I was grateful for the opportunity to present the beginnings of my research to an audience of complete strangers in Brighton this week. The Sound and the Urban Environment symposium on 2 June was part of a wider programme organised by Conall Gleeson at the University of Brighton in collaboration with the ONCA Gallery (a unique space focusing on ecology and art). The accompanying sound installation/exhibition included something like 20 sound works by a wide range of artists.
At the symposium on Tuesday night I joined six other researchers in the field of sound and urbanism. There was a lively mix of people with backgrounds in art, architecture, local government & planning, noise control and more. I gave a presentation titled Urban Acoustic Cartography: Sound mapping as a tool for participatory urban analysis and pedagogy, which I used to describe the approach I’m taking in my research and outline some of the early findings.
#soundmaps at sound and urban environment @ONCAnetwork tonight. Great event. Come tomorrow 6-7 for listening session pic.twitter.com/FcPR0RTr51
— Giuseppe Marinetti (@artofnoises) June 2, 2015
Since starting the research in October 2014, this was really my first chance to speak to an audience outside Queen’s about it. I found it slightly nerve-wracking beforehand, but ultimately it was really rewarding and useful. Some general thoughts:
- Talking in public about work you’ve been drafting for ages is a great way to put it to the test. Also, for this presentation I dusted off a lot of material I hadn’t touched for a few months and found connections I hadn’t been expecting with more recent thoughts.
- This event made me conscious of the need to put things out there more often to see what people make of it. (Of course I must stress my supervisors have been absolutely fantastic with helping me refine my work as I settle in to the research, but it’s also good to hear other takes, especially from people outside the academic setting.) My friend Pip Shea has an interesting take on this “beta” approach, in a field guide titled Co-Creating Knowledge Online, which you can read more about here.
- This need to “speak to the community” is all the more important for me in my research, since my primary research materials (over one hundred sound maps) consist of sound recordings, images and text created by hundreds if not thousands of other people around the world. While I am planning to make the sound map database public in due course, that involves a process of data collection (ongoing) and design (yet to begin) which will take some time. Speaking to sound map producers and participants more often in the meantime can only help I think.
- I came away from the event feeling very lucky to be part of such a dynamic, wide-ranging field. Artists, scientists, architects, activists, policy-makers – all have useful and unique contributions to the challenging questions around sound and cities.
- On a related note, to me it seems crucial that the field is kept open. Though there are welcome moves towards standardisation (through training of acoustic planners, for example) one of the strengths of research around urban sound is the diversity of approach. Perhaps this is true more from a sonic arts standpoint: In many practices of sound art the desire is not to control sound but rather to submit to it, using radically open listening practices, and seeing where it leads us…
At ONCA we had an audience of probably 30-40 people, a mix of academics, artists and those just generally interested, making for a nice variety. There were four presentations aside from mine, from Dr Frauke Berehndt (Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Brighton); Lisa Lavia (Noise Abatement Society) and Dr Harry Witchel (Brighton and Sussex Medical School); Dr Linda O’Keeffe (Lecturer in Sound Studies, Lancaster University; also Editor of the excellent Interference Journal); and Glenn Davidson (artist) and Mike Fedeski (architect). You can find more about the other presenters on the event website.
My own presentation looked at three areas:
- Mapping sound maps: a whistle-stop tour of the 117 sound maps we’ve gathered so far for a database. This will form the basis of a critical review of sound maps, seeking useful points of dialogue with architecture and planning.
- Listening and the urban environment: here, I gave some time to ideas around social listening in urban environments, drawing from a range of fields, including theories and writings by people like Peter Zumthor, David Toop, Pauline Oliveros and Klaske Havik.
- Towards my research methodology: this final part focused on the work I’m developing in terms of critical review of sound maps, workshops with built environment professionals and initial ideas about an “urban sound pedagogy”
This event was a good opportunity to survey what I’ve been doing and put it out to the community. Big thanks to Conall for the invite.
PS: I gained a lot of momentum by giving the presentation, so I’m keen that it doesn’t drop. With that in mind, I’ll use this blog in a similar way to update my progress for anyone interested, giving more detail on my work in the coming weeks and months. All thoughts and ideas welcome!
Maps and Microphones 