Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
8-2023
Abstract
"One of the intricate connections that shapes urban spaces is made through the interweaving of divergent, competing, and complimenting sounds. Just as objects, inhabitants, and histories form urban spaces, there is also an aurality that defines each one, distinguishing it from all others. The flows and ripples of these different soundscapes simultaneously challenge the separations of urban spaces and reinforce the distinctions. At the most overt, these are the sounds of the market as they exceed the spatial boundaries and mix with traffic noises; the softer sounds of the park that muffle and hold construction clamor; the multicultural voices as they form an urban soundscape which is diverse and continuous. The polyphony of the city manifests as the drowning sounds that form layers much like psychoanalysis’ versions of the ’noisy’, apparent conscious and seemingly silent unconscious. We ‘hear’ the conscious sounds (of the city, of the noisy parts of our psyche) as if they are all that is to be heard, while the susurrations of other, powerful, sounds are less, perhaps never, attended to with the same awareness. These competing sounds are beyond the sense of decibels (some sounds quite literally drowned out by louder and more persistent ones); rather, they work in this psychoanalytic parallel of us being attuned to hear some sounds more than others."
Recommended Citation
Patrick Fuery: "Underneath it All: Uncanny Sounds, the Materiality of the City Through the Ear of the Other" in Parby, Jakob Ingemann (ed.): Conference Proceedings: Sound, Language and the Making of Urban Space, August 24-25, Copenhagen 2023.
Copyright
The author
Included in
Audio Arts and Acoustics Commons, Other Psychology Commons, Urban Studies and Planning Commons
Comments
This article was originally presented at the Sound, Language and the Making of Urban Space conference in August 2023.