interactive sound maps provide new tools for mapping cities _ citymetric

5/25/2015 Interactivesoundmapsprovidenewtoolsformappingcities|CityMetric

http://www.citymetric.com/skylines/interactivesoundmapsprovidenewtoolsmappingcities552 1/10

The Montreal Sound Map at work.

Since the late 1990s, using interactive technologies and thepower of social media, sound artists, archivists and historianshave proposed new ways of mapping cities in sound. Their

SKYLINES Interactive sound maps provide new tools for mappingcitiesBy Gascia Ouzounian

December 5, 2014

Donotshowthismessageagain

Wehaveplacedcookiesonyourcomputertohelpmakethiswebsitebetter.WeuseGoogleAnalyticsandMyStatsUltimatescripts,whichallsetcookies.Moredetailscanbefoundinourprivacypolicy.



maps provide new ways for citizens and publics to engagewith the urban environment, and provide new insights intothe composition of city spaces.

One of the first online, interactive sound maps was created bysound artist and musician Peter Cusack, who teaches at theUniversity of The Arts, London. The premise for Cusack'sproject 'Your FavouriteLondonSound', initiated in 1998 was simple but effective. He invited people to upload fieldrecordings of their favourite sound of London to drawattention to the positive aspects of the soundscape or acousticenvironment.

This was in contrast to the much more widespreadnoisemapsused by city councils, governments and planners, whichshow ambient or environmental noise levels. Whereas noisemaps show unwanted sounds in the form of noisyneighbourhoods or districts, the Favourite Sounds project which has since spread to around a dozen cities includingBeijing, Berlin, Jerusalem, New York and Vancouver showspeople's affinities to different sounds and how this affectstheir experience of a city.According to Cusack, the projectintended toget people talking about the way they heareveryday sounds and how they react to them, or what theythink and feel about them, and how important (or notimportant) they are... Youlearn a lot about the city by askingabout its sound.



A more recent online effort,the Montral Sound Map, wasconceived by twin brothers Max and Julian Stein when theywere still undergraduate students at Concordia University inMontral in 2008. They wanted to create an interactiveplatform for documenting and archiving the Montralsoundscape, while also inviting contributors to develop a newrelationship to the city through listening.

The Stein brothers say they hope people will explore andlisten to the city with a purposeful and special attention thatis rarely given to the sounds of the environment. We aim forpeople to continue this attentive listening and experience thecomplexity and lure of the soundscape first hand.

The Montral Sound Map has received hundreds ofcontributions, and it not only acts as a sonic time capsule,but also gives people a new way of interacting with andunderstanding the city. Visitors to the website can hear theMontral soundscape as a kind of musical composition bychoosing the Autoplay or Shuffle functions for playingback recordings; or they can choose to focus on a particularsite see how its soundscape has changed over time. The mostrecent addition to the project is the development of an iPhoneapp by Julian Vogels that allows users to automatically uploadsounds as they navigate the city.

Sound mappings social dimension field recording, listeningwalks, participative artworks has profoundly benefittedfrom social media websites and licencing agreements likeCreative Commons ShareAlike, which permits people tofreely share media including audio recordings. Between 2010



and 2011, over 350 peoplesubmittedapproximately 2000recordings to the British Library's UK Soundmap, the firstnationalsound map of the UK.

Contributors could share and comment on oneanother'srecordings through websites like Twitter andAudioBoo. The participative nature of social media allows fordifferent contributors to connect with one another throughthe act of field recording and through dialogue aboutsoundscapes. This has been especially important for visuallyimpaired users, who are particularly active members of thesound mapping community.

There are innumerable uses for sound maps yet they arelittle known and seldom used within architecture and urbanplanning. Recomposing the City seeks to bring sonic artsmethods and perspectives to bear within architecture andplanning education and practice, particularly in urbancontexts. For example, sound maps can be effective tools insite analysis. In the Street Society workshop, we invitedarchitecture students to create sound maps of an area of socialdeprivation of Belfast. They engaged in different listeningexercises and explored the area in terms of its acousticmakeup. Their map showed that the area was acoustically cutoff from its surroundings. It also illustrated that this acousticisolation had enormous impact upon the quality of life ofresidents.

Sound maps are only one tool emerging from the sonic artsthat can benefit architecture and planning. By proposing newcollaborations between sonic artists and those who design the



built environment, we hope to bring attention to theenormous potential that sound has to change how weunderstand, design and transform cities.

Dr Gascia Ouzounian is co-founder with Dr Sarah Lappin of thecross-disciplinary research project Recomposing the City: Sonic Artand Urban Architectures, based at Queen's University Belfast. Nextweek she will speak at the Challenges of Government Conference Flourishing Cities organised by the Blavatnik School ofGovernment at the University of Oxford, which exists to inspire andsupport better public policy and government around the world.

Related

5 people who are really worriedabout London's Garden Bridge

There's a new outdoorswimming pool art installationthing in London's King's Crossdistrict

Where are largest cities in theworld?

Tweet Share Pin Subscribe to our newsletter

SKYLINES LONDON 11 hours ago



A mock-up of the planned Garden Bridge. Image: Heatherwick Studios.

Last week, a group of campaigners and locals gathered inWaterloo to discuss their objections to Thomas Heatherwick'splanned garden bridge. We'vecollected togethervariousproblems with the plansbefore, but were interested to see therange of objectors from different backgrounds who turned upat the meeting.

Where necessary, we've also added some information fromthe Garden Bridge Trust themselves mostly from the bristly"Fact vs Fiction" page on their website.

5 people who are really worried about London's GardenBridgeBy CityMetric staff



1. Ann Kendrick, Chair of theLondon CyclingCampaign: because cyclists can't use it

Kendrick told the meeting that she was extremelyconcerned by the lack of provision for bikes on the bridge:

It would be appalling for so much public money to be spent atthis time on a new river crossing which excludes cyclists. Thisproject does not seem to have been thought through. By 2030,we will have 10m people in London and there will have been amassive increase in the numbers of people on bikes.

(As quoted inArchitect's Journal.)

The Trust has said that cyclists would need to push theirbikes across, or use alternative routes nearby. This isapparently to ensure the safety of pedestrians.

2. Cezary Bednarski, bridge designer and architect:because Heatherwick may not be the right designer

Bednarski is concerned that Heatherwick was not fairlychosen as the bridges designer, after documents seenbyArchitects Journalshowed he did not score highly in severalof the appointment panels categories, including, er, bridgedesign experience.

At the event, he said:

This student should go back to the drawing board because this



project fails on every count.

(As quoted inArchitect's Journal.)

3. Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green party: becauseit's very expensive for a single green space

The Trust calls the bridge a "green corridor" which will behome to all sorts of wildlife and link ecologies north andsouth of the river. It will play host to 2,500 square metres ofgarden.

But Bennett claims the bridge is an example of "greenwash" something which masquerades as something environmentallyfriendly in order to win funding and public support.At themeeting, she made the point that the 60m of public fundingdedicated to the bridge could be used to create green spaces allover the city.

4. Michael Ball, Lambeth resident: becuase it willblock views

Ball, who was also in attendance at the meeting, hassuccessfully petitioned for a judicial review of LambethCouncil's approval of the bridge, as he claims the plans dontadequately protect the settings of nearby listed buildings.

FromThe Guardian:

Lawyers for Ball are arguing that Lambeth council failed to



comply with its duty to protect the historic settings of listedbuildings in the area, including Somerset House. They alsomaintain long-term funding arrangements for the project havenot been properly considered.

5. Christian Wolmar, Labour mayoral candidate:because it's a commercial venture

Ahead of the event, mayoral hopeful Christian WolmartoldLondon Loves Businessthat he doesn't buy the project'spublic pretensions:

Its not a transport project, so 30m of TfL money and 30m oftransport money is being spent on something that really is atourist attraction that has commercial possibility.

It doesnt seem to be something we should be supporting as atransport scheme when it has no such function. It doesnt makeany coherent sense.

The Trust says the bridge will be free to visit, except during amaximum of 12 annual fundraising events.

Other attendees included Fiona Haughey, archaeologist forTime Team, who has done research into erosion of London'sriverbanks; Hugh Johnson, President of the MetropolitanPublic Gardens Association; Caroline Pidgeon, LiberalDemocrat London Assembly member; and Val Shawcross,Labour London Assembly member.

At the moment, it looks like the bridge is likely to go ahead in



its current form as long as Ball's judicial review fails, ofcourse. Every objection raised at the meeting has beenacknowledged before, andWestminster City Council and BorisJohnson both gave the designs the nod anyway. Ah, well.

Related

There's a new outdoorswimming pool art installationthing in London's King's Crossdistrict

Where are largest cities in theworld?

Some Swedish architects usedstatistics to design the idealhouse

Tweet Share Pin Subscribe to our newsletter

interactive sound maps provide new tools for mapping cities _ citymetric

Documents

sound artists

montral sound map

montreal sound map

favourite sound of london

city councils

new tools

new york

different sounds