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a stratigraphy of soundscapes: listening to amsterdam and vancouver

acoustic urbanism | sound over water by caelan griffiths

l istening recording world soundscape project sound souvenirs place

First Impressions – a poem:

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pedestrian crossing noise takatakatakatakatakatakatakatakatakataka a kind of five-of-six-legs-working grasshopper tarantella on a cigar box dance floor pursues the flitting walker with such urgency! a trilling bike bell sounds warning shaking out a corduroy rubber sheet

car tires on cobblestones a streetcar dinner-plate bell the competition for street space is a running battle

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The sum of human activity in a particular urban environment yields its own tune. Is there a ‘key’ to a city? Is Vancouver an Fsharp? Is Amsterdam an Aflat? Can auditory comparison of each of these waterfront cities yield insight into their architectural character? There are two groups of writers that have proposed important ways of thinking of sound and design: the World Soundscape Project (WSP) and the theories proposed in the work of Karin Bijsterveld. These listeners and writers suggest ideas that can affect design analysis methods, and thus design proposals. In this sound comparison of Amsterdam and Vancouver I have compiled

a sound diary in my day-to-day wanderings of the cities. This resulted in an written observation about each city’s soundscape. In attempt to catalogue the constituent chimes and racket of Vancouver, the WSP catalogued the sounds of that city. Under the direction of R. Murray Schafer, it succinctly recorded, collected and catalogued their work in an album called Vancouver Soundscape . Throughout the course of their work – in Vancouver and eventually abroad – the WSP proved that listening to a city leads to a kind of analysis. Recording and identifying sounds can lead to a different way of understanding the city-scape – and

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