the visual limits the innately diverse ways we sense and communicate with our home and the world.

In urban planning the “regime of the visual” makes it easy to neglect the invisible nature of sound. All its acoustic variables are essential for developing proposals for our cities. Technically, the physics and mathematics of sound are complex. Yet, all too often, we have ear-witnessed the huge discomfort of new spaces built with little or no attention to acoustic design. Your listening is as important as what engineers can measure. The issue of sound quality in urban environments is a universal theme that affects us all, from hearing loss to heart disease, so it is urgent to extend this discussion.

Invisible Places | Sounding Cities has two goals: a symposium on sound, urbanism and sense of place endorsed by the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and an exhibition of artistic events that aims to bring art and science to the streets. It is integrated in Jardins Efémeros edition IV.

Raquel Castro

Invisible Places poster

Travel Info

Porto–Viseu

Distance: 130 km, average time: 1 hour 30 minutes

By car: From Porto, take highway A1 towards Lisbon; take the exit for A25/E80 to Aveiro/Viseu in the direction of Viseu; already in Viseu follow the directions for the Centre. Estimated cost: 60€

By bus (recommended): Get from Francisco Sá Carneiro airport to the central bus station in Batalha square in Porto. Near the Batalha square in Porto, you can catch a bus to Viseu, departing from Aliança Garage, located at Rua Alexandre Herculano. The average price per person is 11€.

Lisboa – Viseu

Distance: 320 km, average time: 3 hours

By car: From Lisbon follow in highway A1 towards Porto, take the exit for A25/E80 to Aveiro/Viseu in the direction of Viseu. Already in Viseu follow the directions for the Centre. Estimated costs: 100€

By bus (recommended): Get from the Portela airport to central bus station in Lisboa Sete Rios. In Lisboa Sete Rios bus station, you can take a bus directly to Viseu. The average price of a bus ticket per person is around 18€.

Recommended Hotel (special price for participants)

Other hotels in Viseu

Organization

The municipality of Viseu welcomes and supports, in the context of their promoting policies of cultural awareness, urbanism and sustainability, the organization of the international symposium “Invisible Places Sounding Cities”, with the scientific endorsement of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, a global institution dedicated to promoting research and consciousness of acoustic ecology. The attraction of researchers and artists from different parts of the world will allow to perform an urban artistic intervention in the field of sound through installations and performances enrolled in the festival program “Jardins Efémeros - Ephemeral Gardens”, in Viseu.