Sound Space:
Architecture to Enhance Aural Perception
Sound Space, a center for aural arts and perception, demonstrates an architecture committed to enabling meaningful listening. In striving to answer the question of whether there is (or what the limits are) of objective, communicative potential in noise, sound and music, the institution explores sound as a mechanism for spatial perception.
Sound Space:
Research Agenda
The primary research agenda is to encourage the development of auditory-spatial awareness as a skill, a sensory tool, and then heightening that awareness through a series of aural and sonic experiments. The institution strives to recognize or suggest a difference between noise and sound, particularly in everyday contexts, and how an enhanced or evolved understanding of ambient noise can impact how we actively listen—and ultimately enhance our spatial awareness and understanding.
The research agenda of the institution is intended to test and experiment with the notion of an explicit semiology of sound, and question how (or whether?) sound and ultimately music may be evaluated from a semantic perspective. The intention is to evaluate the communicative potential of noise (particularly within the urban environment), to quantify its communicative ability in terms of mood and affect, then through fMRI visualizations and neuro-scientific methods validate how we (culturally, anthropologically, and societally) register and interpret what we hear.
Examples of research topics / concentrations:
- Brain Localization: Representations of spoken and musical sounds do not occupy the same regions of the auditory cortex.
- Linguistic Sound Systems: The creation of a language-specific framework for sound perception phonetics: the science of speech sounds, the acoustic structure of speech.
- Signification & Meaning: Sound and verbal description or association.
- Sound Sequences: Pitch intervals as learned sound categories in Western music. Pitch variation and emotion.
- Sound Timbre: Evaluating sound quality when pitch, loudness, and duration are identical. The temporal and spectral profile of a sound.
Sound "events" and their reflections envelop us constantly, offering telling clues as to the materiality and dimension of our surroundings. Sound is fundamental to how we perceive space.
Three methodologies of sound "mapping" are shown above; time-based mapping (sound intensity over a number of years, for example), isobel mapping (sound intensity across geographic areas, and experience-driven sound mapping (based on individual paths and experiences over time).
Sound City: Documenting the Urban Soundscape
Sound City is intended as a sound-sharing platform for capturing and posting samples of ambient noise, public speech or the spoken word, street music and impromptu performances.
When documented or recorded, the sound is geo- and time-tagged. To this day, Isobel maps are drawn by a single person walking around recording sound samples within a particular area for days at a time.
Sound City could likely serve as a platform for users to curate unique sound walks throughout the city.
The building itself is an unmistakable host to the urban soundscape, but also facilitates learning and enhanced aural perception by scheduling listening sessions throughout its various listening environments. The institute features 4 distinct sonic typologies through its various listening spaces.
