The Incidental Person: Reviewing the Identity of the Urban Acoustic Planner
(2016)
author(s): Sven Anderson
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
At the intersection of the urban and the aural lies a territory that remains largely unplanned and frequently marginalized by more dominant agendas that shape contemporary urban development. This paper explores this territory – as both an experiential and an administrative space – through a two-year public art commission in which I initiated an artist placement for myself within the city council in Dublin Ireland, working in the self-declared position of urban acoustic planner. By stepping away from the centralizing concept of the soundscape and drawing parallels with participatory artworks that lie somewhat outside of the traditional canon of works embodied by contemporary sound studies, this paper seeks to discover the identity of this role at its most open, inclusive, and plural.