CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The scene takes places in front of Santa Barbara Market, in Vancouver BC. I am recording the sounds of the market: people passing by, cashiers’ beeping noises, traffic rumble in the back, fleeting discussions. Somebody approaches me:
“Is that a microphone?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What are you recording? Traffic? Are you doing a movie or something?”
“No, I’m just recording the market. People talking, doing their grocery shopping.”
“Hmmm… (Short pause) Why would you do that?”

The interrogation triggered a short discussion about my project, my interest in sound environments, and the reason why I record these sound events that usually remain unnoticed. If I had used a video camera instead of a microphone, it would probably have been easier to explain. I finally managed to convince him of the usefulness of my action. He left with his grocery bags, and I wished I had left the recorder on. This was one among many discussions I had during the three months of my field research, and well before that too. It is always amazing to witness the sudden acoustic awareness of people when they are told to listen, not just hear. To pay attention, for a moment, in an environment where their visual perception usually takes over their consciousness.

The history of soundscape studies is fairly brief. As an emerging multidisciplinary research domain, it resembles in many ways this moment of sudden aural awareness: It starts with a feeling of surprise and excitement, and then triggers a re-consideration of our perception and the role of sounds in our daily life. Since R. Murray Schafer started the World Soundscape Project in the early 70s, that excitement has been felt by researchers and scholars in many disciplines who since then developed other approaches to the soundscape. Schafer proposed for the sound environment what Jacques Attali (1985) did with music: an appreciation and understanding of its symbolic role and its interactive relationship with the society that creates it. Previous traditional approaches to sound were either devoted exclusively to musical or linguistic structures, or they objectified sound through a series of measurements and qualitative descriptions. With soundscape studies, the sound environment is now being considered from the perspective of the listener, and it is analysed in its entire complexity.

The study of such a broad topic however poses epistemological and methodological problems. The way we define the “ideal” soundscape, for instance, shapes our understanding of its functioning, and may result in a biased, or distorted reading of the sounds around us and their signification. Various disciplines have been used as grounding frameworks to elaborate a model of the sound environment. Schafer, for instance, proposed the use of an ecological model to deal with growing problems of noise and the way we should design our environment. When the soundscape is studied under the realm of architecture and urban design, the emphasis shifts to the social expressions of the environment, the way it is fabricated and then experienced by inhabitants.
Soundscape studies is definitely a practical research domain; one cannot learn about a sound environment just by thinking or reading about it. It has to be heard, listened to, and experienced over a long period of time. Furthermore, when dealing with urban environments, a researcher is faced with a single soundscape, but a large variety of perceptions. These issues must all be dealt with through the development of an extensive methodological framework. The way we access or frame the soundscape is as important as the way we define it.

It is with this argumentation in mind that I decided to analyse the methodological and analytical components of three major approaches, in a way to combine them into a single multidisciplinary study of the sound environment. The common element remains a subjective analysis of an urban space through an ethnographic exploration of its soundscape. Each model proposes a set of tools and concepts to describe the soundscape and assess its functioning. I therefore tried to combine them in a complementary way, rather than simply looking for their respective weaknesses.

The first model that I use is the one produced by the team of the World Soundscape Project (WSP). Their innovative work, notably with the Vancouver Soundscape (Schafer, 1978) and the Five Village Soundscapes (Schafer, 1977b), has led researchers to produce their own methodology, as they learned about the various aspects of the soundscape. Also, Schafer’s concept of the soundscape as an interactive composition in which listeners can also be soundmakers remains essential in understanding any sonic situation. The WSP’s interest in the dynamic relationship between a community and its soundscape in an increasingly urbanised and mediated society can also be considered as the underlining perspective of the whole project.

Barry Truax, an electroacoustic composer and member of the WSP team in the 1970s, further developed this model and established its basis in communication studies. With Acoustic Communication (2001), Truax proposes a contextual approach in which sound becomes a mediating link between a listener and his or her environment. The soundscape therefore constitutes a complex system of sounds and signals that are actively interpreted, informed by active listeners. The consequences of electroacoustic technologies on society and on what Truax calls acoustic communities are examined, and the author proposes guiding principles of acoustic and electroacoustic design.

Finally, the third approach used consists in the works of Jean-François Augoyard and Pascal Amphoux, respectively French and Swiss researchers working at the CRESSON (Research Centre on Sonic Space and the Urban Environment) in France. The centre, associated with the School of Architecture in Grenoble, has been conducting research projects of various kinds since 1979; however, language barriers (no major English translations of their work have been produced yet) have seemed to prevent the spread of their knowledge to other schools and research centres until recently. The present work therefore provides a basic translation and discussion of the various aspects of the models developed by Augoyard and Amphoux.

To explore the ways in which each of these models interact practically, a case study has been prepared and conducted in an urban community, the Commercial Drive neighbourhood in Vancouver, BC. Methodological and analytical components selected in each approach have been used to study this specific soundscape, and the results of the case study provide in-depth information about both the environment itself and the ways in which the three models interact. This work therefore inscribes itself in the development of multidisciplinary models to describe the sound environment.