DARTING ATMOSPHERES
More and more studies are turning to the way cities sound and sound maps are emerging as tools that can benefit architecture, urban anthropology and spatial planning. This research proposes a discussion on the aural reality of space in the modern city and its impact on our shared environments by studying the experience of taking a train journey on Dublin’s DART service,
The dramatic and varied soundscapes of waiting, arrival and departure across these spaces of public transition are surveyed over the course of a day. When both are mapped, their patterns overlap but never completely correspond - the boundaries of the sonic and the visual are rarely identical. Sound comes and goes, it can be perceived throughout space, or even when it is out of sight. While vision, is fixed by the frame of view.
The tools of enquiry therefore, are recording and drawing, observation through the eye and ear, in order to study the relationship between the two. The ‘drawings’ made are neither plans, nor notations but are rather dimensional interpretations of the soundscape experienced using mixed media. They create a kind of noisy, psychogeographic map that aspires to demonstrate a layered and multiple understanding of place. At the same time, they bring attention to the potential that sound has to change how we understand, design and transform the public realm as we are called to ‘invent narratives for how we might live’.
This research was presented at AIARG 9 2020 and was published in Building Material 25. An illustrated zine was presented at Dublin Art Book Fair which can be viewed here.
