Soundscape
‘simultaneously a physical environment and a way of perceiving that environment: it is both a world and a culture constructed to make sense of that world.
The physical aspects of a soundscape consist not only of the sounds themselves […] but also the material objects that create, and sometimes destroy, those
sounds. A soundscape’s cultural aspects incorporate scientific and aesthetic ways of listening, a listener’s relationship to their environment, and the social
circumstances that dictate who gets to hear what‘
Emily Davison: The Soundscape of Modernity
This exhibition and symposium explores our auditory encounter with the urban environment and asks how we might plan for the soundscape of our futures cities, homes and dwellings. It asks in what ways can the soundscape and the practice of
listening inform and make meaningful the experience of living within urban environments. Do we need to revisit our relationship to the sound of cities, if so what changes should be made? What is the role of the artist and other professionals in considering
alternative approaches to listening as well as helping to celebrate, re-imagine and regenerate the spaces, buildings and institutions of the urban soundscape.
The sound works presented in this exhibition bring together a diverse range of artists whose practice addresses ways in which we encounter, explore and navigate the sounds of our urban environments. Danny Bright’s Ghosting Ruins explores the multiple sonic temporalities and auditory heritage of industrial ruins. Paul Garcia Stone’s Nunhead: From Dawn to Dusk charts the intersections of industrialization with the sounds of the natural world, where freight train whistles, fox calls and bird song coalesce. Ingrid Plum’s The Lightship is a response to the architecture of a decommissioned lightship in Kent. The up flow of air by Conall Gleeson and Jonathan Milo Taylor is a composition made from recordings of the flow of air through the scaffold structure of St Peter’s Church that is directly opposite the Onca Gallery.
Symposium
June 2nd 6-8.30pm,
ONCA Gallery BN1 4GB, UK
Sound and the Urban Environment
Admission Free
Please register in advance
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/symposium-sound-and-the-urban-environment-tickets-16983080852
Sonic, Digital, Public Spaces: NetPark
Dr Frauke Behrendt discusses how sound and the digital occupy public spaces, drawing form her work developing the digital sculpture park NetPark, she highlights some of the issues of community and collective experience within
a digital age.
Speaker: Dr Frauke Behrendt, University of Brighton
www.metalculture.com/projects/netpark/
The Nexus of Soundscape, Art, and Social Action
‘We must hear the acoustic environment as a musical composition and own responsibility for its composition.’
R Murray Schafer, The Soundscape and the Tuning of the World
Speakers: Lisa Lavia , Managing Director, Noise Abatement Society
Dr Harry Witchel Discipline Leader in Physiology, Brighton and Sussex Medical School
Urban Acoustic Cartography: Sound mapping as a tool for participatory urban analysis and pedagogy
Sound mapping practices and projects have proliferated around the world in recent years. They offer a critical alternative to the emphasis on noise and noise pollution in current policy, scholarship and practice. Their multivalent character
suggests new insights across disciplines: the study of urban sound; practices of (collaborative) sound art; sound in architectural and urban design practice; urban pedagogy and urban data and policy work.
Speaker: Conor McCafferty is a researcher based in Belfast. He is currently pursuing a PhD titled The Acoustic Mapping of Cities, with the Recomposing the City research group at Queen's University Belfast led by Dr. Sarah Lappin and Dr. Gascia Ouzounian. Prior to commencing his PhD, Conor worked for six years with PLACE, a not-for-profit architecture centre based in Belfast. https://twitter.com/comccaff
The Socialisation of Sound
Looking to place sound within an urban social context, framing and contextualising it as an important part of research on space, place and spatial practices. The study of audio cultures, noise cultures, and the soundscape are explored in very different fields of research with very little overlap: ethnomusicology, communications, history and the physical sciences. These all explore sound within society but in very different ways. The result is that while there is a large field of research into sound, there is often a separation between sound as a physical and scientific object and the social meaning of sound. This talk examines a project, which mapped the soundscape of The Smithfield area of Dublin city (an urban regenerated space) over four years with 84 teenagers, 5 older adults and through a series of auto-ethnographic walks. It presents some key findings from this study.
Speaker: Dr Linda O Keeffe, Lecturer in Sound Studies, Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Art
Lancaster University
Editor of the Interference Journal, Vice president of the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association
Zone of Tranquil Access
The participants then shift their focus of listening to conversations with locals about the zone, its value to them, the sonic habitats that give rise to it, and their ecological health. The wheel and map, scaled up to fill a hall and mounted on tables, allow participants and locals to share their findings with one another. They become iconic features around which participants can engage the public about ideas for change.