Journal of Sonic Studies

About this portal
The portal is used to publish contributions for the online OA Journal of Sonic Studies, the storage of A/V materials, and the storage of previous issues.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen 
,
Vincent Meelberg 
url:
http://sonicstudies.org/about
Recent Issues
Recent Activities
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What do the urban soundscapes of a city represent? Case studies in Bangkok and Hong Kong / 都市聲音有何個性? 考察曼谷和香港之城市聲景
(2016)
author(s): KA HO CHEUNG, Marcel Cobussen
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Urban soundscapes convey the cultural codes, history and collective memory of a society. Bangkok and Hong Kong are two open societies in Southeast Asia, within which local and imported auditory cultures co-exist, correlating to the demographics, cultural heritage, and recent geopolitical, economic and social transformations. Nevertheless, studies of their distinctive sonic phenomena are underrepresented in the field of sound studies. Encompassing street music, ritual activities, boxing matches, fresh produce markets, shopping arcades, commuting systems and various public spaces in Bangkok and Hong Kong, this article introduces case studies and contextualizes some distinct urban soundscapes, employing first-hand audio footage, as an initial pathway for building an auditory acquaintance with the region.
城市聲景蘊含社會的文化符號,歷史與集體回憶。曼谷和香港乃東南亞之開放城市,其本土與外來的聽覺文化並存,繫於族群分佈,文化傳承,地緣正治,社會經濟的演變。然而,聲音研究暫未對此題目有廣泛涉獵。有鑑於此,本文收納兩城市之街頭音樂,祭祀活動,鮮活市場,運輸系統,商場,拳賽,運輸系統,公共空間,就其聲景設案考察,為充實東南亞之聽覺智識引路。
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Editorial: Recomposing the City: New Directions in Urban Sound Art
(2016)
author(s): Gascia Ouzounian, Sarah Lappin
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In the first year of Recomposing the City we hosted over a dozen public seminars, concerts, exhibitions, and an International Symposium in Belfast. The papers collected in this volume of the Journal of Sonic Studies (JSS) stem from the Recomposing the City International Symposium in 2014, a lively gathering that was followed with an equally stimulating Postgraduate Student Symposium in 2015. However, the papers published in this present volume represent only a small part of the dialogue that Recomposing the City has facilitated. Thus, in this editorial we will reflect on our group’s larger concerns as well as on the insights of those artists and scholars who have generously contributed to this ongoing dialogue.
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Sonic Places: In Conversation with Peter Cusack
(2016)
author(s): Sarah Lappin, Gascia Ouzounian
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In this interview, Recomposing the City co-directors Sarah Lappin and Gascia Ouzounian talk with Peter Cusack about his recent work, reflecting in particular on relationships between sound, sound art, planning processes, and urban communities. Cusack, a field recordist and sound artist, has been a leading figure in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies for more than two decades. Cusack created one of the earliest collaborative sound mapping projects, Favourite Sounds (1998-), in which he invited people to record, share, and describe positive aspects of their everyday sound environments. Among other things, Favourite Sounds has been influential in inspiring the recent proliferation of online sound maps, establishing a framework for producing collective ideas of soundscape, and suggesting approaches to urban sound that extend beyond noise pollution.
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The Incidental Person: Reviewing the Identity of the Urban Acoustic Planner
(2016)
author(s): Sven Anderson
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
At the intersection of the urban and the aural lies a territory that remains largely unplanned and frequently marginalized by more dominant agendas that shape contemporary urban development. This paper explores this territory – as both an experiential and an administrative space – through a two-year public art commission in which I initiated an artist placement for myself within the city council in Dublin Ireland, working in the self-declared position of urban acoustic planner. By stepping away from the centralizing concept of the soundscape and drawing parallels with participatory artworks that lie somewhat outside of the traditional canon of works embodied by contemporary sound studies, this paper seeks to discover the identity of this role at its most open, inclusive, and plural.
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Sonopolis
(2016)
author(s): Francisco Lopez
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Original environmental recordings carried out between 1985 and 2010 in more than one hundred cities all over the world.
Evolved, composed, and mastered at “mobile messor” worldwide in 2011.
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Soundmapping Beyond The Grid: alternative cartographies of sound
(2016)
author(s): Isobel Anderson
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Drawing from projects that already map sound in unconventional and creative ways, including my collaborative project with Fionnuala Fagan, Stories Of The City: Sailortown (2012), this article explores forms of soundmapping that expand the online gridded soundmap platform. Not only do these examples map the invisible “in-between-spaces” of personal relationships to sound, but also the unseen spaces of urban architectures. Sound is intangible, ephemeral, and invisible in nature, and therefore possesses profound potentials to map invisible geographies, which might otherwise lay silent. We will only bring voice to these other layers of experience if we embrace cartography as a creative and potentially empowering platform.