Soundscapes of the Urban Past: Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage

We cannot simply listen to our urban past. Yet we encounter a rich cultural heritage of city sounds presented in text, radio and film. How can such "staged sounds" express the changing identities of cities? This volume presents a collection of studies on the staging of Amsterdam, Berlin and London soundscapes in historical documents, radio plays and films, and offers insights into themes such as film sound theory and museum audio guides. In doing so, this book puts contemporary controversies on urban sound in historical perspective, and contextualises iconic presentations of cities. It addresses academics, students, and museum workers alike

The Universal Roar: Walt Whitman, John Muir, and the Song of the Cosmos

The idea of an ancient harmony uniting the universe has been theorized since the ancient Pythagoreans got the idea of musica universalis, often translated as The Music of the Spheres. John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, not only recognizes similar musical patterns in the wilderness but emphasizes how they bring a sense of balance his life. Walt Whitman, often coined America’s poet, uses the harmonies resonating throughout the natural and urban worlds to demonstrate unity throughout the cosmos. Similarly, Aldo Leopold revolutionized our understanding of ecology, as he wrote about reciprocity and the connection of all things to the land. Although these ideas are often romanticized, many contemporary scientists, utilizing bioacoustics and soundscapes, are applying the same concepts conveyed by Muir and Whitman to test the healthiness of a natural environment

Development of a design evaluation tool for primary school projects

Thesis (Master)--İzmir Institute of Technology, Architecture, İzmir, 2003Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 113-115)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxi, 116 leavesEducation should play an important role in transforming children into productive adults and members of society. School should be the environment of these transformations as an educational milieu in which children collect data through perception. School should also offer a motivating environment while concepts of three-dimensionality, size, proportion and symbolization develop in the child.s mind. Therefore, the spaces in which children are educated have very special importance in their lives.Contemporary schools should have environmental adaptation, be functionally sufficient, aesthetically attractive and structurally appropriate.Since August 18'th 1997, new educational measures have been taking such as renovation of Turkish National Education Program and primary school education which have been extended from five years to eight years. This required capacity increase, restoration of existing school buildings and design of new projects.Development of an evaluation tool for primary school projects has the aim of creating a basis for future primary school projects for both private and national ones

Casco Bay Weekly : 23 May 1991

https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/cbw_1991/1020/thumbnail.jp

In the spirit of engagement: memories and the sensorium in Algonquin canoe building

This project develops cross-cultural ontologies of memory that are explored dynamically through multimodal sensory pathways. Considering the vast and varying theories on memory, the near universal adoption of storage-and-retrieval metaphors, such as the memory trace, which posits that memories are embodied ‘inside’ in our central nervous system or embedded ‘out there’ in our material environment, remains problematic. Using Material Engagement Theory (MET) as an experimental research model in cognitive archaeology, I conduct collaborative ethnographic fieldwork building birch bark canoes with the Algonquin First Nations. Together we investigate the mnemonic flow that occurs between sensing bodies and living geographies. I propose the possibility that the human mind may possess underdeveloped sensory pathways involved in the transmission of transgenerational memories and the recovery of long-lost wisdoms. I excavate the sensorium through the archaeoacoustics of forest listening to uncover the ways in which memories are deeply sedimented in the sonic worlds of nature. With the helpful concept of mimesis, this ethnography encourages multiple forms of listening, where natural sounds are fully canvased for what they are capable of teaching us about how to live. An examination of the haptic dimensions of the mocataugan (crooked knife) presents a compelling case for how material inheritances provide sensuous similarities that cohabite past and present moments of our cognitive becoming. These sensory attunements challenge the popular belief that memories are imprinted and stored. The ethnographic findings suggest ancestral memories are imminent, temporally persistent, actively participating and ready-at-hand to be enacted through our material engagements and our skillful dealings with the world. Understanding the ways traditional territory and natural resources sustain cultural memory over vast periods of time is of vital importance to the Algonquin. This research encourages us to think about how to sensibly take our place in the larger ecology of mind that sustains us and is increasingly under considerable strain

Branch Street Ryokan : relaxation through reactivating human senses

Thesis (M.Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 56).My thesis is a Japanese traditional Inn, called Ryokan. The is open to anyone seeking refuge from the rapid pace of urban life, including local residents and tourists, yet is limited to adults in order to keep quietness within. It is similar to a Bed & Breakfast in terms of person-to-person service, yet its emphasis is on the idea of reactivating human senses by offering an intimate experience with the surrounding nature through materials. The intention of my thesis is to explore an experience in Ryokan architect~re. The thesis introduces Ryokan architecture as a typology. Incorporating ritualistic Japanese inn traditions, the architecture is designed with a sense of order, which encourages guests to settle their state of mind. The inn investigates the notion of 'continuity of moments (in time)' through a manipulation of light and water as well as through materiality, which is to lure forgotten human senses. Communal bathing experience within the inn enhances stimulation to human sanity. Beacon Hill in Boston is selected as the site for the Ryokan. The site's existing condition is a 6000sq ft-vacant-lot. Although it is just one block-in from the very active and busy intersection of Charles and Beacon Street, the site offers quietness and tranquility. Given that I sensed the stark contrast between the very busy streets and the solitude of this site, I felt that there was an intriguing quality.by Keiko Sugeta.M.Arch

So Late So Soon

So Late So Soon: A thesis exhibition positioned on the crossroads between sculpture, installation and sound, investigates the line between subject and object as well as the means by which the listener/viewer can be physically integrated into the work. Some of the works function through direct performative bodily interaction while other works explore heightened awareness of sound, requiring active or enhanced listening to nearly inaudible sound. In all cases the manifestation of sound is visually cued by clues provided by the visual apparatus of the physical installation. The intention is that the four pieces comprising this exhibition will reveal their overarching thread of experiential meaning to deliver an environmental message speaking to interconnectedness-made-urgent under the imperative of time as it ticks ever onward, to spur a shifting… an unease ….a political response

Overhearing: An Attuning Approach to Noise in Danish Hospitals

Denmark is building new and improved super hospitals, based on a vision of improving overall quality by switching the focus from hospitals for treatment to hospitals for healing, guided by research in the field of evidence-based design and healing architecture. Users mention noise as one of the main stressors and research has discovered that noise levels in hospitals continue to rise. Noise has therefore become a central point of concern, recommending strategies to reduce measurable and perceived noise levels.However, these strategies do not support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is also a key element in creating healing environments linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field. This framework regards broad concepts such as noise and silence as objects with quantifiable properties, and assumes that these properties can be understood independently of the perceiver as a bodily and situated subject. The aim of this dissertation is accordingly to develop an alternative framework capable of accommodating the multi-sensory, affective and atmospheric conditions that influence the experience of noise, with a view to complementing the existing approaches in the field.  Consequently, the dissertation develops an ecological framework capable of accommodating these issues, established by viewing sound and listening through the lens of atmospheres. The attuning approach highlights the reciprocal relationship between the way in which atmospheres condition shared rhythms that shape us, but also the way in which we can tune them in different ways. In the context of sound and listening, this creates the potential of ecological overhearing as an atmospheric mode of listening capable of reconfiguring habitual background and foregrounding relationships. Attuning strategies should thus provide opportunities for diverse acoustic situations and possibilities for active choice-making to meet different and shifting needs through an enactive approach in order to enhance empowerment and ecological overhearing. Embedding diverse enactive sound installations and interactive sound technology in hospitals can facilitate such zones of overhearing. These zones become places for ruptures that strengthen the possibilities for engaging in counter-attunements of existing negative atmospheres. In this way, zones of overhearing not only provide continual sense of presence without demanding full attention, but also create ample opportunities for the restoration of  attention.The dissertation takes an experimental practice-based approach through artistic- and constructive design-research and comprises six peer-reviewed papers (Part IV), framed by a general overview article (Parts I-III) that develops the theoretical and methodological foundation for the papers, and provides a synthesis and discussion of their main findings. The practice-based work is founded on a range of experiments, but focuses on two main experiments: Light, Landscape & Voices and KidKit, and the way in which they elicit sensitivities within the topic of investigation. This contribution also concerns the concrete development of installations through the experiments. These installations are in themselves manifestations of and challenges to hypotheses about the topic I aim to address.

Sonic Histories of Occupation

This open access book examines how auditory environments in different contexts have contributed to understanding foreign occupation and colonialism, and how they have given rise to historical music cultures. How are sound and music implicated in the control and discipline of people under occupation? Exploring case studies of foreign occupation and colonialism from around the world, Sonic Histories of Occupation seeks to answer these questions and more. Examining how an emphasis on auditory culture adds complexity and nuance to understanding the relationship between occupation and the bodily senses, this book is structured around three conceptual themes: voice and occupation; memory, sound and occupation; and auditory responses to occupation and colonialism. Highlighting case studies in Asia, North Africa, North America and Europe, contributors employ a range of theoretical approaches to examine histories of imperialism and foreign occupation, and the auditory legacies they created, and contribute to a wider dialogue about the relationship between sound and imperial projects across political and temporal boundaries. The open access edition of this book is available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council (Horizon 2020, Grant Number 682081)

Journeys through Architecture: the Body, Spaces, and Arts in Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage

The inter-arts potential of Dorothy Miller Richardson’s life’s work, Pilgrimage, has been gaining critical attention since the end of the twentieth century, with continuous scholarly efforts dedicated in revealing the cinematic, painterly, and musical depths of the novel sequence. Building on such established foundation, this study responds to this inter-arts call of Richardson scholarship by taking an architectural turn, and contends Pilgrimage as a piece of architectural construct—a literary work that demonstrates the coming together of the body, spaces, and arts. Interdisplinary in nature, this study draws on diverse fields of inquiry in its configuration of the architectural as manifested in Pilgrimage, with two interconnecting sections. Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual phenomenology and recent theorisations of body-space interaction in various disciplines, such as cultural geography and anthropology, underpin the first section of the discussion, which attempts to explicate the spatial significance implied in Miriam’s (the protagonist) sensuous interactions with the different kinds of space around or within her. While the first section underscores how the art of literature embodies Miriam’s sensuous-spatial dynamics, the second section illuminates how the spatial arts of painting and architecture come into contact with Pilgrimage. Collaborating biographical, painterly, literary, and phenomenological approaches, the thesis considers the sequence’s manoeuver over the issues of simultaneity, instaneity, moment, and subject matter as the manifestation of literary impressionism. After contemplating Pilgrimage as a piece of literary impressionism, the discussion concludes by considering the sequence as a piece of haptic architecture, with the notion of ‘fragile architecture’ formulated by Juhani Pallasmaa. By re-examining how Miriam’s body, spaces, and arts interact and integrate throughout Pilgrimage, the thesis aspires to bring to light its architectural disposition