Hallo list,

I would like to come back to Ginas project Spine, connecting visuals with
sound which gave the images an additional depth.  I wonder how loud the
sound was and how difficult to negotiate with the permission of city. The
issue of sound in public space connected to visuals I think is an
interesting topic that deserves more attention and even can be used to
trigger interaction with a visual artpiece. From my point of view of a
trained urban planner this seems to be a topic that is relevant if new media
art steps out into urban public space and is confronted with not only a new
audience but a set of whole other rules and conventions different from
gallery space. Let me be a bit provocative, I can definitely recommend
artists and media art curators who curate in urban public space, which
became quite popular recently to know a bit more about the concept and
characteristics of public space and not only about the topic of surveillance
and the fact that they face a wider audience, they dont have to know how to
design a plaza, but..... hm, thats another discussion what would be
necessary to know ...

OK back to visuals and sound in urban space

Sound is usually treated as noise in urban space, urban planners learn quite
detailed various methods how to protect inhabitants from the sound of the
city. Even though the attitude towards audio disturbance varies in different
countries (the sensitivity in Germany seems to be extremely high.... )
Concerning commercial screens in public spaces, the restriction to run them
mute is considered as a huge disadvantage since there is no tradition of
mute videos in the development of advertising. Sound is also an essential
part of the movie culture which predeterms the viewer in public space. So
there is a conflict between subconscious expectations and possibilities.

Visuals in urban space is usually treated as information and also widely
accepted as advertisement (see the coverage of whole buildings with
advertisements) Only recently people start to talk more serious about visual
and light pollution. On the other hand, traditional information transmission
via sound has more and more vanished since the booming traffic noise
problems in our cities.

But sound is now recently discovered by media artists as element that can be
integrated in an urban experience. The idea of Soundwalks, sound annotations
or urban sonic cartography have increased. Of course it is an important
question for curating these works: How much connected and dependent is the
sound on being listened to at the specific outdoor location, how much is
sound an image connected with each other, are there deeper interactions
between sound and the surrounding ( I mean more than just that the sound is
triggered via a GPS location code and is telling you something about the
history of the place), does the sound help me to build a new relation to the
space and maybe to its other inhabiting people.

Another thing, often headphones are used or the individual mobile phone to
again protect the urban space from "the art noise". In a sense they play
with an immersion of the individual user into the surrounding urban space
while the user from the outside is more perceived as an alien. Not to say
that this can be also used specificly as interesting effect, acting as a
stranger since the encounter with strangers is another underlying concept of
urban public space....

It would be interesting to see more artworks that play on a deeper level
with the connectedness of the urban visual and the urban soundscape. For
example with the discrepancy that visuals are accepted to have a wide range
of visibility while sound usually is accepted either to be received
individually via headphones or only in a very short range for a small public
or in in a very short time in form of interventions.

What other interesting effects can be created, than that the sound is
already audible while the visuals are still not visible. It seems it is a
challenge to find ideas that play with this restrictions that occur if you
go with media art into public space. Especially what more is possible than
showing mute video art in public space and how can it be connected with
sound or even with smell? Spine seems to have shown that use of sound can be
a tool to help visual art to compete with the visual overload of urban
spaces.

Does anyone have more experience with curating artpieces that play with this
difficult connection of sound and visual screenings in the outdoor public
space without the necessity to use special equipment like headphones?

Best,
Mirjam


___________________________
Mirjam Struppek
Interactionfield
Urban Media Research, Berlin
http://www.interactionfield.de
http://www.urbanscreens.org

Urban Space, Public Sphere and the New Media