City Sonic Ecology: Urban Soundscapes of Bern, Ljubljana, and Belgrade
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City Sonic Ecology: Urban Soundscapes of Bern, Ljubljana, and Belgrade 1 SUMMARY This joint project of the cities of Berne, Ljubljana, and Belgrade explores the phenomenon of the urban soundscape and its potential and role in shaping the affective economies (Ahmed 2004). Drawing on the connection of acoustic ecology with affect studies (cf. Goodman 2010; Kanngieser 2012), the project will interrelate approaches of urban ethnomusicology, soundscape research, and affective theory to investigate with the ways people living in the city invest their hearing capacities in the various kinds of identity building and politics of belonging. Also taking factors like architecture, urban planning, and space representations into consideration, this project particularly focuses on dichotomies in urban soundscapes, such as invisible vs. symbolic, private vs. public, and noise vs. music by focusing on three broader themes: 1) Religious city soundscapes (church bells, mosques, street religious performances). 2) Urban soundscapes as places of political participation. 3) Individual city soundscapes – mobile music, technology and public space. Based on an analysis of the central keynote sounds and elements of each investigated city, this project hereby investigates how individuals embrace or reject particular aspects of urban soundscape. How do individuals create communities of shared affect through sound? How do these city soundscapes function as part of the broader landscape? The general aim is thus to uncover culturally determined values, unnoticed sounds, and specific urban spaces that are symbolized through sound. Yet the project also intends to analyze how people create their own urban soundscapes – in contrast to the broader urban soundscape – at present. The project will be conducted by using clusters of methods: 1) Field work grounded on ethnographic documentation on the sound topography of the city; 2) a dynamic cartographic approach of audiowalk, in which the collected archival, textual, visual, musical and sonic data is combined within an Interactive Digital Environment; 3) a musicological analyses of the collected data and its critical deliberation. This approach includes also a researcher triangulation, referring to the involvement of more than one researcher from more than one of the partner institutions in the field to gather and interpret data from a different perspective. 1 2 RESEARCH PLAN This project explores the phenomenon of urban soundscape in order to investigate its potential and its role in shaping the so-called “affective economies”, regulating the distribution of affects in space, through which the specific communities of shared emotions and attitudes are being formed (Ahmed 2004). Focusing on the three cities of Bern, Ljubljana, and Belgrade, City Sonic Ecology will trace some of the dichotomies in urban soundscapes such as invisible vs. symbolic, private vs. public, noise vs. music. Sonic events that shape the urban soundscapes, such as church bell ringing, muezzin calls, sounds of the street performers, are variously considered as unwanted noise or appreciated as music. Concurrently, some of the sounds remain unnoticed, being habituated in our everyday experience of the urban spaces, while others can be recognized as symbols of specific urban centres. Finally, given the technological-digital development, many people create their own city soundscapes today by using portable media devices, which often contrast the sounds emitted in the city transport, cafés, or shopping malls. Based on an analysis of the central keynote sounds (Schafer 1977) elements of each investigated city, this project’s goal is to investigate how individuals embrace or reject specific aspects of the urban soundscape, hereby creating communities of shared affect. We will particularly pay attention to the city soundscape as part of the broader landscape, interacting with elements, such as architecture, urban planning, and spatial concepts and representations. The sensorial porosity between outdoor and indoor has let us to question the classical dichotomy between private and public spaces. The project will particularly address three main themes: 1) Religious city soundscapes (e.g. church bells, muezzin calls, street religious performances) Religions, manifested through (public) sound often arouse strong responses in urban sonic environments and in the context of society, religion and politics, resonate in a variety of assemblages. The religious soundscapes concern a large community of people as nearly everyone is in contact with these sounds in an everyday context (e.g. church bells). The relation of people towards religious sounds is most evident in situations that have triggered heated public responses of individuals and the wider community, thus often reflecting the secular opposition against the sacred. The political control over the (public) sound can thus also be understood as a control of the symbolic order and rhythm of the inhabitants and the environment in which they live. The basic focus of this research theme will be on church bell ringing, muezzin’s calls, street religious performances and their impact on society and the environment, and conversely, the effect of individuals, society and politics on their sonority. Both aspects are closely linked, since human intervention in sonority is the consequence of the perception of sonority. Further central issues are the relationship, attitude, the physical responses and behavioral characteristics of those living in the cities. 2) Urban soundscapes as places of political participation Giving voice to the public space is one of the possible ways offered by the sociocultural context to participate in a global way of linking habitat spaces with the assertion of social membership. We will focus on sound actions in public spaces – squares, streets, and parks –as the art of doing music. These reflect the co-creation of sound and 2 space, and the potential they have for an affective politics in the sense of agency. Our particular targets will be main city squares, which, through various kinds of protests, have become spaces of shaping new models of political participation, in the last few years. 3) Individual city soundscapes – mobile music, technology and public space The terrain for the exploration is the internal experience of the individual in the city and uses sound, memory and imagination to create a deep connection to place. For the city inhabitants, being sonic becomes integrated into the strategies adopted for living the street. We will pay attention to individual strategies aimed to modify the experience of the urban soundscape, both intentionally and non-intentionally. Do citizens embrace the dominant soundscape or do they try to subvert it? Which technologies do they use, and does the technology, in a Latourian sense (cf. Latour 2005), influence their choices? Finally, we will pay attention to projects that label themselves as ‘artistic’, offering personal (artistic) interpretations of particular neighbourhoods’ soundscapes. Throughout this investigation, we will particularly focus on the ways that notions of ‘public’ and ’private’ collide in the dynamics of the city soundscapes. As the subsequent sound-sketches indicate, these aspects are also reflected in various degrees within the three investigated cities – also depending on the broader physical frameworks. Bern The characteristic keynote sound of Swizerland’s federal capital Bern (137,937 inhabitants; appr. 338,000 in the larger agglomeration) is shaped by an intersection of specific physical-geographical and historical layers. Generally speaking, Bern is located on a peninsula in the hilly Aare valley with 3-4 larger distinct sound areas that also reflect the different height levels of the region: As specifically apparent at the waterfalls of the dammed river at the Schwellenmätteli, the lower Aare regions are strongly shaped by the keynote sound of the river. The Old Town with its surrounding urban sound mixture is located on the middle level, while the higher areas – that can be further divided into other urban surrounding parts and the hills like the Gurten – not only convey a much more distanced keynote of the inner city, but also include a keynote that is very unusual for a capital city: Animal sounds and bells of various nearby farming houses. Particularly the Old Town also reveals the impact of architectural-historical sound layers: UNSECO world heritage site since 1983, Bern’s Old Town still conveys older historical sound impressions: Not only is this area shaped by the ringing bells and the rooster crowing of the former medieval gate tower Zytglogge, also the numerous fountainheads, cobbled stone streets, and wooden stairways shape the soundscape of Old Town, that however also features characteristic modern sounds like the beeping of the No.12 bus. Yet, particularly the ringing of the church bells of the Münster cathedral and other significant Christian churches still shape the urban keynote, also marking specific hours (e.g. 8 p.m.) and days (e.g. through the Sunday ringing). However, within this distinct keynote one will also discover the “House of Religions.” Currently still located at one of the higher urban layers, within the noisy traffic of the Laubeggstrasse, one can often hear the ringing sounds of a Hindu procession next to the Rosengarten that overlooks the Old Town. Yet, the audible presence of non-Christian cultures is also set against the current so-called Minaret Controversy, a political debate centered