Silencing Urban Exhalations: a case study of student-led soundscape design

Jordan Lacey

This paper describes a practice-led soundscape studies project in which students created sound interventions to transform the “voice of the city.” A loud exhaust fan outlet dominated the site, and students were asked to create a soundscape intervention in response to an imaginative-artistic question: the exhaust outlet is the voice of the city, speaking; can this voice be deciphered, transformed, augmented? Students responded with live sound-art, musical and electroacoustic performances played through loudspeakers placed adjacent to the exhaust outlet, and physical changes to the environment with interactive sound-making artifacts. The intervention was informed by the acoustic ecology movement’s maxim that acoustic design and the “retrieval of a significant aural culture” is a “task for everyone” (Schafer 1977: 206); thus, students were encouraged to listen and creatively respond to the dominant sound. Students were introduced to a mixture of acoustic ecology listening exercises and structural approaches derived from the Research Centre on Sonic Space and the Urban Environment (CRESSON). The project aimed to demonstrate that with the assistance of educational resources, city dwellers, given the opportunity to creatively interact with city sounds, might revitalize their own city-relationship through participatory soundscape design.

Reflections

Conclusion: public empowerment through soundscape design

The student-led soundscape intervention project was inspired by an earlier study in which I identified the ubiquity of ventilation and air-conditioning noise in supposedly quiet areas of global cities.[7] This study led to speculation on how these homogenizing sound agents might be diversified. These inquires encouraged an approach to urban soundscape design that combined the imaginative powers of acoustic ecology techniques and the analytical approaches of CRESSON as presented by Augoyard and Torgue. This led to a future recommendation to “explore the possibilities of listeners interrelating with existent soundscapes via playback through electroacoustic soundscape systems” (Lacey and Harvey 2011b: 119). The intention was to more readily integrate everyday life experiences with an awareness of urban soundscapes, which was also the foundational idea for the student-led interventions discussed in this paper.

Ideally, bureaucracies would support interventionist initiatives by removing hindering power complexes that constrain social space. The implications of encouraging public engagement with everyday soundscapes in regard to people’s sense of connection, enthusiasm, and interest in their cities are presently unknown; however, the experiences of students, as described in this paper, suggests that given the appropriate resources and education, the opportunity to creatively engage with city soundscapes can lead to meaningful and thoughtful responses that might contribute to improving the relationship people have with their city.

It could be argued, of course, that allowing everyone to express his or her own soundscape interpretations might lead to an unwanted sonic cacophony. Approaches for sonic intervention should include parameters ensuring that expressions are respectful of existing social and acoustic conditions, without, ideally, destroying the creative energy that is gained through such encounters. Students were enthused by this project in large part because they, for a brief moment, exerted power over what they were hearing in a shared everyday soundscape. Finding a way to give the wider public this opportunity may forge new connections between people and their cities. At the very least, I hope that the examples provided in this paper might encourage sound-based pedagogues to consider adding the opportunity for soundscape design interventions to their curriculums as an additional tool for improving individual and social aural awareness.

References

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