In this interview, Recomposing the City co-directors Sarah Lappin and Gascia Ouzounian talk with Peter Cusack about his recent work, reflecting in particular on relationships between sound, sound art, planning processes and urban communities. Cusack, a field recordist and sound artist, has been a leading figure in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies for more than two decades. Cusack created one of the earliest collaborative sound mapping projects, Favourite Sounds (1998-), in which he invited people to record, share, and describe positive aspects of their everyday sound environments. Among other things, Favourite Sounds has been influential in inspiring the recent proliferation of online sound maps, establishing a framework for producing collective ideas of soundscape, and suggesting approaches to urban sound that extend beyond noise pollution.
Cusack is a research fellow and a member of CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) at the University of the Arts, London. In 2011-2012 he was an Artist-in-Residence at DAAD, the German Academic Exchange Service in Berlin, during which time he initiated the Berlin Sonic Places project. Cusack writes, “from January to September 2012 Berlin Sonic Places brought together the perspectives of different interest groups – local and international artists, architects/planners, sociologists, musicians, residents, administrators, communities and the public – for a wide ranging dialogue on the city’s changing soundscape” (Cusack 2013). The project focused on three sites in Berlin: the site of the former Tempelhof Airport; Rummelsburg, an area currently undergoing transition from previous use as an industrial area with a sensitive World War II history; and Prenzlauer Berg, widely recognized as one of the most gentrified neighborhoods in Berlin. As part of this project, Cusack facilitated a wide-ranging dialogue between different interest groups including policy makers, architects, planners, sociologists, community groups, and sound artists. Their efforts culminated in day-long events that featured installations, performances, panels, talks, and open discussions. As part of the Berlin Sonic Places project, Cusack and a group of sound artists and researchers investigated different methodologies for studying urban sound in relation to development and planning in the city. Stemming from this project, Cusack will publish a book, Berlin Sonic Places, A Brief Guide, with DAAD in 2016.
In this interview, Cusack reflects on the challenges of communicating about sound and the built environment with policymakers, planners, and local residents and introduces his concept of “sonic place," which he describes as a “small sonic locality in a city that is sonically coherent enough to be studied as such.”
The interview was conducted on 15 December 2014 via Skype, with Sarah Lappin and Gascia Ouzounian in Belfast and Cusack in London.
This work was generously supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the project 'Hearing Trouble: Sound Art in Post-Conflict Cities' (AH/M008037/1).
Lappin:
We’d like to begin by discussing your Berlin Sonic Places project. Why was this an important project for you, and why were you interested in examining the relationship of sound to the development of sites in Berlin?
Cusack:
I was originally invited as an Artist-in-Residence by the DAAD for a year. One strong motivation was that I had to come up with a project in Berlin. But my interest for a long time has been in the sound of environments, partly in rural environments, but more specifically in cities. I grew up in London and had already done Your Favourite Sounds of London, Prague, and Chicago, which was a way to figure out how people who lived in those cites thought about their local soundscapes. The project exposed how people thought about the sounds in their cities in a positive way, rather than just complaining about noise.
I proposed to do something similar in Berlin, and it seemed there was a reasonable amount of funding, so it actually grew in terms of scope. I proposed that it would be a collaborative project, because many people in Berlin have been interested in sound in relation to space for some time. There are a lot of sound artists in Berlin, and there has already been a festival called Tuned City Berlin, which is organized by Carsten Stabenow, a good friend of mine. I proposed a collaboration with him and various other people associated with Tuned City. Thus, the Berlin Sonic Places project was born with Stabenow, Sam Auinger, and various other people who live there.
We decided to focus on three locations in Berlin to make it manageable. We asked other artists to create work in these areas and for researchers to study these areas from the perspective of the sonic environment. Since Sam Auinger was teaching at the Universität der Künste, he brought his students into the project. Many of them wanted to take part, and the students held their individual projects in the areas that we’d chosen. The end result was three days of public exhibition, shows, discussion, and talks in the areas concerned. The events involved local people and discussions with a wider range of people, such as politicians, international experts, and artists.
Lappin:
How did you choose the three main sites for the project?
Cusack:
The idea was to explore the effect of planning and development on the soundscape as one of the overall themes. Therefore, we chose places where there were known types of planning and development or social change over the last 10 years or so. Prenzlauer Berg was chosen because it’s famous for gentrification, and we were interested in the effect of gentrification on the soundscape. Rummelsburg was chosen because it was a total redevelopment of an area that, up until the end of the DDR, was an industrial and prison area. Now it's a residential area, which is a major change, of course. The other was Tempelhof Airport; again, very well known. It was a working airport until 2008, and now it's a huge park in the middle of Berlin. No other city in Europe has anything like it, and ever since the airport closed, there has been constant discussion of what should be done with it. It is an ongoing discussion, and nobody expects any big decisions to be made for some time. The site is very much part of the future of Berlin's development, so we were interested in what it sounded like and what it might sound like, given some of the development plans that already exist, though none of them has yet been determined.
Ouzounian:
We thought that was a very interesting part of the Berlin Sonic Places project: its engagement with potential or future sound environments. Was this the part of the project that you called “Sonic Glimpses” – a collaboration with Udo Noll, Max Eastley, and others?
Cusack:
Yes. It also involved Tomomi Adachi, a Japanese artist/musician/composer who was also a DAAD guest at the time. Our idea, of course, could only be speculative, because nobody knows which plans are going to be developed in the future. Our idea was that, if you do plan new developments for that area, it would be nice if they took into account the already existing soundscape at Tempelhof. Since Tempelhof is such a huge, open space, the soundscape there is very much determined by wind. Wind is almost always blowing there, and people go there to fly kites. Max Eastley is a sound sculptor who often works with natural energies, very specifically the wind. He put up a series of wind harps, for example, which produce sound when the wind moves them: a very simple and incredibly affordable thing to do. If you do it well, the sculptures sound quite interesting: a very ethereal kind of sound. We proposed that, if a development takes place in Tempelhof, many ideas already exist that could be incorporated into the plan – as long as these ideas can be included early enough to make use of the features of that area from a sonic perspective, and not just from a visual point of view.
Lappin:
Was there a point in the project when you met with policymakers, planners or politicians to suggest that these kinds of particular soundscapes should be considered within future plans?
Cusack:
Yes, we did, on this occasion. In Tempelhof there already exists an architectural group called Raumlabor that is supported by the city to carry out small-scale, temporary experiments. One of the architects in this group, Marcus Bader, gave a talk for the Berlin Sonic Places project, and there were locals in attendance. Unfortunately there weren't any politicians at that talk (although there were at other talks), so it didn't quite work out the way we'd hoped. Since it's such a big place and since there are so many ongoing, political discussions about it, politicians can be a bit reluctant to come up and talk about what they would like to see happen. That was our experience in Tempelhof, in contrast to the other project sites, which are much less contentious.
Ouzounian:
I'm curious: even if politicians might be reluctant to show affiliation with a particular idea or another, do you think it helps to just raise awareness of the sound environment, soundscape, acoustic ecology – and the creative use of sound in planning – in that kind of context? Did you feel that you reached politicians or policymakers on that level?
Cusack:
Well, it's difficult to know, but I do think it's important to do what you just described. I wouldn't say that on that particular occasion we succeeded. If you're an artist or you work in art circles or academic circles, it's relatively easy enough to organize an art festival or an academic conference, which we did for Berlin Sonic Places. But, often, no connection is made outside that particular event with the people who are actually in a position to have any real influence. Our experience made it clear that if you're heading down that road, making links with politicians, architects, and developers – and entrepreneurs who would actually be involved in those projects if they happen – is something that one has to spend one’s whole time doing, just to make sure they turn up.
Lappin:
Were decision-makers more engaged at the other sites, Prenzlauer Berg and Rummelsburg?
Cusack:
They were. At Prenzlauer Berg there was a politician and an architect, and they participated quite vociferously in the discussion, particularly around issues of gentrification. Each of the sites had a particular theme, so while at Tempelhof we concentrated on the future of the soundscape, at Prenzlauer Berg we focused on gentrification. Of course, gentrification has been a big discussion topic for decades already, so they all had something to say about that. Still, I think the connection with sound is a bit different. A discussion about sound has to be wide-ranging, and simultaneously you have to give a lot of detail, because people can’t really think about sound in those easy ways as they can think about what things look like. It's no good to say, “Well, this would sound great.” You have to spell it out, and you have to be very clear. You actually have to make a proposal.
For example, if the discussion with the politicians ventured into making paths or walkways beside the river, or creating new green spaces and putting a path for people to walk or jog on, I would say, “Well, Berlin has many of these things. How do you actually listen to what they sound like when people do run on them, because if they cover them with a particularly crunchy material, which they do, the sounds of people running or walking on these paths become actually quite loud and a very noticeable part of the soundscape.” I don't think they had even thought of that. Or, if they had, nobody had raised the issue it in relation to planning. It’s a very detailed and specific observation about the choice between what size gravel you use on your paths, and nobody, of course, makes those decisions from the sonic point of view. They make them from an expense point of view or a visual point of view.
Ouzounian:
Right – or health and safety.
Cusack:
Or health and safety, but never from the sonic point of view, even though it does actually have quite an impact on the sound of an area. That's the level of detail that needs to be involved in the discussion of the overviews, in my opinion, and that also takes a lot of prior thinking. You have to get the right people …
Lappin:
… to show what this work sounds like. That level of consideration happens more often in highly specialized, interior spaces like the Arup SoundLabs. However, that level of auralization of outdoor sites and acoustic planning of outdoor sites isn't something that, at least to our knowledge, is really on people's radar.
Cusack:
That's right. That just happened to be a very specific example. The other big discussion on that occasion was how you deal with wide open spaces for wildlife, because Berlin's a very green city, and I take that into account already, but when a new development takes place, then it may involve cutting down some trees. This may be compensated by the developer having to plant some trees somewhere else, but of course the trees you plant somewhere else are never going to be the same as the ones you cut down. The ones that you cut down may be 200 years old, whereas the new ones are new. It's not just a question of cutting down the trees. It's a question of the whole ecology of that particular place, which can't be replaced by planting new trees somewhere else.
This was a particular issue in Rummelsburg, one of the other main study sites that actually ended up being more interesting to me than either of the others. One of the consequences of Rummelsburg having once been a prison area was that nobody had bothered with the trees and the wildlife there. They just left them there. This means that it’s one of the oldest existing narrow strips of trees in Berlin; it's beside the river and it attracts a much greater variety of wildlife because of its age than elsewhere. And yet, when the residents' houses were built, some wanted these trees cut down so they could have a good view of the river. There was quite a lot of opposition to that which involved the NABU, the Nature Conservation Society of Germany. They have a local office in Rummelsburg, and there was a big discussion about cutting down the trees. Of course, that threatens the soundscape as well, because if those trees had gone, then the birds would have gone with them as well as some of the spectacular sonic diversity. That was another very specific example that might be totally boring to some people, but if you live there or if you're planning there, then of course it's something that you live with every day.
Ouzounian:
And if you live there, it probably makes a discernible difference in your quality of life, whether you're aware of it or not.
Cusack:
I interviewed some of the people who live there, and many of them said the reason they chose to go there was because of the nature that's so clearly obvious in that area. In the end the trees weren't cut down. They're still there, and everybody is very appreciative of them now.
Ouzounian:
Do you think the people who you interviewed, residents of that area, were aware of having that kind of variety of birdsong in their environment, for example, as something that contributed to their sense of well-being?
Cusack:
Some of them certainly did, yes. It’s a fairly upmarket development, so the people who bought places and moved in there were generally middle-class, professional people who were often broadly aware of these issues. In fact, the local head of NABU, the Nature Conservancy, was one of the people who had bought a house there, and he was part of the local community as well as having his green, political background. So, some of the community were much more informed than might be the case in other communities. It was a very particular place. They did manage to have some impact on what the place looks and sounds like, and what exists there now is a public amenity.
Lappin:
The notion that you have to concentrate both on wider impacts as well as specifics in order to be able to talk about sound is extremely interesting and potentially crucial for people who engage in this type of project. Were there other issues that came up in your interviews, with residents in particular, or with people who don't necessarily have an expert knowledge of sound, that was surprising to you: either things that you wouldn't have expected them to talk about or challenges that you discovered while carrying out those interviews?
Cusack:
In Rummelsburg we did have contact with the local community organization, and because we did the projects there, some of the residents came to the final show, took part in the discussion, and heard what artists and some of the international speakers had to say. It turned out that the development in that part of Berlin is not yet finished. There's an area still to be developed, which at the moment looks very green. It’s covered with trees and vegetation; it's been a brownfield site, as they would say in the UK, ever since the end of the DDR. That part is scheduled for development in the same way as all the rest has been, but the local community association does have an input into the planning discussions. After hearing our sonic research into their area, they wanted us to be part of that discussion. They wanted us to look at the plan and advise them on the sonic end results of that particular plan. We did that for about six, eight months. Following the end of the original projects for Berlin Sonic Places, we remained in contact with the people there. But then, of course, politics intervenes. You realize that the ability to take part in the discussion in no way ensures that anything you say ever becomes solidified. That was the case here. And all the power is in the hands of those who are putting up the money, basically, and the local community of course can't do that. However, no decisions have yet been made. These things take years, so who knows?
Lappin:
It’s such an interesting outcome of that project. Do you know of other examples of this kind of collaboration between developers, community groups, and sound artists and researchers happening at such an early phase in the discussion stage of planning?
Cusack:
There is another example in Berlin where sound was taken into account right from the start. It didn't so much involve artists, but rather acousticians who planned the Nauener Platz redevelopment. It had been a place known for anti-social behavior, and the goal was to make it a community-friendly playground where kids and more elderly people could feel safe. They put in loudspeakers and projected birdsong and the sound of the sea. They had carried out huge amounts of research with the community, and they asked the community what sounds they would like to hear there. The community asked for birds and the sea. So that's what they got: recorded versions of birdsong and sea sounds, projected through rather small loud speakers. It’s kind of weird …
Ouzounian:
It's a bizarre thing to do, to remove some element of the natural and then put in a recorded or simulated version of which, I presume, is continuously looping. That might become tiring after a while, because there is no variance in it.
Cusack:
Right, right. I mean they could have done that much better than they did. That's where they should have invited an artist to do the sound design, but they didn't.
Ouzounian:
Do you know if it’s still running?
Cusack:
I think it is. I haven't been there in six months. The last time I went one of the systems was still running, but the rest had broken down. I think repairs have been started again, but I don't really know what the situation is right now.
Lappin:
In terms of your project at Rummelsburg, there was some follow-up with the local community. Was there any follow-up with communities at the Prenzlauer Berg or Tempelhof sites?
Cusack:
No, there wasn't, really. The relationship needs to shift to have any effect. It has to go on for years. You know, an average arts project lasts a month. Ours went on for six months, which was quite long. If you're involved with the planning development, you're talking a six to ten year commitment, or more. The timescale is just so incompatible at the moment. That's another thing one must plan into these projects if there will be any real lasting value, in my opinion.
Ouzounian:
That was one of the great lessons of the Berlin Sonic Places project.
Cusack:
Yes. In terms of methodology, it had a significant impact for me. For example, at the moment I'm writing a small publication, also called Berlin Sonic Places, which is based on that original project. It’s not a documentation of the original project, but rather taking it a bit further. It asks the question: how do you sonically study a city? Clearly a city is huge in area; in fact, you can't possibly study the whole city: it’s just far too big, and what does it mean to do that anyway? It's a question of thinking, “How do you split a city down into manageable, but sonically-relevant sized, pieces for research or for planning?”
The phrase “sonic places” started out as just the title of the project. I’ve now thought a bit more about it. A sonic place may become a locality in a city that is sonically coherent enough to be studied as such. The city, therefore, has many, many thousands of sonic places, but essentially the definition of it is the relationship between how far your ears can hear and the physical layout of the place. The physical environment, of course, has a major impact on what you hear, but so does all of the human or natural activity that's going on in it. That’s what’s actually creating the sound. From a listener’s point of view, you’ve got as far as your ears can hear. The size of the sonic place is really a combination of those three elements.
Lappin:
That’s a really valuable framework for many people who would be able to apply it in so many different contexts. Would you consider taking that framework and testing it in different cities?
Cusack:
Certainly that would be the next step. I am doing that in Berlin. One of the consequences of this publication is to identify a whole number of different so-called “sonic places” in Berlin, describe them and report on them – in fact that’s what I’m doing. The full title of the publication is Berlin Sonic Places: A Brief Guide. It’s a kind of guidebook to a few of the more notable sonic places in Berlin, some of which are very well-known, while others are not.
Lappin:
We have been thinking quite a bit about re-reading architectural history from a sonic perspective. What you're talking about is how people value spaces and their cities from a sonic perspective.
Cusack:
Yes, that's right.
Ouzounian:
We have also been inspired by one of Sam Auinger’s projects for Bonn Hören, his Listening Sites in Bonn, a “listening map” that describes sites of sonic interest in Bonn. That project is focused on documenting particular acoustic features: it could be a water fountain, or the oscillating overtones of the cathedral bells in Münsterplatz, or something along those lines. I really like the idea of sonic places as larger areas that can be approached in this way, i.e. as another layer of mapping and another way of experiencing a place that we're not necessarily aware of in terms of how we imagine or understand cities.
Lappin:
We have such a visually-dominant approach to analyzing cities and mapping cities, but “sonic places” as you describe them, are very much a part of the lived experience of a city. Michael Southworth wrote an article in 1969, “The Sonic Environment of Cities,” in which he claimed that people are attracted to spaces that are both sonically unique and visually comprehensible, such as alleyways. Your research seems to speak to this.
Cusack:
That has actually come up in interviews I did for an earlier project, Favourite Sounds of London. People actually said things like “I find the sound in this place quite disturbing because I can't see where it's coming from.” People had difficulty with a significant mismatch between sound and visual aspects: for example, loud traffic noise in a very nice park with a visual field of flowers. The mismatch between sound and visuals is very dramatic. I've found places in Berlin like that. The Tiergarten, which is the biggest park in Berlin, actually has a main road right through the middle of it, so in busy times the traffic noise is very loud. It's one of the loudest places in Berlin. Because the whole park is covered with trees, you only have to walk a few meters, and you can't see the road at all. All you see, essentially, is forest. Yet, what you hear is extreme traffic noise.
I was introduced to another place called Grunewald Cemetery. It’s near Westkreuz, which is a huge transport interchange of motorways and railways. The cemetery there is totally surrounded by railways, so you have to actually cross over a rail bridge to get into it. However, due to the cemetery walls and the fact that the railways are mostly in cuttings, you can't see most of it. However, you can certainly hear the trains go past. Again, it's a sonic mismatch, but, strangely, a rather more positive one. Train traffic is much more interesting than road traffic, in my opinion. It's another place you can hear an awful lot happening, but you just can't see it, and what you do see is totally different.
Ouzounian:
In a way that's a very contemporary kind of experience of sound and sonic environments: that what you see and what you hear don’t match up. We also experience that with the insertion of recorded sound, and we're so immune to that now, especially in places like commercial districts. These kinds of schizophonias – whether they are randomly occurring or deliberately orchestrated – profoundly shape our sense of place, even though we may not always be fully aware of them.
Cusack:
Yes.
Lappin:
Have you had any thoughts about the scale of the sonic place? Of course, these will vary considerably, not only from site to site in a city, but also from city to city. Are you thinking of it in terms of a potential typology that develops city by city?
Cusack:
Yes, I think that would be the case. Berlin’s a very open city. The streets are wide. The buildings are not very high compared to other cities. Berlin has a very particular soundscape because of those things, and London is clearly very different. All cities are different. You can think of, say, an ancient city. In Italy, for example, the centers of a lot of cities are still intact from hundreds of years ago. And there, the streets are often sometimes so narrow that you can’t drive cars along them anyway. So, they’re full of twisting, very narrow streets, often with steps. The soundscape there is quite different.
One of the things that interests me about planning is the idea of sonic diversity. In my opinion, one of the criteria for a relatively human-friendly, interesting soundscape would be a reasonable degree of sonic variety. But you don't have to think of variety only in terms of the sounds that are occurring there. The variety also has to do with the acoustics of the different spaces. If you cross the street and then turn into an alleyway, clearly the acoustic immediately changes. In other words, at the edge of the alleyway and the street there's a sonic border that you have to cross from one to the other. In a case like that, you would hear it. There are also sonic borders that very gently merge into each other which you don't particularly hear. But in old cities, old Italian centers for example, every time you turn a corner there's a sonic border. Thus, the number of sonic borders or sonic changes to the acoustics is also a part of sonic diversity.
Lappin:
And very specific to the site, as you say.
Cusack:
The thing about sound is that it's actually very detailed, and the impact it has on someone is, in its detail, much more than in the grand scale, I would say. You need to get the details right on the sound. I guess that's true of many things, but especially with sound.
Concluding Thoughts
In this interview, Peter Cusack draws our attention to the challenges, as well as the promises, of developing sustained collaborations across sound art, architecture, and urban planning communities. Sound art projects increasingly aspire to influence urban policy as well as the views of decision-makers. Still, the idea that sound is an integral part of place making, and should be considered an essential element in architectural design and planning, remains elusive within the vast majority of urban planning and development initiatives.
Cusack highlights the incompatibility between the timescales in which most art projects develop versus those in planning and development. Similarly, he draws our attention to the idea that sound and noise simply are not a priority for most planners, despite the fact that the quality of a sound environment can contribute in profound ways to community sustainability, well-being, and health (Matheson and Stansfeld 2003; Ohrstrohm and Skanberg 2002; Passchier-Vermeer and Passchier 2000; United States Environmental Protection Agency 1973).
Therefore, we identify a need for much more education on sound and community development, both within architecture and planning professions, as well as within policy sectors and in the public sphere. We stress here that these conversations must move beyond discussions of noise pollution. For Cusack, a key point is that variance and diversity – both in the soundscape and in the physical acoustics of an environment – are crucial components of what might be described as “sonic health.” Therefore, efforts to cultivate diversity and variety in acoustic environments could, and should, productively inform debates on community well-being and development.
References
Auinger, Sam (2010). “Listening Sites in Bonn.”
Cusack, Peter (2013). “Berlin Sonic Places.”
Matheson, Mark and Stephen Stansfeld (2003). “Noise pollution: non-auditory effects on health.” British Medical Bulletin 68: 243-257.
Ohrstrohm, Annbritt and Evy Skanberg (2002). “Adverse Health Effects in Relation to Urban Residential Soundscapes.” Journal of Sound and Vibration 250/1: 151-155.
Passchier-Vermeer, Willy and Wim Passchier (2000). “Noise Exposure and Public Health.” Environmental Health Perspectives 108/1: 123-131.
Southworth, Michael (1969). “The Sonic Environment of Cities.” Environment and Behavior 1/1: 49-70.
United States Environmental Protection Agency (1973). Proceedings of the International Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.