This session will feature the rebroadcast of the lecture presented by Gascia Ouzounian on May 9, 2019 at 5 PM Eastern Time (10 PM British Standard Time), followed by a one-hour live discussion with Prof. Ouzounian herself. The main goal is to revisit the topic, and then, in the discussion that will follow, evaluate what has changed since the research was first presented. Participants are encouraged to submit their questions and comments in the chat of the platform used.

The lecture, on ‘Acoustic Defense and Technologies of Listening’, stems from Professor Ouzounian’s recently published book, Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts.

For more information please see here

We hosted 4 workshops as part of the Scoring the City project. This experiment takes inspiration from graphic scores in music as dynamic forms that could offer new models for the relationship between architecture, design practices, and social life: in other words, between scoring and performing urban space. Over 12 months we hosted 4 workshops in very different cities, with common challenges: London and Paris, two global cities needing to create flexible space to accommodate rapid economic and socio-cultural change; and Belfast and Beirut, cities marked by conflict needing to find common spaces across sectarian divides. These will invite architects and composers to collaborate to create scores for sites in transition, as dynamic modes of design dealing with time, interaction, and improvisation. The process will culminate in a publication of these scores and a launch event in early 2020.

The project is organised by Gascia Ouzounian (Associate Professor of Music, Oxford University) and John Bingham-Hall (Director, Theatrum Mundi) with support from a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship awarded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

In a city in which noise can often be all-encompassing, how can we find ways to listen to things that are hidden, stories that are unheard, and forms of life at risk of disappearing?

This edition of the sound art label Optophono invites artists and scholars from Lebanon and the UK, to create works that sound out the spatial traces of memories, cultures, and bodies ingrained into the physical fabric of their cities. The works offer listeners modes of language and tools to find forms of value in their surroundings that might otherwise go unnoticed, and to challenge the quality of their acoustic environments. In doing so, they will help to frame sound as a shared concern and a shared heritage that can be shaped as well as recorded.

The edition follows on from Theatrum Mundi and Recomposing the City’s 2017 exploratory workshop Urban Sound and the Politics of Memory. It is commissioned by the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity and the RELIEF Centre. ‘Acoustic Cities: London & Beirut’ features works by Joan Baz, John Bingham-Hall, Gerard Gormley, Nathalie Harb, Omaya Malaeb, Nadim Mishlawi, Merijn Royaards, Youmna Saba, Mhamad Safa, and Christabel Stirling.

Co-presented by Optophono, UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, Theatrum Mundi and Recomposing the City.

—Event photo by Merijn Royaards © 2017.

Join us for a panel discussion that explores sonic urbanism. Panelists John Bingham-Hall, Gascia Ouzounian, and Nathalie Harb will each present provocations based in their own work, followed by a conversation moderated by Howayda Al-Harithy.

This event is in collaboration with Recomposing the City and Theatrum Mundi.

For more information click here.

Recomposing the City, Urban Rhythms and Theatrum Mundi will co-host a Study Day on 'Acoustic Cities' at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, from 9.30 AM - 5.30 PM on Friday 2 March 2018. 

The Study Day will be devoted to exploring a wide variety of issues and practices related to urban sound: city symphonies, acoustic architectures, the politics of sound and noise mapping, intersections between sound art and urban design, sound and pedagogy in architecture and urban studies, and the challenges of acoustic planning, among other pertinent issues.

The event will bring together internationally leading as well as emerging practitioners and theorists who work across such disciplines as music, architecture, film, and urban studies. Speakers will include Richard Sennett (author of The Craftsmanand Practicing Culture), Ed Hughes and Lizzie Thynne (creators of Brighton: Symphony of a City), Katarzyna Krakowkiak (St Johns Sound Artist-in-Residence), and composer/sound artist Keith Obadike, among many others. The aim of the Study Day is not only to share recent work but to ignite conversations across the urban humanities--and to probe the possibilities of urban practice as it evolves in connection to sound and music.

See the full schedule here.

On 28 February 2018, Dr Lappin and Dr Ouzounian will present the findings of RTC to date at the Northern Ireland Assembly's Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series (KESS).  The event, which occurs throughout the year, allows academics and researchers to present their work to elected officials, policy makers and civil servants.  The session on 28 Feburary will feature work of scholars on the topics of "People and surroundings -- impacts of sound."

Gascia Ouzounian and Sarah Lappin take part in the City Sonic Places event at the London College of Communication on 2 February from 2-7 PM. Ouzounian's talk will investigate the politics of sound mapping and noise mapping in urban contexts. Sarah Lappin will present our new publication The Sound-Considered City.

Dr Lappin has been invited to speak about the work of RTC to master's of architecture students at Strathclyde University on 22 February, 2018.  Her talk is part of a multi-year series devised by Dr Jonathan Charley, Director of Cultural Studies in the Department of Architecture which has included presentations by experts in film, literature and politics. 

On January 26, 2018 Dr Lappin will present a paper at the All Ireland Architectural Research Group being held this year at Queen's University Belfast.  She will examine sound art as an increasingly key feature in and critique of public space.

The Recomposing the City Research Group invites you to the launch of The Sound-Considered City, a guide to urban sound for decision makers and designers.

We are delighted to welcome three guest speakers:

• Alastair Hall, Hall McKnight Architects

• Dr. Ken Sterrett, City Reparo

• Adam Turkington, Seedhead Arts

The event will take place in the Reception Room in Belfast City Hall on Monday 19th February 2018 from 4pm to 5pm. Drinks and light refreshments will be served.

This event is supported by:

• Arts & Humanities Research Council: Hearing Trouble project (AH/M008037/1)

• Queen's University School of Natural and Built Environment, Culture and Society Research Cluster

• Belfast City Hall

RVSP to recomposingthecity@gmail.com.

Dr Gascia Ouzounian, co-director of Recomposing the City, will give a Keynote Lecture on 'Acoustic Urbanism: Critical Perspectives on Urban Sound' at the upcoming conference 'The Role and Position of Sounds and Sounding Arts in Public Urban Environments'. She will join other Keynote speakers Salomé Vogelin, Holger Schulze, and Jean-Paul Thibauld.

Please find the Call for Papers here.

All are warmly invited to a presentation and reception with architect Sarah Lappin and musicologist/sound artist Gascia Ouzounian at Errant Bodies project space in Berlin. Sarah and Gascia are co-directors of the research group Recomposing the City: Sound Art and Urban Architectures at Queen's University Belfast. This group brings together sound artists, architects and planners in collaborative projects around the topic of sound and the built environment. 

From September through November 2015, Gascia and Sarah will be based in Berlin to conduct research for their project Hearing Trouble. For this project, they are keen to interview sound artists, architects, planners, curators and community activists who have been involved with sound art, soundscape and sound studies communities in Berlin. The event will be an informal opportunity to meet Gascia and Sarah, who will give a short presentation on their project followed by a reception.

The Hearing Trouble project is generously supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK.

For further information, visit this event's Facebook page.

7.30 PM. Wednesday 16 September 2015

Errant Bodies Kollwitzstrasse 97, 10435 Berlin

Conor McCafferty from Recomposing the City will present on 'Urban Acoustic Cartography' at the upcoming Symposium 'Sound and the Urban Environment', at ONCA Trust and Gallery, University of Brighton, 2 June 2015.

ABSTRACT: Sound mapping practices and projects have proliferated around the world in recent years. They offer a critical alternative to the emphasis on noise and noise pollution in current policy, scholarship and practice. Their multivalent character suggests new insights across disciplines: the study of urban sound; practices of (collaborative) sound art; sound in architectural and urban design practice; urban pedagogy and urban data and policy work. This research has gathered an initial dataset of approximately 100 sound maps from around the world. This will lead, firstly, to a critical review of sound mapping practices to help to bring the field into dialogue with architecture and urban design discourse. This paper will chart a path through multiple creative, theoretical and technical fields to bring together disciplines of architecture, sonic arts and sound studies.

The paper outlines a proposed methodology of participatory engagement: firstly with built environment professionals, exploring urban sound mapping in urban analytical terms; and secondly with young people, as a means of experiential learning "of the city" through the urban sound environment. These different case study subject groups are chosen to investigate potential applications of participatory sound mapping practices in both the professional context (for those working in design practice or policy environments) and the educational context (for young urban dwellers with no experience of design practice).

Recomposing the City is delighted to host a symposium on the research group's central question: how can connections between sonic arts and architecture generate new ways of understanding, analysing and transforming urban environments? The symposium will bring together leading and emerging voices in architecture, city planning, sound studies, and sonic art.

For more information please visit our Symposium page.

SOUNDSPACE POSTGRADUATE STUDENT SYMPOSIUM

The research group Recomposing the City will host a PGR symposium, Soundspace, on Monday, 18 May. This symposium emerges from our recent Soundspace seminar series, which has explored the topic of sound and space across multiple disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, architecture, planning, music and sonic arts. 

Monday, 18 May, 9.30 AM - 1 PM | The Graduate School | Queen's University Belfast

For a detailed schedule, please visit the Symposia page.

Katherine Fennelly is a researcher and historical archaeologist, specialising in the historic built environment, and the development of dedicated institutions for public confinement in the nineteenth-century. She studied history and archaeology at University College Dublin, and gained her doctorate with the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester in 2013. Her research interests include material history, sensory studies, and concepts of space and place. In this seminar, Katherine Fennelly will present her work on the creation and study of a sensory environment in early-nineteenth century lunatic asylums.

Dr. Jacqueline Waldock is a sound artist and academic. She is currently Artist in Residence at Falling Horse in Manchester where she uses sound and mapping to explore Ancoats as it goes through a time of ‘regeneration’. Her research interests include: urban soundscapes, creative regeneration and the impact of change upon domestic and temporary domestic spaces. 

Sven Anderson is an artist working between Ireland and the US since 2001. Anderson's work explores the act of listening within diverse architectural, physical, social, and emotional contexts. His practice is a discursive platform that operates through artistic intervention, academic publication, participatory processes, and interactive design.  He is currently working on a public art commission titled 'MAP: Manual for Acoustic Planning and Urban Sound Design', which won the European Soundscape Award in 2014.  The project explores the field of urban acoustic planning through a sustained artist placement within Dublin City Council, working to produce public outputs in the form of permanent urban sound installations alongside an ongoing institutional intervention through which a more discursive framework might emerge.

BIOGRAPHY. Rachel Ní Chuinn works fluidly between areas of performance, installation and composition. She uses radio, sound, text and electronics to explore ideas of touch and movement. Her recent feature documentary The Shape of Sounds to Come looks at the relationship between sound and space.

ABSTRACT.  The practice is interested in sonic atmosphere, or the sound of a space, as a principal contributor to the character of interior spaces. We develop this in our architecture by considering internal acoustic environments as one of the primary constituents of architectural space making. We work in collaboration with musicians and composers to explore spatial and compositional potential in buildings, temporary installations and theoretical projects. This allows us to engage more fully with the metaphysics of interior space in our work. 

BIOGRAPHY. Steve Larkin is a musician and architect. He studied architecture at University College Dublin and graduated in 2002. He established Steve Larkin Architects in 2007. Since then the practice has been the recipient of a number of national and international awards and commendations including RIAI Best Emerging Practice 2012. The practice was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2013. Steve has taught as a Senior Lecturer (Education) at Queens University Belfast and is a Studio Tutor at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is a guest critic in a number of universities in Ireland and the UK. He is currently a EU Marie Curie ITN ADAPTr Fellow in PhD postgraduate research at RMIT University Melbourne.

Shipping Forecast [work-in-progress] explores the complex relations between territory and transmission in BBC Radio 4’s shipping bulletin. Coordinated recordings following the long-wave journeying of a signal from inside a studio at Broadcasting House; to the transmitter at Droitwich; to a shipat sea; to a transistor radio several hundred kilometres away; reveal audible aspects of broadcasting. The piece examines attractions between language, geography, radiation and precipitation where transduced speech addresses, defines as well as physically occupies dimensions of terrestrial space.

Raviv Ganchrow’s (1972) work focuses on interdependencies between sound, location and listener, aspects of which are explored through sound installations, writing and the development of acoustic forming and vibration sensing technologies. Recent installations examine context-specific sites in contemporary modes of listening. His on-going Listening Subjects project examines the contextual circuitry of listening whereby audibility, surroundings and subjectivity are conductive of one another. He has been teaching architectural design in the graduate program at TU Delft and is currently a faculty member at the Institute of Sonology, University of the Arts, The Hague.

Event date: December 10 2014

The trembling voice, the determined gaze, the soft touch, the pouting lip, the pain of freedom, the frog in the throat, the distant horizon, the sudden burst, the gathering crowd, the forgotten words, the unknown outcome, the social energy, the lonely thought, the dispossessed, the longing and the nation, the disciplinary grip, the body on the run, the lost tribe, the flickering light, the moon overhead, the remembrance of things, the quiet hour, the unforgettable sound, the afternoon that drifts, the road to nowhere, and the sign up ahead, the song that made me stop, the whisper, the encounter, the writing on the wall.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist. His works explore questions of social life, using sound, performance, text and sited constructions. He is the author of Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (Errant Bodies, 2012) Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (Continuum, 2010) and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum, 2006). He is professor at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design.