 |
R. Murray Schafer, "The Sounding City"
You
have asked me to speak about the soundscape of the modern city.
I wonder if you realized when you asked, that I left the city
in 1975 to live in the countryside of central Ontario and havfesnever
returned. When I make short visits to cities both in Canada and
on lecture tours abroad, I am nothing more than a soundscape tourist.
But that is actually significant because a tourist is often more
perceptive of the environment than a native inhabitant, who has
grown weary of the daily soundscape and tries to shut most of
it out.
Tourists
are first of all sightseers, which is to say that they were initially
attracted to their destinations by pictures or a desire to see
buildings or beaches or art treasures. We still say 'have you
seen Prague?', or 'I'd love to see St.Petersburg". But, once
undertaken, trips to unknown places are multisensory experiences.
I remember the constant ringing of the church bells in Germany
and Austria but I also remember equally well the smell of goulash
or sauerbraten exhaled from the restaurants. And in Italy it was
the sound of people singing in the streets, the scraping of the
chairs on tile floors and, of course, the aroma of cappuccino.
Tourist literature often contains pictures and descriptions of
native food, but the unique sounds of tourist destinations are
scarcely ever referred to. This is a subject I'll return to later.
The
city I left in 1975 was Vancouver. I had been teaching at Simon
Fraser University on the outskirts of that city for ten years,
and it was during that time that the World Soundscape Project
was developed. I had a staff of five young researchers, and the
first real project undertaken was a study of the soundscape of
the city of Vancouver. In fact, I believe this was the first attempt
anywhere in the world to record, measure and document the acoustic
pulse of a city. The project took the form of a book and two LP
discs to illustrate the texts of the book.1
Vancouver
is a relatively new city. It was officially incorporated in 1886.
This made it possible to go back to its origins, first as a settlement
of the Central Coast Salish native people, many of whom were still
in the area when we undertook our study. The first white settlers
were loggers and trappers but they were quickly followed by an
influx of new arrivals with the construction of Canada's first
transcontinental railway which pushed the population of the city
up to 100,000 by 1910.
When
we began our soundscape research on Vancouver in the early 1970s,
there were still people alive who remembered life in those early
days of the city. In fact, ear witness accounts are the only source
material any researcher who might wish to know about past soundscapes
has prior to the invention of the tape recorder. And even after
that invention, field recording was seldom attempted except for
the recording of birdsong or occasional recordings of tribal singing
by ethnomusicologists. I honestly believe we were the first people
to take the microphone out of the studio to make phenomenological
recordings, that is to record phenomena in their native environment
without trying to mediate or manipulate the material for other
purposes.2
We
were not trying to produce works of art with these recordings;
we were using them as source material for the study of past and
present soundscapes and ultimately to assist us in what I might
call soundscape design. Soundscapes
consist of a combination of materials and activities and, of course,
these materials and activities vary from culture to culture. Originally
Vancouver was a wood and water culture. By contrast, most of Southern
Europe is a stone culture; much of the Middle East is a pottery
and sand culture; traditional Japan is a paper and bamboo culture.
This is to say, these materials define and characterize many of
the commonplace sounds of these cultures.
The
sound of the axe, the sound of the saw and the adze were the principal
sounds of pioneer life in Vancouver. Walls, floors and furniture
were of wood; even sidewalks were wooden planks echoing under
boot heels. Only after 1930 did cement sidewalks overtake those
of wood. The location of the growing city of Burrard Inlet also
kept the sounds of water and ships omnipresent.
We
might call the sounds over which the culture of a civilization
is created keynote sounds. Keynote is a musical word and it refers
to the predominant tonality of a composition; and although a composition
may modulate into other keys, it is always in reference to the
predominant key of the work.
And
in the same way, the omnipresence of keynote sounds in a given
environment does not mean that these sounds are always heard.
In fact, the contrary is often the case as our future research
began to prove. In soundscape research the sounds you miss are
often more significant than those you hear. During the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries and well into the nineteenth, a good
example of a keynote sound was that of the quill pen scratching
paper, which no writer I have encountered ever mentioned. Today
the principal keynote sounds are electrical hums such as those
of lighting systems, computer peripherals, and ventilation equipment.
We seldom listen to these sounds consciously; most of the time
we ignore them. But they are there, nevertheless, and they condition
every moment of our lives. A sudden power cut makes us immediately
aware of that.
By
contrast, signals are foreground sounds and they are listened
to consciously. They must be loud enough to catch your attention.
Often they are encoded, such as the signals of your cellphone
or computer. Often they are social signals and must be understood
by everyone, for instance the signal to wait or cross an intersection,
or the whistle signal for the level crossing of a train. In Canada,
this is two longs, a short and a long. In the past many level
crossings were in cities and this signal was heard frequently
to the point of numerous complaints. Certainly it was heard frequently
in Vancouver at the time of the Vancouver Soundscape Project and
we recorded hundreds of them. Today however they are rarely heard
in Canadian cities as trains have receded from the soundscape
and viaducts have been constructed for those that pass through
city centres. PLAY:
TRACKS THE VANCOUVER SOUNDSCAPE: HORNS & WHISTLES
If
we look at a view of a medieval city, we see that the tallest
buildings (the castle and the church) were also the most wealthy
institutions. In the modern city it's the bank tower and the industrial
complex. Every city will have its landmarks and the longer they
remain in place, the more cherished they may become, although
there are often political or social changes that can affect their
survival. In the soundscape too, there are sounds that obtrude
over the acoustic horizon. We call these soundmarks and we can
define soundmarks as prominent sounds possessing properties of
uniqueness, symbolic power, or other qualities that make them
especially conspicuous or respectfully regarded.
We
identified many soundmarks in the Vancouver soundscape : the Diaphone
Foghorn at Point Atkinson, the O Canada horn at 12 noon, the Nine
O'clock Gun in Stanley Park, the bells of Holy Rosary Cathedral,
to name a few. We recorded them all, often from different places
in the city. The latest contender for the status of soundmark
is the O Canada Horn, on the top of the B.C. Hydro building, which
was introduced in Canada's centennial year, 1967.
PLAY
TRACK 6 - VANCOUVER SOUNDMARKS
Generally
speaking, the older the sound, the more it is loved; the newer
the sound, the more it is feared. The Diaphone Foghorn at Point
Atkinson was probably the best-loved soundmark in Vancouver and
when it was replaced by a higher-pitched air horn the newspapers
were full of complaints. Listening to the lonely horn while lying
in bed on foggy winter nights was what made Vancouver 'home',
wrote deprived listeners. The fate of the B.C. Hydro Horn was
different. It was silenced for a while in 1972 due to complaints.
(We had measured it at 108 dBA three blocks away next
to
the Public Library). But it was later reinstated, and I assume
is still booming out each day at 12 o'clock noon. Actually, at
a distance of about three miles, it is tolerable and even quite
evocative. Noise
pollution is one of the main problems in modern urban life. In
survey after survey, both in Europe and North America, noise ranks
above crime, drugs, prostitution and all other social nuisances
as the leading source of complaint. The question arises as to
how much the ambient noise level of modern cities has increased.
Certainly it rose throughout the twentieth century with the introduction
of motorized vehicules, increased construction, aircraft noise
- not to forget the introduction of schizophonic devices such
as radio and piped-in music in public places. Thousands of surveys
were done in all the major cities of the western world by acoustical
engineers during the latter decades of the twentieth century,
but without a starting point earlier in the century, these surveys
don't tell us much.
The
easiest way to determine the extent to which the ambient noise
level of a city or community rises would be to study the changes
in emergency vehicules' sirens. We did this in Vancouver starting
with the 1912 La France disc siren used by the fire department
which measured 88 -96 dBA at 10 meters. We then measured all later
sirens up to the "yelp" sirens of the 1970s which peaked
at 114 dBA at the same distance. That would be an increase of
20 - 25 decibels in sixty years. It is a fair assumption that
there would have been a rise in the same order of magnitude in
the ambient noise level of the city over that period of time,
since emergency vehicules must always be audible above the ambient
sound level.
I
proposed this as a cheap method of determining the noise curve
to numerous civic administrations over the years but they all
turned the proposal down, preferring to spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars on elaborate and largely inconclusive surveys by acoustical
engineering firms. Of course, it kept countless acousticians employed
- and still does - and it gave politicians time to evade the issue
until these unending surveys were completed. In 2004 the British
government proposed a 13 million pound noise mapping project as
a preparation for a national noise strategy. Then what will they
have? A noise map of England that will be out of date in two years.
Are
cities noisier now than they were in 1970 when we did the study
of the Vancouver soundscape? My own subjective reply to that question
would be to say probably not; but there has been a shift to lower
frequencies, and infrasound. The noise generated by the physical
plant of all new buildings is significantly higher that that in
older buildings. This seems to be an issue that has been ignored
by both architects and acoustical engineers who in my experience
are remarkably deaf. We don't really know the consequences of
those deep vibrations with which we are being forced to live.
Do they stimulate our sexual appetites or calm them? Do they promote
headaches or bowel movements? Who knows? Cities will continue
to be shaped and reshaped by the demolishing and erecting of buildings,
which may now have a terminal life as brief as forty or fifty
years - a phenomenon never before known or dreamed of in architectural
history, where buildings were intended to live forever.
The
downtown areas of cities will continue to be broken up and redesigned.
Nothing is permanent here. Famous architects whose designs win
prizes will live to see their creations struck down to make room
for bigger, more resplendent creations.
It
is almost as if architecture has gained the fluidity of music
with a very heavy bass and percussion section, as modern buildings
resonate with infrasonic growling and the continuous pounding
of destruction and reconstruction. As a footnote to that, I might
add that 62% of people living in houses in London England that
were constructed after 1990 have had noise problems. This is significally
higher than residents in older houses, constructed of sturdier
materials.3
The
Vancouver Soundscape was probably the most comprehensive study
of an urban acoustical environment ever undertaken. Certainly,
it has never been duplicated or improved on as far as I am informed.
We went on to refine our methodology in our next study of Village
Soundscapes in Europe, where we compared five villages of about
the same population in five countries, (Sweden, Germany, Italy,
France and Scotland), but that is another story. The
real problem of soundscape recording is that the recordist is
always outside the environment being recorded. The recordist is
an eavesdropper. This is true even if he or she is a member of
the society being documented, just as the photographer of the
family photo is outside the picture when the photo is taken. And
in the same way one poses for a photograph, the recordist selects
and often sets up the recording situation. The ease with which
recorded images or sounds can be extracted from the environment
and the easy acceptance of this evidence by media-conditioned
audiences camouflages the fact that they are decontextualized
substitutes for real-life situations. Furthermore, rhetorical
devices such as montage and crossfade can induce reactions quite
different from those the original might stimulate.4
The
reality of our time is that we listen more readily and with greater
interest to the mediated treatment of soundscapes than to the
material in its original form and context. Of course it is the
job of artists to draw our attention to objects and events in
the environment that we may not otherwise have noticed. But it
is the duty of the researcher to document the material impassionately
and attempt to discover, as far as possible, the effect it has
on the inhabitants who live with it and participate in its making. The
World Soundscape and the interest it stimulated eventually led
to the establishment of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology,
an international organization devoted to improving the quality
of the world soundscape by sharing ideas and research techniques.
To date there are member associations in several countries (Canada,
The United Kingdom and Ireland, Japan, Germany, Italy, Austria,
Finland, Australia and the United States). There is a Soundscape
Journal that appears twice a year and there are international
meetings every couple of years, with the next slated for Japan
in November 2006. The
Japanese Soundscape Association has developed an original project
entitled "The Hundred Most Beautiful Soundscapes of Japan."
They asked people all over the country to nominate places where
they thought the most beautiful or original soundscapes existed
and from the many nominations they visited each site and selected
the most attractive. The advantage of this project is that it
involved the public at large and the consequence is that many
localities, proud to be cited as in possession of a unique heritage
have taken measures to protect their inheritance. Some of them
have even erected monuments to advertise the distinction.
A
large team of French researchers at the University of Grenoble
have produced numerous studies of the evolving soundscape in France
and I am pleased that McGill University Press in Canada has translated
Jean-Francois Augoyard's book, A l’ecoute de I'environnement
into English so that others may become acquainted with the work
of CRESSON.
In
Australia, Nigel Frame and his colleagues have developed a unique
project in association with a number of zoos to reproduce natural
habitat soundscapes for exotic animals to help them feel less
alienated than in the traditional zoo environment. A related,
but so far little-researched project, might be to determine how
the problems of immigrant resettlement might be made easier by
host nations if the importance of traditional soundscapes were
recognized. To an extent this occurs naturally in immigrant communities
where language and native music is preserved, but I am speaking
of the soundscape in more general terms. What occurs in the homes,
kitchens and restaurants, or at weddings and other ceremonies
of these communities? Certainly this is a transitional period
for the immigrants and integration into the general framework
of the host nations must also be a priority; but the subject is
an important one nowadays and deserves attention and research.
Another
current issue is that of national parks, where the soundscape
is being threatened by the invasion of exterior sounds such as
motorized vehicules, aircraft and an increasing number of visitors.
This has been a concern of the American recordist and bioacoustician
Bernie Kraus, who informs us that when he began his beautiful
series of recordings of natural environments entitled "Wild
Sanctuary" in 1968, he would record for about 15 hours to
capture about one hour of useable sound: a ratio of 15 to 1. "Now
it takes nearly 2000 hours to record one hour…due to the
unimaginable loss of native habitats."
This
is a very difficult issue for, on the one hand, the more people
who visit parks, the better the chances of persuading governments
to fundand preserve them, while the increase of careless or ignorant
visitors leads to their ultimate destruction. This is why Bernie
has been giving workshops to park employees to acquaint them with
the importance of quiet behaviour at all times while in wilderness
areas.
These
are just a few of the activities that were stimulated by the initiative
of The World Soundscape Project. Perhaps we are coming closer
to the dream I once had of training researchers who would one
day become soundscape designers attached to or affiliated with
civic or national institutions to help guide the evolution of
the changing soundscape in the same way urban planners try to
modulate the placement of roads, settlements and the whole infrastructure
of expanding societies.
In
1998, 56 percent of Paris inhabitants said they were disturbed
by noise. In London the Environmental health department received
approximately 8000 noise complaints in 1991. By 2001 this had
grown to 21,000. Other cities are posting similar results to surveys.
But we will never solve the problem of noise pollution until we
realize that the real issue is one of public education, in schools,
universities, workplaces, and, of course, the media. We need listening
programs in schools. We need soundscape programs in universities,
affiliated with schools of architecture, urbanology, geography,
sociology and ecology. We need manufacturers to recognize the
value of quieter products and we need the media and the entertainment
industries to tone down their garishness and sensationalism. The
theories are already there; all we need to do is begin to apply
them. Actually I think some progress is being made. In his 2004
"Ambient Noise Strategy"5, the
mayor of London England writes: "Cities need, not just more
effective noise control, but more sound-conscious design and arrangement.
SoundScape quality and diversity need to be enhanced. The Mayor
will encourage arts organizations, sponsors, and others to promote
creative exploration of city soundscapes."
----------------------------------------------------------
1
- The recordings were later reissued on a CD but regrettably without
the book as guide. |