Journal of Sonic Studies
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About this portal
The portal is used to publish contributions for the online OA Journal of Sonic Studies, the storage of A/V materials, and the storage of previous issues.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
,
Vincent Meelberg ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
url:
http://sonicstudies.org/about
Recent Activities
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Animas: Disaster, Data, and the Resonance of a River
(2019)
author(s): Brian House
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In this paper, I discuss the conceptual framework and development of Animas, an artwork which links sounding materials to the Animas River in Colorado. The Animas River is heavily contaminated by leakage from abandoned gold mines, including a 2015 spill in which three million gallons of wastewater were accidentally released into the river by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), turning the water a bright orange and threatening agriculture, tourism, and an already “disturbed” alpine ecology. Animas draws on precedents in sound art and explores transduction as a means of relating to more-than-human agencies and avoiding over-simplified representations of environmental degradation. Changes in the clarity of the water, invisible indicators of the dissolved metals within it, and the dynamics of its daily and seasonal flows all become sound in the gallery, producing timbral "color" from the river's continually changing composition—these data are provided by the Southern Ute Water Quality Program and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The piece acknowledges how our limited temporal sensibilities are challenged by the imbrication of the geologic time of minerals, the historical time of extractive industries, and the immediate urgency of equitable responses to ecological change.
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Beyond the Azhan: Abu Dhabi’s Cacophonous Soundscape
(2019)
author(s): Diana Chester
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In Abu Dhabi, a city where the adhan, (The Islamic Call to Prayer), is recited five times daily, mapping the cacophony of its sounds can provide insight into its built environment and the lived experiences of the people in it. By considering the urban ambiance of the city through the acoustical mappings of both the uniform and pre- recorded natures of the adhan in Abu Dhabi City, I will offer a perspective of how live recordings can participate in a discourse on the aesthetic and temporal landscape of the city. What is it about the process of recording what we hear that allows the sonic content of the recording to become live, and does this impact our understanding of place? What do recordings reveal about urban spaces, and how do we “listen back” to them?
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The Murmur of the Crowd
(2019)
author(s): Andrew Brooks
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Public assembly and mass protest are increasingly common features of our political landscape. The recent women’s marches, the mass protesting of President Trump’s so called ‘travel ban,’ Black Lives Matter, the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement are centred on the bodies in crowds in the streets. This paper examines the sound of the crowd, arguing that the sonic offers a productive framework for attending to the collective yet heterogeneous nature of public assemblies. Considering the sonic materiality of the crowd, I argue that the collection of voices that coalesce to produce the sound of the crowd can be understood through the sonic figure of the murmur. Drawing on Michel Serres’ formulation of noise, I suggest that the hum of a collective murmur foregrounds multiplicity and resists fixity. The murmur cannot be reduced to a singular voice or clean transmission but rather is always registered as a multiple. An attentiveness to the sonic dimension of the crowd allows us to develop an understanding of public assemblies as collectivities that enable and cultivate dissensus. I argue that the crowd can be read—or rather heard—as a social body that activates what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney refer to as an undercommon sociality. This paper proposes a form of micropolitical listening that attends to the materiality of a murmuring crowd and suggests that such an embodied listening practice might offer us a way to listen to a politics in process, a politics that is yet to cohere into a rigid and stratified form. Listening to the murmur of the crowd offers us a way of conceptualising collective politics anew.
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Addressing the Mapping Problem in Sonic Information Design through Embodied Image Schemata, Conceptual Metaphors, and Conceptual Blending
(2019)
author(s): Stephen Roddy
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article explores the mapping problem in parameter mapping sonification: the problem of how to map data to sound in a way that conveys meaning to the listener. We contend that this problem can be addressed by considering the implied conceptual framing of data–to–sound mapping strategies with a particular focus on how such frameworks may be informed by embodied cognition research and theories of conceptual metaphor. To this end, we discuss two examples of data-driven musical pieces which are informed by models from embodied cognition, followed by a more detailed case study of a sonic information design mapping strategy for a large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) network.
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The Dominant Eye
(2018)
author(s): Journal of Sonic Studies
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
The Dominant Eye is a sixteen week project that aims to uncover why there is a heirachy of the visual sense whilst establishing strategies to re-engage with our forgotten senses. Through a series of weekly radio discussions, members from The Noematic Collective will build on a dialogue with speakers to form a manifesto towards an equality of the senses. Speakers will include sound theorists, artists, architects and specialist researchers whom deal with the beaurocracy of the senses that has been established by modernist thinkers like Art Critic Clement Greenberg.
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Sonifying for Public Engagement: A Context-Based Model for Socially Relevant Data
(2018)
author(s): Milena Droumeva
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In this paper we discuss the possibility for designing sonification as a tool for public engagement for socially relevant data. We do so through a case study of a specific sonification model and the results of a participatory focus group discussing ours and similar sonifications of “social” data. First we report on a unique and contextually-sensitive approach to sonification of a subset of climate data: urban air pollution for four Canadian cities. Similarly to other data-driven models for sonification and auditory display, this model details an approach to data parameter mappings, however we specifically consider the context of a public engagement initiative and reception by an “everyday” listener as a core principle informing our design. Further, we present an innovative model for FM index-driven sonification that rests on the notion of “harmonic identities” for each air pollution data parameter sonified, allowing us to sonify more datasets in a perceptually “economic” way. Finally, we discuss usability and design implications for sonifying socially relevant information based on user evaluation of our design and an open-ended discussion from two small-scale participatory focus groups.