Deafness in landscape architecture:
soundwalking to reawaken the senses
Anthony Magen
full paper
Abstract
There is generally an opto-centric mind set amongst landscape architect. Listening skills provide a powerful technique for people to enhance, empower and dicover a 'sense of place', even for the well educated ear.
Thinking about the question posed by landscape architect Pers Hedfors, in 2003 at the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology symposium, in Melbourne,
‘How can landscape architects create sonic environments that support people in their every day life’
I have had to develop and refine my own listening skills as a response to this question and as always, the best technique is also one of the simplest. It is called a Soundwalk.
Since then I have facilitated Soundwalks across Australia, and they have all varied in detail (and location) but a consistent theme is a temporary social cohesion amongst the participants combined with an empowerment beyond my control. Sometimes I combined the Soundwalks with workshops that can cover simple microphone construction with other graphical sound mapping and listening exercises.
I have discovered that the individual response to these exercises is myriad yet there is a similarity that is the re-discovery of a vital sense, that this simple exercise elicits. Active participation in ones environment is a key to this empowerment; it is walking and listening with awareness.
The walking element of a ‘Soundwalk’ is crucial to the activity. The act of crossing space is born from the necessity to move and find food for survival. Once the basic needs have been satisfied walking becomes an architectural intervention and an act of significance. It defines our relationship to the landscape as it modulates our sense of spaces and territories.
Today urban environments are complex networks and when experienced as a sequence of controlled events are even more complex than we expect; it is an ecology of which there are spaces of movement, voids, stasis and entropy. Walking is useful for architecture as a cognitive and design tool and as a means of recognising and comprehending the geography of perceived complexity that can often feel like chaos.
What are we listening to as landscape architects? In this AILA conference of critical examination of forward thinking and adaptation within a complex new world, how can landscape architecture navigate through this complexity if we do not realise we are wandering around deaf?
full paper
Biography
Anthony Magen works in Melbourne Australia for Architects, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design consultants, Urban Initiatives. He is a part-time educator, sonic inquisitor, audiovisual performer (Solo and as half of the infamous HELMETHEAD) and active member of Australian Forum for Acoustic Ecology (AFAE).
He has performed at abroad and at Australian multidisciplinary events that includ producing Instant Places workshops I + II at This Is Not Art (Newcastle), performing at The nowNOW (Sydney), Other Film Festival (Brisbane), Golden Plains (Meredith, Vic.), Sounds Unusual (Alice Springs) and curating events for Digital Fringe, such as the Mobile Projection Unit in Melbourne 2006-2007.
His interests include but are not limited to the creative responses to the environment in multifarious forms, in scientific research, anecdotes, musical improvisation, physical activity and through active listening as a life enriching experience.
