Urban Soundmarks Psychophysical Geodimensioning: Towards Ambient Pointers Geosystemic computation

International audienceThrough interaction with environmental parameters such as light or sound, urban and architectural spaces generate ambiences with identifiable characteristics. This notion of ambiences is related to the human being position through its perception of environmental physical phenomenon during a pedestrian walk. Presented work aims to evaluate, so as to characterize, the impact of sound ambiences (soundscape) onto an urban pedestrian pathway using GIS spatial dynam-ical mapping. To carry out this scheme, our research work within AMBIOFLUX project concerns spatial interaction between sound ambience (soundscape) and man urban spatial trajectory (soundwalk). Spatial impression of sound-sources or soundmarks has to be both defined through acoustical measurement and perception informational evaluation. The remainder of this paper is dedicated to the evaluation's methodology of the pedestrian pathway's acoustic fingerprint using the GearScape spatial formalism described thereafter. Preliminary results we have obtained will also be presented and validated

Influence of experimental conditions on sound pleasantness evaluations

ICA 2016, 22nd International Congress on Acoustics, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINE, 05-/09/2016 - 09/09/2016Being able to characterize and estimate the urban sound perception is a key point to improve the city dwellers environmental quality. In the past decade, various studies have focused on collecting perceived global sound pleasantness at specific locations. Some of them were carried out on field in order to evaluate the soundscape perception of the participants directly in their context. Other studies were realized in laboratory to better control the stimuli and to increase the number of participants who were subjected to the same sound environment. Most of the laboratory experiments are done in large or semi-anechoic chamber with calibrated and highly realistic audio reproduction in order to respect the ecological validity of the experiment. On one hand, even with a high immersive level, the laboratory context is not as rich as the field context and the two types of experiment could lead to different results. On the other hand, few studies exist showing the influence of decreasing ecological validity for the same experience. This work presents a short statistical analysis of perceptive evaluations of ten urban locations under 4 different test conditions. First, evaluations are carried out directly in-situ in the city of Paris. Then audio-visual recordings of these locations are evaluated in three different experimental conditions: (i) in a well-controlled acoustic laboratory in Paris region with French people, (ii) in an acoustic laboratory in Buenos Aires with Argentinean participants and lowest immersive conditions, (iii) in a habitational room with Argentinean participants and subjective calibration. The study reveals that both the 'country' factor and the experimental conditions in laboratory do not show any significant impact on the perceived sound pleasantness and perceived loudness assessments

Sonorous cartography for sighted and blind people

International audienceIn this article, we test the usability of a cartographic tool mixing maps and sounds. This tool is developed withinQuantumGIS as a plugin prototype. We first present some theoretical reflections about synesthesia. Secondly, weexplain the way we «sonificate» the images, by associating colors and recorded chords and sounds. Then we presentthe results of several usability tests in France with different users, including blind people. We finally conclude on thecontributions and the limitations of such a tool and draw some perspectives

Modeling soundscape pleasantness using perceptual assessments and acoustic measurements along paths in urban context

Mapping the pleasantness of an urban environment is an alternative approach, closer to the city dweller's perception, than standardized sound levels cartography. This study reports on modeling pleasantness in urban context using perceptual assessments and sound measurements for specific locations during an urban walk. These assessments have been collected from four groups of approximately ten participants on 19 different assessment locations, along a 2.1 km-long path traveled in both directions. Simultaneously, 1/3-octave band sound levels and audio were recorded. Perceptual and physical models of pleasantness are proposed for specific locations based on multiple linear regressions. A multilevel analysis was performed, and it is shown that a perceptual model that includes perceived loudness joined to the perceived time of presence of traffic, voices and birds explains 90% of the pleasantness variance due to the sound environment variations. Physical models that include the original acoustic indicators that are most correlated with perceptual variables explain 85% of this variance. Thanks to these models, a unique averaged pleasantness value is defined for each assessment location from the perceptual or physical collected assessments. The Pearson's correlation coefficient between the averaged perceived pleasantness and the modeled values from perceptual assessment reaches r(19) = 0.98, and r(19) = 0.97, with the modeled values from physical measurements. These results make it possible to consider the use of this kind of models in a cartographic context. As the path was traveled in both directions, the presentation-order effect has also been assessed, and it has been found that path direction did not have a significant impact on the pleasantness assessment at specific locations, except when very strong sound environment changes occurred. Finally, the study gives some insights about the retrospective global pleasantness assessment for urban walks. For very short walks between two assessment locations, a recency effect is shown. Nevertheless, this effect doesn't seem to be significant when longer routes are assessed

Sound pleasantness evaluation of pedestrian walks in urban sound environments

ICA 2016, 22nd International Congress on Acoustics, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINE, 05-/09/2016 - 09/09/2016The health benefits of a daily physical activity, and of walking in particular, are widely acknowledged. However, walking in urban environment inevitably leads to an increased exposure to noise, which forms a drawback of choosing this transportation mode. Being able to estimate the sound pleasantness associated with an urban walk trip has many potential applications, such as informing pedestrians about the sound along their intended walk, which may help them to optimize their route choice. In the past decade, various studies have focused on characterizing and estimating the sound pleasantness perceived at specific locations, on the basis of perceptive and physical measurements. However, to estimate the sound pleasantness along an urban walking trip, an additional step is required, which consists of assessing how a pedestrian evaluates the overall pleasantness of a sound environment that varies along the walking trip. In this work, the results of two laboratory experiments and one field experiment are discussed, which were designed to assess the overall evaluation of the sound environment along an urban walk. Physical and perceptive measurements at specified positions or continuously along a series of tested routes are available, in addition to a global evaluation of the route. A comparison between the results of the three experiments provides a rich source of information to understand how the sound pleasantness of a pedestrian walk is evaluated. The main conclusion is that for short walks (of about 1 minute), a recency effect is observed, which tends to disappear when the duration of the walk increases

Sonorous cartography for sighted and blind people

International audienceIn this article, we test the usability of a cartographic tool mixing maps and sounds. This tool is developed withinQuantumGIS as a plugin prototype. We first present some theoretical reflections about synesthesia. Secondly, weexplain the way we «sonificate» the images, by associating colors and recorded chords and sounds. Then we presentthe results of several usability tests in France with different users, including blind people. We finally conclude on thecontributions and the limitations of such a tool and draw some perspectives

Asymmetries : Iterative Cinematic Cartographies

The article functions as an exegesis for the installation project on the city titled Asymmetries (2018/19/20). The installation and its various iterations is conceived as a making-thinking-spectatorial research project on the urban premised on strategies developed through modes of artistic research. The project explores various forms of contemporary film practices in order to explore and re-imagine city life beyond the confines of teleological conceptions. In particular, the writing and its iterative explorations relates to cinema aesthetics and its political confrontation with the mono-focal conception of cinema and its projection norms. The work invites the reader momentarily suspend the position of the passive spectator and assume the position of a collaborative explorer or experimenter in various acts of cinematic cartography. The suspension of the inactive spectator position might lead to the re-examination of equivalences between the reader’s learned gaze and of epistemic prompts offered in this artistic research project on the city

The Ephemeral City : Songs for the Ghost Quarters

The towers of the Stockholm skyline twine with radio transmissions, flying out over the city, drifting down through the streets and sinking into the underground telephone system below. Stockholm has buildings that have been there for centuries, but is also full of modern and contemporary architectures, all jostling for their place in parallel collective memory. In taking the city up as a subject, this artistic PhD project in music expands allegories to these architectural instruments into the world of the mechanical and the electrical. By taking up and transforming the materials of the cityscape, this project spins ephemeral cities more subtle than the colossal forces transforming the cityscape. The aim is to empower urban dwellers with another kind of ownership of their city.The materials in the project are drawn around themes of urban memory and transformation, psychogeography and the ghosts of the imagined city. There are three questions the artistic works of this project reflect on and address. The first is about the ability of city-dwellers to regain or create some sense of place, history or belonging through the power of their imaginations. The second reflects on the possibility for imagined alternatives to re-empower a sense of place for the people who encounter them. The third seeks out the points where stories, memories, or alternative futures are collective, at what point are they wholly individual, and how the interplay between them plays out in listening.There is an improvisatory practice in how we relate to urban environments: an ever-transforming inter-play between the animate and inanimate. Each individual draws phantoms of memory and imagination onto the cityscape, and this yields subtle ways people can be empowered in their surroundings. The artistic works of this project are made to illuminate those subtleties, centering around a group of compositions, improvisations, artistic collaborations and sound installations in music and sound, utilizing modular synthesizers, field recordings, pipe organs, multi-channel settings; PureData and SuperCollider programs, string ensembles with hurdy-gurdy and nyckelharpa or violin, and sound installations. This choice of instruments is as an allegory to the architecture of Stockholm. The final result is a collection of music and sound works, made to illuminate the imagined city. Taken as a whole, the works of the project create an imaginary city–The Ephemeral City–in order to argue that this evocation of ephemeral space is a way to empower urban dwellers through force of imagination, immune to the vast forces tearing through the fabric of Stockholm life by virtue of the ghostly, transitory and mercurial, as compelling to the inner eye as brick and mortar to the outer life

‘Review Essay: Street Life in Early Modern Europe’

ArticleThis is the final version of the article. Available from University of Chicago Press via the DOI in this record.n/