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Planning urban soundscapes
Sketch sound analysis of Bissingen Village, Germany, from “Five Village Soundscapes”, No. 4, The Music of the Environment Series, edited by R. Murray Schafer (reproduced by permission of the World Soundscape Project, Simon Fraser University).
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The sonic qualities of cities and urban spaces are the subject of growing research in “urban sound planning”, which is increasingly being used to inform the design of new cities. However, awareness of these qualities and their positive and negative aspects is nothing new, having been the focus of works by artists, audio documentary makers, sound historians, composers, architects and urbanists for several decades.
Canadian artist and academic R. Murray Schafer, a key figure in the field of acoustic ecology and a founder of the World Soundscape Project (WSP), coined the term “soundscape” for his work on noise pollution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From such negative beginnings, the development of studies, artworks and recordings of soundscapes and the utilisation of “found sounds” from field recordings have all contributed to a significant body of investigations benefitting artists, spatial practitioners and communities alike.
Whilst the recording or collection of found sounds originated in the biophonic documentary recordings of natural environments, this activity moved indoors some time ago. Practitioners such as Francisco Lopez have recorded the sounds of buildings derelict or otherwise, overlaying and massaging these sounds into controlled recordings suitable for aurally bombarding audiences in blacked-out listening spaces.
Other artists, such as Janet Cardiff, have deployed high-end technology and spatial manipulation to place participants and observers into the soundscape of a specific place (both real or abstract) regardless of their actual location. For example, Cardiff created her work The Forty Part Motet from a version of one of the finest examples of early music, loosened from its physical demands (five choirs, forty singers, a decent choir stand) by the use of forty carefully placed speakers. The simultaneous music and acoustic environment converts the selected physical location into a sacred chapel space – sound as the manipulator and creator of architecture, both sited and siteless.
More recently, the collection of found sounds and haptic soundscapes has moved into the fetishisation of “geophony”, with the increasingly available means of documenting urban spaces through the sounds that locate them – physically, historically, culturally.
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Melonie Bayl-Smith is an architect, musician and educator from Sydney, Australia. An adjunct professor at UTS School of Architecture, her project, studio and research collaborators span institutions and practices across Australia, Europe and the UK. She writes for AR Asia Pacific, AA, Artichoke, Cyclic Defrost, and contextfreesound amongst other publications.
Video: “Soundscapes”, stereosoundagency.com
Cities such as Melbourne, London and Montreal now have online city soundmaps readily accessed for use by the public, featuring “pins” that indicate the location of a particular environment and the activities typical of that recording site. The value of these maps is variable – recordings range from the mundane to those of real social significance, including lost sounds inherently reliant on human interaction, such as trading or manufacturing activities.
With the danger of standardised urban sound planning resulting in a type of aural hygiene in safe and healthy cities, the work of sound artists, composers and collectors could become increasingly valuable, as they plunder public places for elusive and unexpected sounds, then hack and covert the acoustics of urban spaces. Architects and designers, rather than looking to homogenise the city and segregate soundscapes, might instead embrace the artist’s exploration and trapping of the sometimes indeterminate, sometimes exceptional sounds caught between buildings and walls. In turn, both fragments and slabs of soundscapes could better convey and relate the social significance of human activities, channelling these as the basis for planning better cities. I
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»I don’t mistrust reality of which I hardly know anything. I just mistrust the picture of it that our senses deliver.«
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