A plea for a listening city

How can we design cities that account for auditory factors in their urban planning? How do people experience the sounds of a city? Our visual society is starting to pay more attention to all things audible, but we are noticing that people are still predominantly negative about sound. It is often equated with noise and hearing damage, but sound doesn’t have to be just a nuisance. Eliminating sound altogether is an impractical and unnecessary proposition. Neither is pinning all sound-related regulations to decibel measurements the way forward. After all, many important factors cannot be taken into account through dry calculations. We at aifoon vzw are happy to lay out an approach centred on the combination of practice, experience, better-trained attention, dialogue and a more extensive roll-out of auditory literacy (in the public space).

Developments in the domains of transport, energy, greening, shorter supply chains, urban agriculture and infill have all had a major impact on how the city of tomorrow will be designed. At the same time, the silence of lockdowns has made people more aware of the impact of sound on our coexistence in society. Environmental sounds are rarely taken into account by urban planners, however. Often it is what we can perceive with our eyes that is prioritised. One consequence of this visual dominance is that the ‘invisible sound’ through which we move is left to chance. According to the World Health Organisation, sound has an immense impact on our health, productivity and well-being. The impact on well-being also extends beyond us humans to other animals. The discrepancy between the actual attention being paid to sound in the city and the need for it illustrates a serious shortcoming in our listening culture.

In light of this, it is not so surprising that people have negative feelings surrounding sound; they are overwhelmed by sound and their grievances are scarcely taken into consideration. This sense of helplessness breeds a perception that is inclined to become increasingly allergic to sound. The consequence of this: playing children are experienced as a nuisance and crowing roosters are considered an undesirable part of the rural scenery. As a society, we are collectively coughing up for noise-cancelling headphones, making us, ironically enough, even more sensitive to sound. How do we move beyond this impasse?

Developing our listening culture

For the past 20 years, the arts organisation aifoon has developed all kinds of participatory projects, for all kinds of audiences, centred around the art of listening. From the various projects and collaborations of recent years, a focus has organically emerged on listening in relation to our environment, the city and the urban fabric, and auditory cohabitation. We are creating an arena where listening culture can grow without restraint, to the point where it starts to factor into our everyday listening. We are researching experiences, attitudes and strategies surrounding listening, as well as the related aspects of diversity and flexibility. In all of this, our emphasis is on ‘listening’ as opposed to ‘sound’.

Every project starts out with the golden question: ‘What is listening?’ We encourage participants to reflect on the effect environmental sounds have on them. But when we ask them to describe a sound, words often fail them. We employ listening art (as we like to call it) as a tool for providing their experiences with a language and form. During co-listening exercises, we seek out a pluralistic language, but also nuance, detail and an exchange of perceptions. When we listen to field recordings (sounds recorded outside a studio) as a group, participants begin associating freely based on their personal frames of reference. We also offer active listening exercises or experiments tailored to specific groups and contexts as an accessible way for people to start listening to their surroundings. We have invited people to walk through the city blindfolded, created a time capsule of sound recordings to be buried underground, and hidden speakers on a public square. The post-exercise discussion is a crucial part of it, as it gives participants an opportunity not only to reflect on how they would describe their own listening experience, but to compare their experience with that of others. By entering into dialogue with each other about listening, we give a voice to our experiences, we are heard and we expand our auditory spectrum. We have found that unlocking new listening attitudes and strategies has a disarming and unifying effect.

The Spatial Sound Institute, a research centre in Budapest, talks about the ‘Ecology of Listening’ in this context. They suggest that the way we develop our listening also has an impact on how our environment develops in turn. In this way, our working methods are not only of interest to city residents but also professionals in the fields of urban development and renewal. Sharing experiences with regard to our sound environment is a first step in outlining concrete plans for moving in the desired direction. How do we experience the sound that surrounds us? Which sounds are masking, soothing or amplifying? Which ones change the quality and identity of the public square or have the effect of turning a public space into a place?

The city as an auditory laboratory

Our artistic working methods are tools for bringing about in-depth reflection on sound environments. During processes of co-designing, they also serve to involve residents participatively in the shaping of their own living environments. Participants can then create an alternative design for the sound they would like to inhabit. For this they might use The Swarm, an installation of ours consisting of twenty portable speakers that set sound and listening in motion. Participants assign sounds to the speakers, which, when strategically positioned on a public square, can bring about a real-time auditory transformation of the square. In this way, an immediate physical and spatial impact is generated, showing how listening art can turn a public space into a place. With The Swarm, people can grow stronger together in their listening and become empowered to auditively shape their world. It is a tool that gives people agency over sound, a tool they can use to devise plans for the sound they wish to inhabit. With a view to developing the city as an auditory laboratory, we devised a number of research questions:

• What does a public square sound like? How would you like it to sound?
• In which way do you resonate with the sounds of the square?
• Which sound would you like to inhabit? What does the city of the future sound like?
• How does the composition set listening in motion?
• Which sounds are amplified and masked by this speaker setup?
• Can we add sounds to the city in a passive/active way?
• How might we reflect on soundscape design and urban sound planning?
• Can we draw inspiration from nature or from acoustic ecology?
• Which parameters (temperature, light, moisture, wind) influence sound and listening? How can we anticipate this?

Via artistieke projecten kunnen we, samen met bewoners en professionals, de luisterende relaties die we hebben met onze omgeving blootleggen. Zo hield aifoon in het najaar van 2023, samen met stad Antwerpen en Universiteit Gent, een auditie met De Zwerm voor fonteinen om het geluid van het verkeer op de ring te verdoezelen. Bewoners konden toen via onze speakers geluiden van verschillende fonteinen beoordelen naargelang hoe rustgevend ze werden bevonden. De winnende fonteinencombinatie werd gerealiseerd in het Brilschanspark. Dit project is een voorbeeld van hoe een fijnbesnaarde variant van luisteren een tool kan worden om onze zintuigen te openen en oplossingen te simuleren en ervaren.

Soundscape management

In the context of expanding our listening culture, we also propose an expansion of the way we think about sound. The discourse on sound is often narrowed to sound pollution and hearing damage. Unsolicited auditory experiences are dismissed as noise. ‘Noise (noun): a sound or sounds, especially when it is unwanted, unpleasant or loud.’ This is, all things considered, a pretty narrow definition for something that has become a catch-all term for everything we would rather not hear. As an artistic research organisation, we at aifoon would like to make a plea not to reduce all sound to ‘noise’ and to instead expand our vocabulary and communication. After all, language need not be limited exclusively to semantics; it can also take the form of drawings or collage, for example.

We advocate going beyond simply determining which sounds are wanted or unwanted. Further, we feel that the solution is not always to be found in silence. Instead of ‘noise management’, aifoon seeks to contribute artistically to ‘soundscape management’. There are a number of parameters to keep in mind with this:

1. One pitfall is narrowing listening down to a simplistic notion of transmitting and receiving, as if sound were something external to us. We as humans are not separate from sound; we make sound and we are sound.

2. Sound is everywhere: soundwaves reverberate above, below, against and through us, in front of and behind us. We therefore perceive sound not only with our ears but with our entire body. As Pauline Oliveros, the founder of deep listening, once said: ‘The ear hears, but the brain listens and the body senses vibrations.’

3. Sound is more than resonance. When we listen attentively, we discover all kinds of layers and meanings – acoustic but also emotional and associative. The way we experience sound is thus co-determined by our memories, culture, upbringing and the context of the moment (whether you feel in love, for instance, or just hungry). This makes listening very personal: everyone listens in their own unique way.

4. We cannot measure and regulate every auditive phenomenon that exists in the public space. Not only is this unnecessary, it would amount to nothing more than the sound police trying to fight the symptoms of the problem.

5. When we successfully transcend the individual situation, we discover space for a more holistic discussion and are able to work towards a ‘listening city’.

What is a listening city?

In a listening city, measurements and decibels would not be considered the be-all and end-all. Rather, they would be viewed as a source of data that is complementary to that of the lived experiences of the city’s inhabitants. Here sound problems would not be classed as a purely technical matter or a matter for which a solution could be figured out after the fact. Instead, sound problems would be addressed as part of a broader dialogue between urban planners, policymakers, designers, (sound) artists and citizens. The cornerstone of a listening city is therefore a broadly inclusive dialogue, because only through solid communication is it possible to get to the nuances of the matter at hand.

By cultivating listening through discussion, we are actively building toward a listening culture that is less centred on sound and that instead leans more in the direction of nuance and thus inclusive and tolerant communities. We view this as a way of involving the community in the planning process while expanding horizons and reducing prejudice. By exchanging about how we experience the sound environment, and by developing a nuanced approach to the communication around listening, we can go further than the question of ‘sound’ versus ‘noise’.

In addition to dialogue, a listening city is built on informed citizens. Raising awareness about the impact of sound on our health and well-being is an important piece of the puzzle. Listening art projects engage the community in the debate and bring people together around shared auditory experiences. Through workshops, exhibitions and participative projects, sound artists and communities are able to work together to explore and discover new ways of listening.

Conclusion: holistic approach

Through our methods, which centre on co-designing and co-listening, we create space for a listening city where an appreciative artistic exploration can be established and where experiences are shaped and voiced. This allows for a communal, experience-oriented language whose ultimate purpose is an alternative sound design. In this sense, aifoon’s expertise complements the work of architects, spatial planners and acousticians. Together we can think about the city’s sound in a way that goes beyond the prejudice, stigmatisation and discrimination linked to certain sounds. What we propose is a holistic way of ensuring that sound experiences are not narrowed down to simplistic, personal dualisms of good and bad. Instead, with a view to realising a richer listening culture, we hope that sound can come to be understood as a rich and multifaceted dimension of urban life.

We propose working toward a listening city where a certain breadth of listening is possible. Listening is an activity bound to people; we listen in all directions and with our whole body. There are emotions and associations attached to sound. It is the changing tapestry of our environment. Our plea is for urban planning that, in addition to measurements, looks at people’s listening experiences and feelings. For an approach that is people-centred rather than remedial. For a city where acoustically favourable environments are created that take into account the perspective and expectations of those who use the space. For urban planning that sees the potential of listening to break through the impasse we currently face.