Jordan Lacey, Lawrence Harvey, Xiaojun Qiu, Pink Sarah, Stephan Moore, Shanti Sumartojo, Sipei Zhao and Simon Maisch Soundscape design of motorway parkland environments: an industry-based approach.
Antonella Radicchi The HUSH CITY app. A new mobile app to empower local communities to identify, access and evaluate "everyday quiet areas" in their neighborhoods.
Daniel Paiva and Eduardo Brito-Henriques Sounding the unheard city: an approach to the soundscapes of urban vacant lands in Lisbon
Angeliki Diakrousi Empowerment of gender voice: Sound acts in Victoria Square
Juhani Pallasmaa was professor of architecture at Helsinki University of Technology, director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture, visiting professor at various architecture schools around the world, and author of numerous articles on cultural philosophy, environmental psychology and theory of architecture and art.
The modern tradition regards architecture and environments primarily as aestheticized objects designed for focused vision. However, it has become evident that we experience the world in a simultaneous and multi-sensory manner. Vision and taste are directional or localized senses, whereas hearing, smell and touch (particularly in our synthetic existential experience) have an omni-directional, embracing and enfolding character. All the senses are essentially modes of touching, and hapticity is also the hidden unconsciousness of vision – we also touch through vision; we dwell in sound and hapticity, whereas we observe visual phenomena. The focused visual world is one of distance and exclusion, while sound and peripheral, unfocused and omni-directional experiences in general make us insiders and participants. Peripheral and diffuse perception is also the manner of perceiving atmospheres, ambiences and moods; the invisible places. Acoustic qualities are essential for the atmospheric experience although we do not usually identify their role consciously. Modernity, obsessed with clarity and form, has regarded atmospheres as sentimental and entertaining properties. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that our emotive atmospheric perception is a consequence of evolution and could well be named our sixth and the most important sense.
Hildegard Westerkamp The Practice of Listening in Unsettled Times
Hildegard Westerkamp is a composer, radio artist and sound ecologist. She presents soundscape workshops and lectures internationally,
performs and writes.
The seemingly simple act of listening to the environment often leads to unexpected complexities of thoughts, sensations and emotions that are not quantifiable or measurable. When we listen for example on a soundwalk, we simultaneously take in the current conditions of the acoustic environment and those of our innermost sound world, our thoughts and emotions. The nature of this fluidity between our inner and outer sound worlds is both highly personal and at the same time universal. It is here where the real journey of listening starts.
Once we learn that listening in itself is a grounded and grounding place, which nevertheless is always in motion, we recognize its inspirational nature. Its inherent motion forms the real base for grappling with the deeply personal in ecology and culture, for moving beyond self-absorption and navel gazing, and finally facing, accepting and integrating the complexities of listening as a type of depth approach towards caring ecologically for the health of our soundscapes and the beings within it.
The complexities of ‘just listening’ will be traced throughout this presentation by dipping into examples of soundwalk experiences, as well as into a personal case study of sorts that I have conducted throughout much of my adult life, as a way to reach that which we share universally between us.
Sam Auinger is a sonic thinker, composer and sound-artist, who collaborates with city planers and architects regularly. He works together with the composer Bruce Odland as O+A, exploring the central theme of hearing perspective. Auinger has received numerous prizes and awards for his work.
The medieval city center of Bruges was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO in 2000. More than five million people visit the city every year.
What would happen, if they suddenly all decided to stay? What would be the impact on a protected historical city like Bruges if it became a megapolis over night?
This was the premise for the Bruges Triennial for Contemporary Art and Architecture 2015. The triennial contrasted two opposing narratives: the static image of Bruges as a protected medieval city that was restored and preserved from the 19th century onwards and a hypothetical 21st century megapolis version of the city.
In 2014 O+A were invited to develop a project for this festival. After longer stays and studies on site, it became clear that the historical center of Bruges is an urban space with a unique acoustic and auditive atmosphere. To be able to transfer this unique atmospheric quality into a discourse, the project QINL was developed as a four-part work, whereby the individual project parts can operate independently or mutually enhance one another. The artistic intention was to induce residents and visitors to the city and the festival to listen closely with a series of interventions. Personal listening experiences were to be provoked in this way, thus creating discourse material for future urban planning discussions.
Jordan Lacey, Lawrence Harvey, Stephan Moore, Xiaojun Qiu, Sarah Pink, Shanti Sumartojo, Sepei Zhao, Simon Maisch Soundscape design of motorway parkland environments: an industry-based approach.
This paper reports on a practice-led research project investigating the design of parkland soundscapes affected by motorway noise. The project, entitled Acoustic design innovations for managing traffic noise by cancellation and transformation, is funded by the Transurban Innovation Grant. Transurban is a transport infrastructure company operating in Australia and the USA that builds and manages tolled motorways. Car-dependent cities require extensive road networks, and traffic noise can impact those who live adjacent to motorways. We have based our project on three approaches—Cancellation, Transformation, and Ethnography. Research testing along the M2 motorway in Sydney and the Citylink in Melbourne in early 2017 will compare novel electroacoustic environments with community perceptions to reveal new ways for infrastructure projects to include noise management in their planning and design phases. Drawing on early fieldwork and lab tests, this paper includes descriptions of the three methodologies involved and some preliminary observations.
Since the early 1980s microprocessors and digital technology have penetrated our environment and everyday life in various utensils, devices and equipment. Among other, more obvious effects to culture and society, digitalization has changed the soundscape almost everywhere in the world.
In this paper I’m reflecting on sonic experiences, both personal and shared, asking what kind of strategies could be useful in trying to observe, analyze, understand and perhaps also to improve our sonic environment in the digital era. Are the arguments used in fighting against noise pollution valid when dealing with synthetic sounds? How should acoustic balance in the environment be defined in the digital age? Scientists, scholars and artists working with sound should share and discuss their views on ecology and aesthetics of the digitalized soundscape in order to challenge designers to improve the sonic dimension of our collective environment.
How to encourage local development through the development of listening practice?
The paper focuses on the relationship between urban sound art and planning by inquiring into participatory strategies that can invigorate sonic awareness. Sonic acknowledgment contributes here to design urban and regional policies, revealing the potentials of sonic identities.
The research shows how enacting critical listening can become an empowerment tool both for the institutions and the citizens, and examine the main outcomes and perspectives originated from the participatory sound art project “Listening Closely” developed in 2015 in the southern Italian village of San Cipriano Picentino.
Mikael Fernström and Sean Taylor Using acouscenic listening to hear the unheard
This paper discusses the emergence of a creative approach for sound art and acoustic ecology, developed over a seventeen-year timeframe within the collaborative art/science practice of Softday1. Initially, we worked with sonification algorithms to create musical mappings from environmentally related data, performed by classically trained musicians. The sonifications were complemented by field recordings of soundscapes from the contexts of the data sets. We have increasingly been using soundwalking to inform our work, normally conducted with a group of participants that create a collaborative sound map of an area of interest. The participants then use the sound map as a graphical score and perform the soundmap. A collectively experienced, internalised and re-represented soundscape being expressed as a collaborative performance can help to communicate both context and affective aspects of the work.
Vadim Keylin Politics of Participation in Benoît Maubrey’s Speaker Sculptures
Speaker Sculptures is a series of works by Benoît Maubrey, created in 1983-2015. All of them are large-scale architecture-like constructions (often modelled after existing historical buildings or building types) built of recycled loudspeakers. The public could connect to the work by calling a designated number, or using Bluetooth or WiFi technologies, and express themselves freely through the sculpture. In my paper, I investigate the strategies of audience engagement the Maubrey employs and their applicability to the acoustic design of urban spaces. Through their numerous loudspeakers, Speaker Sculptures connect the public space to the electronic media, subverting their antagonism and creating a single space of social interactions. This offers a possibility of political presence in public space to those, who are unable to do so in person due to physical or mental disabilities, or other personal circumstances.
Over the course of this paper, sound artist Johann Diedrick looks at his work Good Vibrations and presents how his acoustic cartography listening tours have allowed acoustic explorers to reorient themselves to the outside world through expanded listening. The Good Vibrations project presents ways in which bodies interact with their environment by examining subtle sounds through amplified listening. By discovering previously unknown “sound”-able objects, these acoustic explorers begin to interact with the environment in a performative way, using the sounds around them as inspiration for play and exploration. In the paper he will present qualitative analysis in the form of feedback forms as a way in which sound artists can solicit responses about their work from an audience to help inform future iterations on their artistic practice.
Luís Cláudio Ribeiro, Jorge Bruno Ventura The sound object of the radio – The constitution of an etherian community
Our goal is to study the shaping of audiences formed by radio listening, and their behavior vis-à-vis the notions of territory, identity, language, and private and public space. To this end, it becomes important to study listeners’ relation with the radio sound object, the space where that relation fuses and how it comes about. Sound, when listened to as radio aesthetics (voice, music, effects and silence), sometimes fuses the private and public spheres. A negotiation is struck between the power of a mass medium and the interests that constitute the listeners’ private spheres. Through broadcasting, in particular, what was of the private domain became collective. It is in this context, fed by the dubious relation of what is private or public, that the relation between listener and medium-broadcast sound object is solidified. One of the ways of understanding this relation, created through radio in the 1930s, involves understanding the relation between the listener and the voices/characters of radio.
Kris Darby ‘When it comes, the landscape listens’: listening as place through binaural sound
In this paper I will argue that despite the numerous challenges it poses, anthropomorphism is a viable means by which to empathise with place without resorting to a wholly homocentric perception of it. Beginning with a discussion of the principal motivations for anthropomorphism and its aforementioned criticism, I will then make suggestions as to how binaural sound can enable a merging of self and place. Holly Owen and Kristina Pulejkova’s film Switching Heads-sound mapping the Arctic (2015) is discussed as an example of an artwork that facilitates such a merging through its use of an anthropomorphised snow head to record the testaments of individuals living in areas most susceptible to climate change. The latter half of the paper discusses the practicalities of fostering placial empathy through binaural sound, making specific reference to my own project If Walls Could Here (2014-) and the challenges it face by trying to give the city of Liverpool a pair of ears. It concludes by asserting that although the act of listening as place is difficult to facilitate, binaural sound possesses the capacity for us to listen with it.
Karla Berrens, Marcos Cereceda Listening bodies: tact, pain and urban accessibility
This paper examines characteristics from the dimensions of touch and discomfort or pain (nociception) that the sonic ambiance produces in our bodies when we navigate the spaces we inhabit. Based on an ongoing research investigating alternative conceptions to urban accessibility and diversely functional bodies, we argue for the inclusion of the tactile and discomfort aspects of sound as actors shaping the experience of our everyday spaces. We bring the focus on the physical perception of the sonic ambiance, from tact to transduction, listening through the body and its vibration. We investigate how this full body tactile experience, that at times and for some individuals can be an unpleasant experience, may unlock another perception on urban accessibility that goes beyond basic safeguarding measures. Using an ethnographic approach, we examine the relationship that deaf-blind
and blind or partially sighted people establish with the ambiance in everyday life and the role the sonic ambiance adopts when they navigate the space in the city (both in terms of route and rhythm). We argue the tactile and pain dimensions of sound are an important element in the making of place for blind and deaf-blind individuals. They intervene on aspects of their spatial orientation but also of their connection to their emotions in and towards the space they navigate, deeply shaping their relationship to the city they inhabit and thus their making of place. This paper presents the initial diagnostic of two collectives on aspects of the layout of accessible spaces in Barcelona, their actual use or 'misuse' by individuals in these two collectives, reflecting on the sonic ambiance and the practice of listening, even when being deaf-blind. We conclude by highlighting the importance of rethinking listening as a tactile, emotional and, at times (both in terms of nosiception but emotionally), painful practice.
Andrea Williams Soundwalking: A creative and meditative art practice used to foster a sense of stewardship for local waterways
Citizens and tourists enjoy the beauty of fresh water resources, but when these bodies of water become endangered through the effects of climate change or pollution, these areas become less desirable, and therefore it is important to consider ways to increase perceptions of stewardship to protect them. My research focuses on my art practice termed “soundwalking”, a walk focused on listening to different features of a specific environment. Soundwalks that will be used in this research will be based on listening techniques, exercises, and methods of musical composition that were developed primarily through the study of acoustic ecology and Deep Listening. I connect these ideas with findings from fields like environmental psychology to argue that when we embody a certain area of the environment through a soundwalk, we can begin to understand its needs more. When we understand how we connect to our waterways we can become better caretakers of our waterways.
Stephen Roddy Absolute Nothingness: The Kyoto School and Contemporary Sound Art Practice
This paper explores the concept of Absolute Nothingness as developed in the thought of three key Kyoto School thinkers Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji has influenced the practice of sound art. The paper examines the influence of these three philosophers on D.T. Suzuki and John Cage, the Mono-ha movement, and the Fluxus movement before examining how these influences have shaped sound art practice.
Hugo Branco Sound watching: travel and storytelling in sound
Living in an essentially visual culture, the dominance of sight has dulled our other senses. Through digital media we daily relate to the landscapes and images of places all over the world, but what do these places sound like? If opening our ears may offer insight and raise reflection concerning complex environmental, social, political and economical issues, could something such as sound tourism contribute to educate travellers towards leaving behind a smaller soundprint? Assuming that something such as sound tourism could be possible and even useful, what can be said about sound within the context of travel? And what can be written about travel within the context of sound? Can sound art and travel narrative cross-pollinate in order to analyse, understand and describe the sounds that best define each place, ultimately telling its story in a resonant fashion?
Min Kim Imagine Sound Map: Time, Temporality and Temporariness in the Soundscape of ŌAZE
This paper examines temporality in soundscape, exposed as a deficiency in the practice of online co-created sound map making. Despite their ephemerality, soundscapes in such sound maps are often treated with the same approach as landscapes in visual cartography and presented as though they were the definitive sonic representations of the geographical locations. This inadequacy may serve as a point of departure for creating artistic works, in which the essence of such work relies on this apparent lack in representation of temporality in sound maps. I will exemplify this with an analysis of my sound map piece OĀZE, the principal concept of which consciously stems from addressing the mis-implementation of soundscape in sound maps and adopting temporality as an imperative feature.
Franziska Schroeder Improvisation and the Narratives of Space
This article provides four viewpoints on the narratives of space, allowing us to think about possible relations between sites and sounds and reflecting on how places might tell stories, or how practitioners embed themselves in a place in order to shape cultural, social and/or political narratives through the use of sound. I propose four viewpoints that investigate the relationship between sites and sounds, where narratives are shaped and made through the exploration of specific sonic activities. These are: sonic narrative of space, sonic activism, sonic preservation and sonic participatory action.
I focus on the performance work ‘Museum City’ (Rebelo, Schroeder, Jacinto, Cepeda, as it enables me to reflect on how derelict and/or transitional spaces might be re-examined through the use of sound, particularly by means of live music improvisation.
Caroline Claus L28_Urban Sound Design studio : urban sonic research as critical spatial practice
The undeveloped open space along the Western railway ring L28 has long been marginalized in Brussels planning processes. Thanks to its natural, historical and ecological richness this urban edge area is an excellent research object, especially in the context of urban sound design. The site in question is the L28 railfield, located in Anderlecht and Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, Brussels. To date, Brussels urbanism is little concerned about the quality of the sound environment. Studio_L28 was conceived as a research parallel to the analysis phase of the urban renewal project for that area. The studio facilitated a critical outsiders’ perspective on the current planning process. The studio, was composed of two parts: A morning program with talks and transversal discussions, during which topics related to sound, urbanism and the area were debated. And afternoon sessions with fieldwork on site. In constant dialogue with experts from the fields such as field recording, acoustic ecology and urban planning we reflected on new urban sound strategies for public urban space development along the L28.
Robin Parmar Models of Place for Sonic Practice: Geos, Topos, Choros
The Ancient Greek philosophers developed three approaches to place. Formulated from geometry, Geos distances the observer from her subject, abstracting place into a coordinate grid. This instantiated an ocular bias that has dominated philosophy and the study of place. Two alternative models deserve further consideration. Topos derives from tales of circumnavigation and narratives such as the Odyssey. Places are experienced from an individual viewpoint, narrated in spatial and temporal sequences. Choros identifies regions of difference on the earth, by symbolic correspondence with the heavens. These klimata are built from patterns accumulated over time within a social milieu. This paper proposes that Topos and Choros have useful explanatory power when applied to sonic practice. Examples include Hildegard Westerkamp's soundwalks, Janet Cardiff's fictive "walks", Robert Curgenven's "Climata" project, and the author's own installation In that place, the air was very different.
Antonella dos Santos Pons, Eduardo Rocha Sounding the Forgotten City: soundurbance in João Pessoa, Brazil
This study proposes to deepen the understanding of the contemporary cities soundscape by exploring their present territories, composed by urban voids, margins, transition zones or portions forgotten by traditional sound and urban studies. Held in the city of João Pessoa, Brazil, it investigates how inhabitants create and recreate their lives from their sound territories, while demonstrating the possibility of confronting dominant soundscapes through sound interventions in these marginal zones. In order to achieve that, the soundurbance methodology was formulated based on the soundwalk methodology and the transurbance procedure, thus forming a hybrid concept. This study shows to be particularly important in Latin American cities, where from the disorderly growth in territories outside of the capitalist order – whose domination logics have corresponding sound logics - also echo the sounds of social differences, excluded inhabitants, nature and silence.
Maile Colbert and Ana Monteiro Soundwalk Walk: Listening Backwards, Moving Forwards
The term soundwalk was first used by members of the World Soundscape Project under the leadership of composer Schafer in Vancouver in the 1970s. Hildegard Westerkamp defined soundwalking as "... any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment. It is exposing our ears to every sound around us no matter where we are." (Westerkamp, 1974) For the first humans the act of walking will have arisen from the need to find ways of survival. Once these needs were met, walking became in part a symbolic form of relationship with the world, possibly the first aesthetic act of humanity. Soundwalk-walk holds an emphasis on walk–a guided and shared aural experience of a soundscape along a path with a concentration on movement, the external and the internal, and the relationship between our bodies listening and moving through time, space, and place.
Jennifer Lucy Allan The Lizard & The Cloch: Time, place and foghorns in the coastal soundscape
This paper will present two previously unknown cases of noise complaints in the UK in the late 19th Century, detailing reactions to new foghorns at The Lizard in Cornwall in the 1870s, and at the Cloch lighthouse at the mouth of the Clyde in 1897. I will address what these two case studies can tell us about the way the sound of the foghorn was received into the coastal environment, how feelings about this sound in the coastal soundscape change over time, and how foghorns affected a sense of place for the individuals living there.
Aaron Rosenblum and Sara Soltau SONICBernheim: A Site-Specific Lecture and Performance Series For Everyone
SONICBernheim is a lecture and performance series that explores relationships between sound, music, and nature. Since 2014, there have been six programs presented at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, a park located just outside the city of Louisville, Kentucky. Each program features a lecture by a guest scholar accompanied by site-specific performances from local and regional artists. Performers and lecturers are encouraged to expand their traditional techniques to address questions raised by the Bernheim landscape and soundscape.
As attendees focus their attention on the soundscape, an opportunity arises to consider the implications of noise pollution, the aesthetic qualities of all forms of sound, and the place of sound in the arts.
In this paper, co-curators Aaron Rosenblum and Sara Soltau reflect on and address the challenges and successes of bringing adventurous sound art programming to an audience far removed from the larger cities commonly associated with experimental art programming.
Pedro Rebelo Sound-specific: Specificities of Place and Identity Revealed Through Soundwalks
Soundwalking is contextualised as a reflective, critical and performative practice which has served numerous disciplines and research agendas. The paper analyses two contrasting soundwalking experiences from two socially engaged sonic arts projects; Som da Maré (2014) dealing with contested space in a conflict situation in a Rio de Janeiro Favela and “Listening to Voices” (2015), an interdisciplinary project working with participants diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia to engage with voice hearing. For the participants in these projects, the notion of soundwalking was novel but quickly became a mechanism for reflection and discovery. Its limitations also become apparent and the paper discusses how a focus on sounds needs to be articulated with other senses and experiences in order to get at notions of specificity, qualities of place and identity.
Paper Session 8
Michael Pigott The Soundproof Box: Using Phonography to Investigate the Workplace of the Cinema Projectionist
In order to investigate, analyse and document the soundscape of the analogue cinema projection box, before it passes into history, a series of audio recordings was made within functioning projection boxes, a selection of which will be released as an ‘album’ on the Gruenrekorder label in 2017. The recordings, made in UK boxes that maintain both 35mm film projection and D-Cinema digital projection, also capture the shifting sonic texture of this environment as it changes from primarily analogue to primarily digital operation. Just as cinema-goers seldom get to see inside this hidden, ‘invisible’, space at the back of the auditorium, these sound recordings also reveal it to be a sound-proofed box, a noisy environment in which the interface between operator and machine takes audible form, in which noise of one sort indicates smooth operation, while another sort indicates faults that need to be addressed.
José Vasco Carvalho, André Perrotta and Luís Martins Sonic Place: A Sonic Augmented Reality Soundscape Experience
This paper describes the conceptualization, technical and artistic development and the first results of the Sonic Place project.
Sonic Place is an ongoing project centered in the relationship between the cultural heritage, sonic identity and sonic memories of specific places. Presenting both artistic and scientific objectives, the project tries to promote sonic ecology awareness and explores new technological possibilities for listening and discovering soundscape compositions.
The project proposes a sonic augmented reality experience of current and past soundscapes that can be experienced by the use of a custom made mobile application.
The project was presented at the 18th Biennial of Cerveira in Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal, 2015 and on the 6th Semibreve Festival in Braga, Portugal, 2016. In total, more than 100 on site recordings were made, 20 musical compositions were developed and 224 users experienced the application.
The desire for a precise three-dimensional positioning of sound in the 360° sphere can be traced back to the antiquity. Although numerous 20th century composers tried to implement their 3D audio ‘visions’, the full technological possibility to accomplish sonic plasticity has come up only recently by 3D sound systems, as in this case the Spatial SoundWave System (SSW) by Fraunhofer Institut Ilmenau/Germany. However, technical perfection does not equal the artistically convincing, as 3D audio is a distinct aesthetic concept. By referring to the rich cultural history of 3D sound creation, this paper points out major reflections and criteria which lead to aesthetic necessity and plausibility for 3D audio productions. The approach given by the term soundscape is crucial. Trendy terms like immersion, tangibility, illusion, and virtuality are questioned in reference to overused aesthetics, naiv realism and the lack of providing critical distance. It is suggested that a huge artistic potential for specific 3D audio production lies in dramaturgical approaches like fragmentization, deconstruction, as well as in the careful conceptualization of auditory materials and their representational potential.
Thomas Kusitzky Cultivating urban sound as object of design
Emphasizing the necessity and urgency of a conscious urban sound design, this paper offers an insight into the notion of cultivating urban sound as an object of design. On the basis of theoretical considerations and exemplified by initial results of an extensive research on the subject, the text indicates that this cultivation process not only comprises further developing and transforming urban design practice itself with its methods, tools and measures but, to the same degree, the cultural and social reference framework. Furthermore, the article explicates the congruity, complexity and range of influence of the concept and points out the advantages as well as the prospects of cultivating urban sound as an object of design.
Eric Somers Interpretive Artificial Soundscapes Based on Natural Soundscape Structures and Elements
In this paper the author describes his initial experiences in electro-acoustic music composition and in soundscape composition, then describes how he was eventually able to use the structure of the soundscape in the creation of abstract music for a film.
Barry Morse Site-Specific Music Composition and the Soniferous Garden
Imagine strolling through a garden that, in addition to the usual sights, scents and sounds, contains strange constructions: a steel canyon; a stepped pyramid; two giant concave dishes. Now imagine taking out a flute and playing with sounds that echo and amplify, whisper and reverberate back to you from these odd objects.
Music composed for a naturalistic garden designed with acoustical properties, as if it were an organic orchestra, would demonstrate site-specificity of the highest order. Such music would only be effective in that one place. How to accomplish this integration of landscape and sound is the object of this paper.
The uniqueness of this proposed project, an extension of composer R. Murray Schafer’s “soniferous garden” concept, would have benefits to composers, landscape designers and the public. But what is more, perhaps we will begin to rediscover the magic and mystery our prehistoric ancestors experienced with sound in the landscape.
This paper presents early findings from an on-going research project, through which I am exploring sounds and ways of listening at a London shelter for homeless people. In detailing and discussing my research process and the data this has yielded to date, I argue that a focus on the circulation and transmission of particular modes of listening (auditory heritage) may offer researchers valuable insights into the ways in which social injustice is produced and perpetuated.
Tracing instances, object specimens, potentials and practices wherein the fields of sound art, sound studies, science and natural history are either entangled or at stake, this paper attempts to navigate ways in which underwater sound is converted into what Stefan Helmreich terms a “scientifically, technologically, and epistemologically apprehensible zone.” More broadly, the paper investigates how nonhuman sound production and reception extends the notion of hearing beyond audition and where (nominally) “mute” natural matter might transmute into “things that talk” through mechanisms of sounding or notions of ecological auscultation.
Elen Fluegge Soundly Planning: practically listening to (Belfast) sound spaces.
The paper is part of PhD research in urban sound studies, which explores how applied listening practices may help develop a critical ear for urban sites and thus contribute to a productive consideration of sound space for future urban planning. This paper focuses on the process of adopting sonic thinking and practices drawn from sound arts into site-based fieldwork, grounded on uses of soundwalking, site analysis and in situ interview. It recounts iterative developments of these approaches in the project. It further reflects on the personal process of re-situating the project with regard to physical, social and sonic characteristics of an unfamiliar city (Belfast), and a reframing of the project from one of translating strategies, to one of guided listening and dialogue.
Konca Saher, Gurkan Mihci Auditory Exploration of Derinkuyu Underground City Cappadocia Turkey
This study seeks to understand the soundscape of Derinkuyu Underground City in Cappadocia in Turkey and its sonic characteristics from an analytical and practical point in relation to its different urban spaces with the application of acoustic space and arena theory and soundwalk methodology to understand these sonic experiences. Firstly, characteristics of Derinkuyu Underground City is described. Then the methodology is analyzed and the experience of the soundwalk on site is described. Later, the sonic observations that are unique to the site are presented and discussed. Finally, a further discussion is set regarding the lo-fi/hi-fi soundscape theory to analyze the social and cultural impacts of the city’s soundscape and how the inhabitants of the city might have perceived their sonic environment.
Matt Green and John D’Arcy Recalling the River: The River Soundscape in the Site-specific and Social Practice of Tolka Nights
Tolka Nights was a series of public events that explored the social, historical and ecological significance of the River Tolka, Ireland. Produced by an interdisciplinary team of six artists, the events took place in three distinct sites along the river in September of 2015. This paper outlines the project with particular focus on the aurally-engaged activities of two members of the artist team: Matt Green’s field recording, film-making and sound installation practice and John D’Arcy’s participative choral workshops and performances.
Ingeborg Entrop Tracing Walfridus - a quest for the sound of a past landscape
This paper tells of my artistic search for the sound of a landscape that no longer exists in the Netherlands. It brought me to the pristine raised bogs of Estonia, where I made binaural field recordings. That material has been used to make a series of new sound pieces. But more important, the undertaking revealed empirical insight in what it means to be somewhere and how space can become a place: not the spatial dimensions, but temporal aspects are paramount.
Heta Kaisto The secret of sound in Jacques Derrida and Maurice Blanchot
This paper aims to discuss and ask questions about the role and meaning of sound and voice in the constellation of language, writing, speech and listening in philosophy. I will reflect this in the thinking of two post-war philosophers and great literary voices both sensitive to sound: Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). I would like to introduce a sense of sound existing on the outskirts of experience in silence, folding almost as a secret, that is inspired by Alice Lagaay’s notion for the need of philosophy of voice. Especially in the landscape of (writing a) disaster interrelations between art and philosophy become the most visible addressing ways of meaning and meaning-making, experience and ontological presumptions behind any storytelling and writing. What could sound mean for philosophy?
Andy McGraw The Soundscape of American Hyperincarceration
In this paper I situate the Richmond city jail within the highly racialized context of contemporary American hyperincarceration. I describe the ways in which the sounds of suffering were muted in the transition from the old city jail to a new, “cutting edge” facility in 2014. I discuss the music that residents have produced in both facilities and conclude by arguing that the contemporary jail is only one component of several interlocking structures that render Richmond’s majority African American population inaudible to its minority Anglo-American population. Studying carceral soundscapes represents a political intervention by bringing into the public auditorium the sounds of suffering that have been muted both within and without penal institutions.
Amanda Gutierrez and Jenn Grossman The soundscape of enclaves, two study cases of the Immigrant Acoustic Territories
This paper focuses on navigating the soundscapes of ethnic enclaves in the urban environments of New York and Chicago. Is it possible to get a sense of segregation/cultural immersion through sound? What does the local soundscape tell us about the growth or destruction of native enclaves? What sounds are masking the native culture and what sounds resonate, be it sounds of urban development or sounds of a long-standing community? How does the existing soundscape shape the process of adaptation? How do the sounds frame the public perception of the environment? How can we embody the soundscapes of urban development?
Leandro Pisano Terrae Incognitae: Crossing the Borders of Sonic Ecology
This paper argues that a contemporary perspective on the soundscape must inevitably acknowledge the invisible agency of sound as a force that reveals the possible assemblages that make a place, offering ways to rethink the relations between power, politics and space in a critical ecological perspective. A number of art‐based case studies support this thesis statement. In particular, the paper focuses on some projects developed during the Liminaria 2015 sound art residency in in rural southern Italy. The analysis of these case studies entails a critical engagement with such notions, and the proposition of a possible approach in which the crossing of the current boundaries regulating the practices of field recording – in the ‘acoustic ecology’ perspective ‐ is a prelude to a novel experience of place and territory.
Reinhard Reitzenstein Acoustic Communities of the Forest - Confessions of a Dendrophiliac
Relationships among communities of trees include subtle components of sound. Professor Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia and her team discovered that trees were connected through an underground web of mycorrhizal fungi transferring carbon, nutrients and water to one another. Researchers have chronicled small electrical charges between trees manifesting as crackling sounds.
German forester Peter Wohlleben writes about trees as social beings.
I make drawings of trees whose images are composed of names individual written in tiny letters up to as many as 50,000 times. Each image is a large tone poem. In order to make each drawing I am also intoning the name of the tree each as I write. During the process of drawing/writing/sounding each image production becomes a personal performance, akin to an incantation intended to lend support and strengthen the trees.
Conor McCafferty Mapping, scoring and activating urban sonic space: Ljud vid Nissan / Sound at Nissan
This paper explores how maps were used as an important interface for the analysis of public urban spaces, artistic development, public engagement and sonic activation in Sound at Nissan, a sound art festival staged in Halmstad, Sweden, in September 2016. In the festival, various kinds of maps – what we might call sound maps or listening maps – were used not as results but starting points. These maps were used to characterize sound spaces in the city, to help participating artists plan their works and to engage with residents of Halmstad as participants and audiences. In this paper, I consider the festival programme as a “score”, before discussing the approaches used by the artists in their works and the knowledge they generated. I will make suggestions for how the approach used and knowledge generated by the festival could inform planning, by rethinking urban space in terms of “sonic spatial intelligence”.
Antonella Radicchi The HUSH CITY app. A new mobile app to empower local communities to identify, access and evaluate "everyday quiet areas" in their neighborhoods.
Today, cities are becoming increasingly noisier and, in Europe alone, over 125 million people are affected by noise pollution from traffic every year. Consequently, in the past years, there has been a growing interest in protecting and planning quiet areas, which had been recognized as an important tool to reduce noise pollution by the Environmental Noise Directive in 2002. However, developing a common methodology to define and plan quiet areas especially in cities is still challenging to the point that the European Environment Agency has encouraged scholars to experiment with mixed methodologies integrating the soundscape approach into the traditional acoustic ones. Against this background, this contribution describes the framework in which the HUSH CITY app has been developed: the “Beyond the Noise: Open Source Soundscapes” project, which experiments with a novel mixed methodology based on the “open source soundscape” approach to identify, assess and plan small, quiet areas in cities, by actively involving citizens and using open source technology. Then, the state of the art of mobile apps available on the market for crowdsourcing noise & sound maps will be presented, and the advancement in the field brought about by the HUSH CITY app will be discussed. The new mobile app will then be described, providing technical details and information on the user interface and its graphic design. Lastly, the first results obtained from citizen-driven data collection on field will be presented and discussed, outlining the next steps and possible conclusions.
Daniel Paiva, Eduardo Brito-Henriques Sounding the unheard city: an approach to the soundscapes of urban vacant lands in Lisbon
In this paper, we will present preliminary results of our ongoing study on the soundscapes of vacant lands in Lisbon Eastern Zone (LEZ). Our methodology comprised two stages. Firstly, all the vacant lands of Lisbon municipality were identified and georeferenced using remote sensing methods and high-resolution aerial photography. In the second stage, a field survey with the purpose of characterising the morphology, vegetation, and animal and human occupation of the vacant lands was conducted, along with field recordings of their soundscapes. The results of our study include the classification of vacant lands and of their soundscapes. We argue that listening to the sounds of urban vacant lands defies traditional notions of the urban soundscape as dominated by anthrophonies.
Angeliki Diakrousi Empowerment of gender voice: Sound acts in Victoria Square
This paper is about a participatory sound installation and action at Victoria Square in Athens, dealing with the social and gendered space, and specifically with the way that the inhabitants of the square gather around and socialize in certain places. The visitors of the square, mostly male immigrants, seek to create the conditions of a temporary 'home', which confronts the one they left behind. The project seeks to create conditions to empower the presence of women in the square, intensifying thus the social contradictions between public spheres, in a way that can lead to new understandings and appropriations of the space.
Canções Profundas is a cinematic audio narrative using field recordings, electronic processing, and elements of traditional Azorean and improvised music to imagine the journey of my Portuguese ancestors from the Azores to California in the mid-19th century. During my residency at Invisible Places I will be working with an ensemble of local musicians to realize a live performance here, and collecting new field recordings with the intention of eventually adapting the work as a sound installation.
Shores is a soundscape installation in a boat. Boat sailing and fishing are an important part of Azores’ cultural heritage that has been declining. Here a boat is converted into an acoustic shell to transmit a collective sonic memory. The boat is placed in an urban public space. It invites passers-by for a sound travel through São Miguel’s shores’ vibrant ecosystems, its unique acoustic ecology, and the fishing community’s sonic memory.
Shores installation results from a dynamic of co-creation. A workshop involves fishermen families and students in a process of sound mapping, field recordings, soundscape composition and installation of the acoustic boat. It looks to encourage conscious listening across generations and a sonic connection with the acoustic environment. The goal is to incite an active engagement in the co-creation of our soundscapes.
Robin Parmar "In that place, the air was very different"
This residency is a sounding of São Miguel, an investigation of the culture, geography, and biome of the island through sonic practice. Distinctive field recordings will be compiled into a sound pool, joining those from previous soundings (in Ireland, Spain, Slovenia). This accumulation of sonic memories represents the artist's engagement with place as a generative field, always in the process of being formed. The resulting installation presents these pools as overlapping sonic zones. Visitors are invited to trace their own paths, creating a listening experience responsive to their own attention. "In that place, the air was very different" considers our embedded situation in a matrix of connections and flows. We create place, as place creates us.
Sounding the City is an online exhibition dedicated to capturing urban environments and re-imagining their soundscapes through site-specific installations and acoustic interventions. These installations emerge from their surroundings and occur in the environments themselves. They invite our ears to focus on the music of the places we find ourselves in, and draw our gaze towards characteristics of urban environments that might otherwise go unnoticed. These interventions aim to transcend our everyday experience of space by blurring the perceptual lines between what is natural and what has been inserted into the environment.
On our walks through the city we discovered places that are undergoing significant change. Most are neglected or in-between spaces, and they may vanish in the near future. As we direct our attention to their uniqueness, their sounds and their resonances with past, present and future are transformed into memorable experiences. In a sense, our work is a living archive where these spaces can live on in our collective memory, even as they disappear from sight.
The project consists in creating a sound interface that can scan the sound environment in S. Miguel Island with a mobile phone.
The interface uses camera and the input volume of the microphone of a mobile phone and a program that detects sound around us. Sound frequency, beat, and pitch are analyzed by the program. When sound has some kind of property like level, frequency, beat or pitch, an audio tracks starts. A new composition overlaps the real sound.
We will just need to explore the soundscape to detect sounds, exploring the territory and discovering the sonic identity of the landscape.
Emmanuel Mieville Clouds of sounds over São Miguel: Field recording and granulation of sounds
This workshop is proposed for inhabitants of the island of São Miguel to awaken to sounds of daily life in a musical direction. It will be over 2 days, and the result will be given to the symposium audience as a concert. The first day will be recording out in the field, following participants choice. Second day will be in the museum, for editing and transforming the sounds, with granulation software, sensor and computer. The musician will be there to do the soundtakes, and guide participants to actually transform the sounds with simple musical gesture in the sensor, i-e fingers pressure.
This workshop is addressed to a variety of attendants, with a special interest in the sonic environment (from individuals and students to researchers and educators). The scope of this training is the familiarization of participants with an applied methodology for the study of soundscape (Papadimitriou et al, 2009). The methodology is based on the surveying, the analysis and the representation of attributes which are characterizing the sonic environment. The workshop concentrates on the processes of listening, documenting and describing the acoustic conditions or the sonic events at an area of interest.
Through this training activity, participants are getting in contact with acoustic ecology in three ways: primary, during an introductory section, by the presentation of key meanings related to the study of the sonic environment (e.g. background/foreground, origins/categories of sounds, intensity, noise, diversity etc.); sequentially, during a survey section, by developing basic skills on the field (listening, recording, measuring and data logging); and finally, during a data processing section, by analyzing and presenting the results of the survey (e.g. descriptive text, data tables, thematic maps).
Reinhard Reitzenstein Dendrophilia (the love of trees)
Workshop where participants visit a nearby park and will be asked to select one of the trees growing there and take a photo of that tree. The photo will be the starting point for developing a drawing. Indoors they will begin the drawing. The drawing will be loosely based on artist's experience of creating the image of a tree using only text to articulate a given tree. The text is simply the name of the tree written in tiny letters over and over again until the image is complete.
Each image is a large tone poem where the name of the tree is intoned each time it is written. During the process of drawing/writing/sounding each image production becomes a personal performance, akin to an incantation that lends support and strengthens the trees. Collectively we will send our support to the trees through this act of drawing.
Amanda Gutierrez & Eric Leonardson How do soundwalks engage urban communities in soundscape awareness?
The workshop provides both practical and the poetic opportunities in group listening, reflection on the ecological practice of soundwalking, and practical strategies for engaging public awareness in the soundscape, here defined as any dynamic system mediated in sound between individuals and their environment.
Through listening, dialogue and responsive exercises workshop participants will learn strategies, not only for study, but also for activating communities. We will address benefits and pitfalls that can occur in government, civic and cultural partnerships that are necessary for sustainable professional research and meaningful shared creative social practice in contested spaces.
Sabine Breitsameter, Natascha Rehberg, Aleksandar Vejnovic 3D Audio and Soundscape
Each 3D-audio composition creates a sonic landscape. Understanding 3D-audio as an autonomous means of expression leads deep into the field of acoustic ecology. The significant terminology provides a system of parameters for conceptualizing and composing within 3D-Audio environments and therefore clarifies the narrative power of soundscape as a concept. The workshop identifies the parameters and outlines an approach to 3D-Audiodesign including aspects of the practical implementationics and production logist within object-based production systems. Based on that, the participants develop and discuss their concepts for a 3D-audio composition and learn, how their ideas can be realized on a 3D-audio workstation like the SpatialSound Wave System by the Fraunhofer Institute (IDMT).
The workshop will introduce participants to the world of sound art, while providing techniques for making tools for creating these experiences. This will include the fabrication of hand-made microphones and amplifiers for use in installations, performances, and scientific research. The goal of the workshop is to take these tools into the field and use them for artistic investigation and public engagement.
Franziska Schroeder & Pedro Rebelo Smart Listening and Craftmanship
For this workshop we propose to work with invite a local school to join us in an exploration of listen in order to engage young participants with a A newly developed listening app, called LiveShout. This app developed at SARC was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and will be used as a platform for discovering ways of listening participation and collaboration (AHRC). Part of the workshop will entail showing the children the process of the app development and we will practice using our smartphones in creative listening ways.
Matt Green Ears of Others: Activities in Listening like Animals
Sound artist Matt Green will facilitate a workshop upon the theme of the aural-perceptual abilities of animals. The workshop is to be practical, open and explorative. The workshop is to feature critical listening, field recording, sound processing, sound modelling and paper mask-making activities. Both indoor and outdoor activities are planned.
The workshop is intended to build regard and empathy towards the animals with whom we share our environments, and in turn insight consideration of how we impact these animals. Furthermore, the workshop employs animals and their ways of hearing and listening to encourage a reflection upon our own ways of hearing and listening, and to frame and motivate activities in listening and creatively engaging with sound.
The workshop will develop skills in listening, sound recording, editing and processing and creatively address such questions as why the ears of certain species of owl are asymmetric, one ear higher than the other. No prior knowledge or experience with sound is needed to partake in the workshop. Participants of all ages from 14+ are welcome.
Annie Mahtani and Iain Armstrong / SOUNDkitchen São Miguel SOUNDwalk
Guided by the SOUNDkitchen collective, these walks typically involve simple 'ear cleaning' exercises designed to draw attention to different sonic features particular to the location. We are also interested in extending the walker's listening abilities, augmenting the natural hearing range through the use of audio technology. This may include listening to recorded audio tracks that present recordings from locations at different times of day, night or year. We might transport listeners to visible landmarks such as inside a church or onto the roof of a distant building. We also use carefully placed microphones to enable walkers to hear hidden sounds from locations that are usually inaccessible such as under water, high in the branches of trees or inside objects. Walks can take up to 12 participants each time.
Virginie Dubois Electromagnetic Field Acoustic Explorations
The soundwalk -or acoustic exploration- proposed by Virginie Dubois consists of a guided walking tour that invites the audience to listen to the presence and activity of the electro-magnetic field (EMF). Using an electro-magnetic detector, the audience will be guided through the city of Ponta Delgada and its natural surrounding, to listen to the various radiations that propagate through space. The presence and movements of radio-waves, microwaves and light radiations can be compared to an invisible architecture that exist beyond the usual scope of our perception. Revealed by the EM detector, the acoustic signals of the various radiations will allow the audience to explore the environment, while discovering the invisible soundscape that occupy its space.
Maile Colbert and Ana Monteiro Soundwalk Walk: Listening and Moving
…is a soundwalk, with a concentration on walking, movement, and the relationship between our bodies listening and our bodies moving through time, space, and place, guided by artists and researchers Ana Monteiro and Maile Colbert. We invite you to a guided, scored, and choreographed walk that will include the focus of deep to radical listening, intertwined with the focus of movement meditation and kinesthetic exploration. “Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears” - Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations
Leah Barclay, Luís Vieira, Sandy Sur, Toby Gifford and Lyndon Davis Island Nex(us): Arquipélago
Island Nex(us): Arquipélago in an augmented reality sound walk that connects the local communities of São Miguel island with the sounds and stories of island communities in the Asia Pacific region who are facing the true ramifications of climate change. The initial layers of sound walk will connect with Vanuatu Women’s Water Music who hail from the remote northern tropical islands of Gaua and Merelava in Vanuatu. The soundscapes will be underscored by a cultural ceremony from Sandy Sur, a community leader and researcher who focuses on Vanuatu Water Music and its connection to the environment. Sandy’s research aims to develop a deeper understanding of the role sound plays in the environment and how the Water Music of Vanuatu is deeply inspired by place, nature and culture. This cultural tradition is now evolving in response to rapidly changing climates and can act as a call to action. The second phase of the sound walk will connect with Makepeace Island in the Noosa Biosphere Reserve in Queensland, Australia. The diverse ecological soundscapes will be underpinned by a ceremony with Lyndon Davis and Gubbi Gubbi Dance, traditional custodians of the Island region. The songs and stories will explore ecological interconnection, sustainability and deep listening practices.
The Unthinkable of Nothingness (UN) is a performance proposal focused on the possible experiences of listening, following the principles of acousmatic as it was conceived by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras who proposed the abolition of his own visual appearance, through the use of a curtain, while he was teaching to his students. He argued that by the implementation of this process, the concentration on the message would be much stronger and deeper. Following this principle, UN seeks for promote this practise applied to the fruition of music content in a black box context, deprived of light.
