"Sounding" the space: soundscape and construction of the imaginary in the historical district of San Berillo (original) (raw)
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The modern city is a space filled with signs and sensory stimulations. Therefore if we go beyond the supremacy of the sight sense, a study of aesthetological nature on the sound characteristics of the city, and on our capacities of turning them into experience through hearing, will allow us to perform a new range of analysis clearly rooted in phenomenology. Being meant as invisible and incorporeal cultural good changing due to variable factors, the sounding landscape becomes exposed to the reflections of urban aesthetics, thus helping a new "sensory" approach to city planning in order to carry on a kind of urban exploration aiming at enhancing modes of perception that a have been neglected up to now. Although this study should be necessarily compared with the analyses Murray Schafer made in his Sounding City, the guideline of the present research will embrace an aesthetological and phenomenological approach.
As something ephemeral that does not leave direct material traces, sound is not often considered in archaeological work. However, sound was an important aspect of ancient life, which can be investigated using a new approach to the archaeological remains and the evidence of sonic aspects in the archaeological record. By analysing the main recent research on these fields, we will discuss in this contribution the relationship between the intangible aspects and the spatial configuration of archaeological spaces. In quanto qualcosa di effimero che non lascia tracce materiali dirette, il suono spesso non viene considerato nel lavoro archeologico. Tuttavia, il suono era un aspetto importante della vita antica, che può essere studiato utilizzando un nuovo approccio ai resti archeologici e alle testimonianze degli aspetti sonori nella documentazione archeologica. Analizzando le principali ricerche recenti su questi ambiti, in questo contributo si discuterà il rapporto tra gli aspetti immateriali e la configurazione spaziale degli spazi archeologici.
The Social Construction of the Soundscape of the Castilian Cities (15th and 16th Centuries
Acoustics 2021, 3(1), 2021
This paper seeks to develop some conceptual elements that articulated the social construction of the soundscape of the urban spaces of the kingdom of Castile (15th–16th centuries). We focus our attention on the revision of the normative spheres that structured the subjective universe of the Castilian inhabitants, in order to notice and spot the different sound representations that intervened in the spatial and social configuration of the cities, their possible conflicts, and levels of acoustic tolerance. This proposal is part of the so-called “sensorial turn” in the Social Sciences, defined by David Howes as a cultural approach to the study of the senses as well as a sensorial approach to the study of culture. The research is carried out through the analysis of the sensory marks present in a documentary corpus made up of normative documents (municipal ordinances, books of agreement, chapter acts, diocesan synods, and royal dispositions) and judicial documents (General Archive of Simancas) combining methods of discourse analysis and the history of the senses. In the article, we argue and remark that the sound dimension operated as a device that acted in the shaping of the identity of places, since it contributed to define and delimit their use. This was reflected in the importance given by the authorities to the normative regulation of the community, which included a textual dimension in which the historical soundscape was imprinted, revealing the multiple social interactions that integrated it.
Urban planning, 2023
This article focuses on the placemaking process and experimental research on the citizens' assessment of the soundscape in Puerta del Sol in Madrid. Numerous studies conducted in recent decades have shown that sound is a crucial element capable of providing new insights into the relationship between human beings and the environment. Sound possesses physical-sensory-perceptual qualities which connect the emotional and the rational aspects of the experience of the place, overcoming the aesthetic/scientific duality. By default, the soundscape is the result of a collective production. It is the resonant expression of the multiple activities and uses that inhabit a space. The soundscape of everyday life provides a vision of life in a particular place, giving meaning and a singular character to the fact of living there. The concept and methods of the soundscape arise from sensitive experiences of the place in direct relation to a community. This exploratory research focused on in situ methods (soundwalks, improvised interview mappings, sound archives, performances, and collective sound actions) as expressions of collective listening to place. This article also focuses on how to map and share the result of this research, the technology to build a collective digital place as a place of confluence of experiences, citizen knowledge, and reflection on the situated soundscape.
Between the Music of the City and the Urban Noise
ARTE IMAGEN Y SONIDO
Starting from the overvaluation of visual culture in the modes of representation of society, this article draws a time line that goes from the marginalization of sounds promoted by disciplines such as geography, architecture and urban planning, until reaching to the acoustic definition of the landscape. In this way we demonstrate how the landscape is reincorporated in the agenda of these disciplines, not only as something visible, but as a cultural construction of our sensory activity, which is also made of sounds. This explains the anthropocentric nature of the soundscape, using the concepts of “sonorous image” and “sonorous identity” to reveal how sound attributes character to space and humanizes it, that can be seen from a global or local point of view. This in order to conclude how the patrimonial identity of sound is capable of characterizing specific urban contexts, its space, its habits and customs, while the ordinary identity contains a trait of "detachment" that ...
Socioacoustics and Urban Sound Ethnography. Reflections on the Case of Tarragona's 'Part Alta'.
Socioacoustics is presented as a holistic paradigm for understanding, describing, and monitoring the influence of sound among human societies through a comprehension of sound as a relational element. Under this perspective sound has come to be understood not as an object but as a process where physical, physiological, and psychosocial variables operate. For a sound to happen adequate circumstances must be given, not only in acoustic and/or psychoacoustic terms but also in social or psychosocial ones, in a way that its existence is conditioned by those variables. Sound is social as it is physical or physiological. Through the case study of Tarragona's historic centre (implemented for the author's doctoral research) an introduction to Socioacoustic methodology as a strategy for urban diagnosis will be done. Through tools that lay between Ethology and Ethnography, between floating and participant observation, Socioacoustics tries to describe and analyze sociophonic phenomena in line with urban audiences acoustemological patterns as well as with normative discourses that organize human societies and under which we colonize and appropriate spaces and turn them into territory. Through these strategies and techniques it is possible to gain access not only to valuable information regarding urban tissue but also to the sensorial hierarchies and structures associated to analyzed spaces.
The slowest “cadence” of the Earth. The perception of fear through the knowledge of territorial sounds: Calabria.
Renew the aural and rhythmic properties of a landscape by “hearing” regional literature and scientific reports on past earthquakes and their consequence on the territory. Calabria has always been a region of natural changes: from the top of the mountains, to the depths of the seas, its ground and its inhabitants have always been the “victims” of what was called the “flagello distruggitore” (earthquake) [Vivenzio]. It occurred regularly (1783, 1894, 1908) appearing as the slowest cadence of the Earth. Geographs [Vivenzio; Baratta], Writers [Dumas; Pigorini Beri; Douglas], ethnographers, ethnomusicologists [Tucci] and historians [Orlando] have all left us pages in which the contemporary reader can find information and sentiments regarding this phenomenon. As the recent history of Italian earthquakes has shown us, this is not an old memory, but is a cruel truth of the present day: territories whose ground has been literally reshaped can be seen in the present as maps through which these authors experienced the sounds of this and other phenomena, and whose effects are what makes each Calabrian village a unique one.