//Unheard_Landscapes - listening | resonating | inhabiting 10th FKL/ENP/AAU_CRESSON International Symposium on Soundscape BLOIS | October 27 -30

Unheard landscapes: this metaphor leaves space to imagination, to the un-thought, to the un-known, to past and future, as well as unexplored sound scenarios. It also reaches the field of auditory perception, the acoustic domain. Sound, through auditive qualities, acoustic phenomena, design practices, artistic creations, and listening experiences, offers an inspiring transversal entry onto landscapes and ambiances. Beyond the discussions on “soundscape”, approaching ordinary environments through sounds increases the awareness of our own capacities to feel, while we inhabit and move across different worlds. From an ecological perspective, resonance appears a key word, too. It puts sound and space together. It implies the idea of a plurality of bodies, things and living beings vibrating all together, sharing common contexts of time and space. The act of listening bypasses the passive meaning it usually receives. It contains in itself a completely unexpressed potential, connoted with «project», «pro-action» and «active decision» by individuals. What will be the sounds of the future and the soundscapes in which we will live, or would like to? How can listening practices evolve, how will we listen or how differently could we listen to the world around us, tomorrow? Inhabiting the world brings to us questions about how we want to manage our being in it. How do we want to inhabit the world sonically? How sound and listening do actually affect our way to inhabit it? Have we lost some of our abilities to resonate with the world? What remains to be heard? Where could the practices of listening and attuning take us to?

Marc BREVIGLIERI, Noha GAMAL SAÏD, David GOEURY| FR |

Paper

RÉSONANCES OASIENNES: approches sensibles de l’urbain au sahara

Abstract

This symposium is an occasion to share a listening experience of the soundscape of four oasis cities: Tiznit -Maroc, Kenadsa - Algeria, Nefta et Gafsa -Tunisia. The fieldwork has been conducted in the framework of a research project: Zerka: La source bleue et l’urbanisation des Oasis de mediterranée (2015 – 2017) that aims to redefine the oasis habitat in terms of space ambiance. We have conducted in-situ lived experience with sound recordings under the form of fixed points and short pathways during two workshops, the first in September 2015 in Tiznit (Morocco), the second in October 2016 in Nefta (Tunisia). The result was fifty soundtracks documenting the soundscape of emblematic places that construct more or less strong and deep relationships with their agricultural heritage. The call for sound recording in the oasis urban context made it possible to nourish a reflection on the sonic particularity of the oasis cities such as the sound contrasts and more particularly the effects of sound depth generated by the agricultural systems of the palm groves as an extension of the residential areas. The sonic thresholds where a shift in ambiances takes place due to the presence of certain architectural and urban spaces within the old medinas. These filtering elements create sound cocoons: a medium with great unity, a metastable equilibrium that could easily be broken. The clews then document the passage from one environment to another. During the soundwalk, the sounds are transformed, reconfigured allowing a chain of sound bubbles that characterize the oasis urban. The sound approach complements the significant bodily and sensory experience (exposure-shade, humidity-aridity) while allowing to enrich the qualification of the oasis ambiance. Moreover, the sound constitutes a medium for nourishing a collective interdisciplinary reflection with 18 researchers from social sciences, architecture, and urbanism, allowing to question the singular configuration of oasis cities ambiances from Morocco to Tunisia, in a context of accelerated transformation. The observations thus seeded a collective publication combining text and sound: Résonances oasiennes, approche sensibles de l’urbain au sahara.

Marc BREVIGLIERI is a sociologist, associate-prof. at the Haute École du Travail Social de Genève (HES-SO) and researcher at the CRESSON research team (UMR: Ambiances, Architectures, Urbanités). He is interested in the various configurations and arrangements of human settlement, in the learning of public life and in the dimensions linking the body and space. He develops a phenomenological sociology inspiration nourished by methodological perspectives linked to the image. Noha GAMAL SAÏD is an architect-urban designer, associate-professor at the department of architecture and urban Design - Ain Shams Uni. in Cairo; associate researcher at the CRESSON research team (UMR: Ambiances, Architectures, Urbanités). Her work focuses on the notion of ambiances; more particularly the sonic and temporal dimension of the space; she tackles contemporary issues such as sustainability, the densification of the city seen from the angle of daily sensory experience. David GOEURY is a geographer, member of the research unit: « Médiations. Sciences des lieux, sciences des liens » Sorbonne University. He co-directs a set of transdisciplinary action research programs on the resilience of oasis spaces. He pays particular attention to the residential entites in their ability to rethink territorial logics toghether with the local gouvernance. Co-author of an "Introduction to the analysis of territories" published by Armand Colin.

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