//Unheard_Landscapes - listening | resonating | inhabiting 10th FKL/ENP/AAU_CRESSON International Symposium on Soundscape BLOIS | October 27 -30

Unheard landscapes: this metaphor leaves space to imagination, to the un-thought, to the un-known, to past and future, as well as unexplored sound scenarios. It also reaches the field of auditory perception, the acoustic domain. Sound, through auditive qualities, acoustic phenomena, design practices, artistic creations, and listening experiences, offers an inspiring transversal entry onto landscapes and ambiances. Beyond the discussions on “soundscape”, approaching ordinary environments through sounds increases the awareness of our own capacities to feel, while we inhabit and move across different worlds. From an ecological perspective, resonance appears a key word, too. It puts sound and space together. It implies the idea of a plurality of bodies, things and living beings vibrating all together, sharing common contexts of time and space. The act of listening bypasses the passive meaning it usually receives. It contains in itself a completely unexpressed potential, connoted with «project», «pro-action» and «active decision» by individuals. What will be the sounds of the future and the soundscapes in which we will live, or would like to? How can listening practices evolve, how will we listen or how differently could we listen to the world around us, tomorrow? Inhabiting the world brings to us questions about how we want to manage our being in it. How do we want to inhabit the world sonically? How sound and listening do actually affect our way to inhabit it? Have we lost some of our abilities to resonate with the world? What remains to be heard? Where could the practices of listening and attuning take us to?

Marylise COTTET, V. BOGDANOV, C. MARQUIS-FAVRE, F. PERRIN, D. DUMORTIER, W. ELLERMEIER | FR |

Paper

When Nature in the City Renews the Urban Experience: Physiological and Behavioural Implications of Renaturation

Abstract

The restoration of nature in cities is now recognized as a major public health and environmental change management issue. It represents a key component of the urban experience for city dwellers. However, the sensory dimension of this experience is often neglected. This paper presents the results of two scientific experiments. Both highlight the interactions between visual and sound urban environments and the physiological and behavioural reactions of the individuals who experience them, particularly in terms of environmental preferences. The first is conducted in situ. It combines an urban walk, eye-movement capture by eye-tracking and a questionnaire. The second is conducted in the laboratory and is based on a questionnaire combining visual and sound stimuli (photographs and recordings of urban environments) and physiological measurements (heart rate, eye movement, pupil size and EMG). In both cases, the presence of nature influences physiological and behavioural responses. The results confirm the importance of restoring nature in cities. The scientific and operational perspectives of this research will be discussed.

Marylise Cottet is a geographer and researcher at the CNRS (Environnement Ville Société laboratory). She works on the relationship between societies and nature, particularly aquatic environments. She is particularly interested in the sensory relationship to landscapes (visual and sound perception) using eye-tracking technologies and recently approached this relationship from the angle of embodied cognition.

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