In and Out of Context Field Recording So

In and Out of Context:
Field Recording, Sound Installation and the
Mobile Sound Walk
Matthew Kane Green (BSc, MSc)
School of Music and Sonic Arts
Queen’s University, Belfast
A thesis submitted for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
23rd May 2011

Abstract
This thesis chronicles the practical and theoretical research that has been
undertaken in conjunction with, and in support of, the creation of a portfolio of
original works. The portfolio comprises five works of sound art: two are sound
installations, and three are what I call ‘mobile sound walks’. All five works are
site-specific, meaning that they have been designed for a specific space, in response
to a specific social and environmental context, and take into account the cultural,
historic and political significance of the hosting site.
The first half of this thesis is dedicated to an in-depth discussion of the work
of six artists with whom I align my own creative practice. These include the
composers Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari and R. Murray Schafer, who are noted
for their use of everyday sounds as compositional material; the sound installation
artists Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana, who create site-specific, environmental
sound art works; and Janet Cardiff, a pioneer of mobile sound art.
In the second half of this thesis I provide a detailed analysis of my own work,
with a particular focus on my mobile sound walks, which use location-aware
technologies as a means to map sounds across a landscape. Such technologies
have received little attention through existing sound art discourses. This thesis
addresses this lack, by offering conceptual perspectives and methodological tools
for understanding and producing what I call ‘locative soundscape composition’.
Throughout this thesis I draw upon a range of critical theories and method-
ologies both from within, and from outside of, sound art studies, which help to
shed new light on sound as it relates to, for example, the city, the politics of
everyday life, the production of space and place, and the relationships between
site-specific art, urban environments, and social actors.
Contents
List of Figures viii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Utilising Field Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.1 An Introduction to Field Recording in Composition . . . . 5
1.2 An Introduction to Sound Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 An Introduction to the Mobile Sound Walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 Theoretical and Methodological Underpinning . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.1 Phenomenology and Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.2 Critical Urban Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.3 Avant-garde Art Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.5 A Note Regarding Hewlett-Packard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2 Everyday Sound, Field Recording and Composition 23
2.1 Schaeffer and Musique Concrète . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.1.1 Schaeffer’s Listening Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.1.2 Reduced Listening and the Production of Suitable Objects 28
i
CONTENTS
2.1.3 Schaeffer’s Faults and Fortes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2 Introduction to Luc Ferrari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.2.1 Exploring the Wider Arts and Real life . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.2.2 The Simplicity of Presque Rien No.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.2.3 Mimicking Real Structures through Composition . . . . . . 40
2.3 An Introduction to Schafer, Acoustic Ecology and the WSP . . . . 42
2.3.1 Field Recordings as Analytical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.3.2 Making Use of Music’s Channels of Reception . . . . . . . . 47
2.3.3 Acoustic Design, the Musician and Soundscape Composition 48
2.4 From Schafer to Westerkamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.4.1 The Practice of Soundwalking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.4.2 Kits Beach Soundwalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3 The Sound Installations of Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana 61
3.1 Introduction to the Work of Neuhaus and Fontana . . . . . . . . . 62
3.1.1 From Music to the Visual Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.1.2 Sound Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.1.3 Course of Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2 Neuhaus, the Real Acoustic Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.3 Neuhaus’ Three Types of Sound Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.3.1 Times Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.3.2 Experiencing Times Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
ii
CONTENTS
3.3.3 Time Piece: A Moment Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.3.4 How Time Piece is Perceived . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.3.5 A Passage Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.4 Bill Fontana’s Sound Sculptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.4.1 The Early Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.4.2 Recontextualizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
3.4.3 Conceptual Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.5 Fontana’s Advanced Fieldwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.5.1 Spatial Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.5.2 Fontana and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4 Janet Cardiff ’s Audio Walks 92
4.1 Introduction to Missing Voice: Case Study B . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.2 Content of Missing Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.3 Cardiff, the Urban Dweller and the Personal Stereo . . . . . . . . . 99
4.3.1 Simmel’s Urban Dweller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.3.2 Bull’s Personal Stereo User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.3.3 Cardiff’s revision of the Personal Stereo Manifesto . . . . . 105
4.3.4 Intimacy and Insecurity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.3.5 Memory and Missing Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.4 Bull’s Auditory Gaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4.4.1 The Auditory Gaze, Cinema and Missing Voice . . . . . . . 111
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
iii
CONTENTS
5 Two Site-Specific Sound Installations 116
5.1 Present Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.1.1 The Gallery Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.1.2 Project Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.2 Study of Gallery Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.2.1 The Results of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
5.2.2 The Aural Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
5.2.3 The Visual Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.2.4 The Social Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.2.5 The Results of the Masking Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
5.3 The Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.4 The Role of the Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
5.4.1 The Composition’s Effect upon Observation . . . . . . . . . 134
5.4.2 Audience Responses to Present Place . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
5.5 Resounding Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.5.1 The Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.5.2 Proposed Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.5.3 Installation Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.6 The Sound Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.6.1 Installation Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.7 The Various Modes of Apprehension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.7.1 Resounding Rivers as Background Sound . . . . . . . . . . 151
iv
CONTENTS
5.7.2 The Discursive Reward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.7.3 The Creative and Critical Engager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
5.7.4 Feedback Received for Resounding Rivers . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6 Three Mobile Sound Walks 161
6.1 Mobile Art and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
6.1.1 Annotative and Phenomenological Locative Media . . . . . 166
6.1.2 Teri Rueb and Duncan Speakman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
6.1.3 Locative Media and Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
6.2 Blackstaff is Belfast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
6.2.1 In Response to ISEA 2009 and it’s Themes . . . . . . . . . 177
6.2.2 The Subject and Format of Blackstaff is Belfast . . . . . . 178
6.2.3 Recording and Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
6.2.4 Building with mscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
6.2.5 Getting Away from the Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.3 Blackstaff is Belfast and Soundscape Composition . . . . . . . . . 187
6.3.1 A Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
6.3.2 Site-specific Soundscape Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
6.3.3 Locative Soundscape Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
6.4 In Hear, Out There: Madrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
6.4.1 The Initial Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
6.4.2 The Park of AZCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
v
CONTENTS
6.4.3 Re-invigorating AZCA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
6.4.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
6.5 Psychogeography, Locative Media and In Hear, Out There . . . . . 198
6.5.1 In Hear, Out There as Dérive and Détournement . . . . . . 200
6.6 In Hear, Out There: Yokohama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.6.1 Selecting a Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.6.2 The Yokohama Baseball Stadium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
6.6.3 The Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6.7 In Hear, Out There, Montage and the Past within the Present . . 207
6.7.1 Montage, Site-specific Art and Architecture . . . . . . . . . 208
6.7.2 The Dialectical Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
6.7.3 In Hear, Out There as Montage and a Critical Practice . . 211
6.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
7 Conclusion 219
7.1 The Five Works and a Few Further Ties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
7.1.1 Present Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
7.1.2 Resounding Rivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
7.1.3 Blackstaff is Belfast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
7.1.4 In Hear, Out There: Madrid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
7.1.5 In Hear, Out There: Yokohama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
7.2 Towards a Mobile Sound Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
7.3 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
vi
CONTENTS
A Extra Materials for Present Place and Resounding Rivers 231
B Mscape Production Notes for Blackstaff is Belfast, Scene 5: The

Quay 239
B.1 On Site Listening Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
B.2 Mscape Mapping Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
B.3 A Remark upon GPS Inaccuracies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
C The Fountain Experiment 248
C.1 Recognising and Augmenting the Sound of Fountains . . . . . . . . 251
C.2 The Presentation and Remark about Future Potential . . . . . . . 252
D Content of Portfolio DVD 255
References 258
vii
List of Figures
2.1 Table of Schaeffer’s four listening modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.1 View to Max Neuhaus’ Times Square (1977) . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.2 Neuhaus’ drawing of Three to One (1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.3 The map that accompanied Fontana’s Landscape Sculptures with

Foghorns (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.1 Janet Cardiff in The Missing Voice: Case Study B (1999) . . . . . 102
5.1 The PS2 Gallery window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.2 Images depicting the recording phase of my study of the gallery

space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
5.3 View to and from the Present Place installation auditorium . . . . 139
5.4 Section of the print map produced for Resounding Rivers . . . . . 144
5.5 Image of speakers positioned on rear of Bittles Bar’s cellar door . . 148
5.6 Resounding Rivers label to be found near each installation . . . . . 160
6.1 The Map of Core Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.2 Three locations in the Blackstaff is Belfast river walk . . . . . . . . 183
viii
LIST OF FIGURES
6.3 Table of the three sample types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
6.4 Screen grab of the mscape software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
6.5 Portion of AZCA upon which the ‘opera house’ was set . . . . . . 202
6.6 Functioning fountain overlaid onto AZCA’s disused fountain . . . . 203
6.7 Overhead shot of Yokohama Baseball Stadium . . . . . . . . . . . 217
6.8 Listener walking around the stadium site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
B.1 Region of Gasworks site onto which Scene 5 (The Quay) was placed.246
B.2 Screen grab of the Blackstaff is Belfast mapping in mscape . . . . 247
C.1 Image of AntiVj’s Nuit Blanche Bruxelles (2008) . . . . . . . . . . 250
C.2 Image of the fountain that the Fountain Experiment software recog-
nised, tracked and augmented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
ix
Chapter 1
Introduction
This thesis chronicles the practical and theoretical research that has been under-
taken in conjunction with, and in support of, the creation of a portfolio of origi-
nal works. The portfolio comprises primarily of five works of sound art: Present
Place (2008) and Resounding Rivers (2010) are both sound installations, whilst
Blackstaff is Belfast (2009), In Hear, Out There: Madrid (2008) and In Hear,
Out There: Yokohama (2008) are examples of what I call ‘mobile sound walks’1 .
These three works utilise location-aware technologies as a means to map sounds
across a landscape. All five works are site-specific, meaning that they have been
designed for a specific space, in response to a specific social and environmental
context, and take into account the cultural, historic and political significance of
the hosting site.
The first three chapters of this thesis (chapters 2-4) are dedicated to a discus-
sion of particular artists who have made significant contributions to one of three
1
‘Mobile sound walk’ is a term I have devised. This term makes reference to the soundwalk
practices of R. Murray Schafer and the WSP (see section 2.4.1). ‘Sound walk’ is also a term
artists such as Janet Cardiff and Teri Rueb have on occasion used to describe their own work
(See Traub, 2007 and http://www.terirueb.net/core_sample/ respectively). By consistently
using the term ‘mobile sound walk’ I am able to unify the practice of artists such as Cardiff,
Rueb and myself.
1
1. Introduction
branches of sound art practice with which my own work is most clearly affiliated.
The first of these branches is musical composition, especially works of composition
that utilise field recordings. The second branch I explore is sound installation;
in particular I am interested in works of sound installation that address public
space and employ field recordings as a structuring material. The third branch
I discuss is the mobile sound walk. I define a mobile sound walk to be a walk
through a specific location for which an aural accompaniment has been devised
that a listener hears through headphones attached to a mobile device. This de-
vice may be a personal stereo, portable CD player, mp3 player, mobile phone
or palmtop computer etc. Hence, the designed accompaniment may be held as
either a standard audio track or mp3 file, or be derived in real-time from coding,
in accordance with contextual data such as the walker’s geographic position.
Each of the three subsets of sound art that I have identified will be discussed
within a separate chapter. In these three chapters I will not seek to provide a full
history or inventory. Rather, I will speak in detail of the work of six principle
artists who I suggest have made the most significant, and influential, contributions
to the three branches of creative sound practice that I address. I have chosen to
narrow my study for two reasons: firstly, I believe that in only analysing the work
of a small group of artists I am able to offer a far more rigorous assessment of
how such works are produced and what motivates their production and secondly,
I have chosen practitioners whose work covers the majority of themes and theories
that can be ascribed to each of the fields I explore, and who have made further
contributions that broader studies often negate or underplay, which I believe to
be of importance. The artists I will be discussing in detail are the composers
Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari and Murray Schafer (chapter 2); the installation
artists Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana (chapter 3); and finally Janet Cardiff, who
I suggest is a pioneer of mobile sound art (chapter 4).
Chapters five and six of this thesis are dedicated to the discussion of my own
work. In Chapter five I introduce my two sound installation works (Present Place
and Resounding Rivers) and in Chapter six I discuss all three of my mobile sound
2
1. Introduction
walks (Blackstaff is Belfast and the two In Hear, Out There projects). For each
piece I will describe the context into which it was placed, the concept governing
it, the form of the work, the methodology guiding it and provide an analysis that
reflects upon the work post exhibition. In this analysis I present all the feedback
I received from my audience for each piece, as well as relate the work to that
of the artists discussed in the preceding chapters. I will also underpin each work
with relevant theories from external areas of inquiry. In particular, I draw upon
phenomenology, particularly how it is expressed within contemporary geography;
critical urban theory, particularly the writings of Michel de Certeau and Walter
Benjamin; and avant-garde art movements, particularly Dada, Surrealism, and
Situationism.
Chapter seven is the conclusion to this thesis. In this chapter I will provide a
detailed overview of what I believe my contribution to sound art (or otherwise)
to be. In summary of the conclusion, I suggest there to be five key contributions I
have made through the course of my PhD that this thesis builds upon and makes
apparent: (1) The practical work itself, which has been exhibited internationally,
to large audiences and has tackled under explored subjects through the use of
innovative technologies and techniques; (2) An increased understanding of how
site-specific sound art may affect our sense of place and affect our attitude in,
and towards, our everyday environments through replacement or modification of
a site’s sound field; (3) A bridging of sound art and critical, urban theory as well
as improved relations to a number of critical art movements. Within the course
of this thesis, I also made links to other schools of academic inquiry including
philosophy, sociology and geography; (4) The application and development of
mobile technologies (particularly location-aware technologies) within sound art
and an approach to these technologies that centres upon their relationship with
sound, sound media and our listening attention; and (5) A transference of ideas
and method between the branches of creative sound practice that I explore (e.g.
soundscape composition, site-specific sound art and mobile art practices).
3
1. Introduction
This preliminary chapter introduces the three branches of sound art I men-
tion above. I suggest who the main contributors are, and outline the underlying
themes, methodology and sentiment that links these artists. In this discussion I
will include some artists whose work will not be explored in subsequent chapters;
I introduce these practitioners so as to provide the broadest possible overview of
my chosen fields, before moving on to discuss the most influential figures. Follow-
ing this, I will introduce the three fields of academic thought and practice that I
turn to most regularly in this thesis, namely phenomenology, critical urban the-
ory and avant-garde art. In this section I will briefly highlight how the ideas I
raise relate to my own work through reference to an example. Finally, I will give a
very brief overview of the content of each chapter and conclude with a note upon
my relationship with Hewlett-Packard, who funded and supported my PhD.
1.1 Utilising Field Recordings
Each one of my sound art works has entailed a presentation of recorded sound
materials through use of loudspeakers or headphones. The type of sound ma-
terials I employ are most commonly called field recordings. Field recordings are
documents of sound environments as they are observed from a particular perspec-
tive; they provide an image of the many sounds present in a place over a certain
duration, affected by the dimensions of a specific space. I bring field recordings
together within compositions that are played out either through my installations
or as part of my mobile sound walks. In either case these recordings, which doc-
ument particular places, are brought to bear upon a new place. The association
between the two places is of conceptual significance to each work. For example,
within Blackstaff is Belfast recordings made across Northern Ireland at various
rivers and waterways were overlaid onto a region of Belfast over which a river
once flowed that has since been buried. The work sought to reintroduce a sense of
the missing river by introducing the sounds of near-by localities that still main-
tain a relationship with a body of water. This activity (i.e. the capturing of the
4
1. Introduction
identity of one place through field recording and the overlaying of this identity
onto a new place via playback) is a significant part of my practice and the reason
why I have chosen to title this thesis ‘In and Out of Context’.
Chapter two of this thesis explores the use of field recordings and everyday
sounds (i.e. sounds that can be attributed to objects or events that are common to
the types of places we inhabit on a daily basis such as the home, office, street etc.)
within musical composition. Although I understand that the contextual setting in
which this work is exercised differs to my own (i.e. I create overlays for everyday,
urban locations whilst composition most generally addresses the concert hall), I
turn to musical composition because it has a long history of utilising recorded
sound materials and also because those who create work from such sources have
contributed much thought towards, and provided practical exemplification of, the
act of field recording and the process of editing and sequencing field recordings
into spatiotemporal systems that mirror the patterns of everyday life, both of
which are of importance to my practice. Furthermore, through their work and
through the accompanying dialogue, the composers I discuss advocate that every-
day sounds (which are not generally musical instrument sounds and are therefore
not generally deemed to be musical) can be beholden of an aesthetic and that
through thoughtful listening, which these works can inspire, this aesthetic can be
realised; this is likewise my sentiment.
1.1.1 An Introduction to Field Recording in Composition
Pierre Schaeffer is a pioneer of using recorded materials in composition. Through

the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, Schaeffer demonstrated that
any sound occurrence from any source could be recorded and made material, and
subsequently manipulated so as to render it suitable for composition. Schaeffer
developed a number of technical procedures for this task that have been adopted
by his successors and developed into the techniques used in studios today. Al-
though Schaeffer scarcely used field recordings within his compositions, he did
5
1. Introduction
utilise the sounds of everyday objects, which he either recorded in the studio or
took from sample libraries that he had access to. Schaeffer’s belief was that for
these types of sounds to be suitable for music they had to have all reference to
their concrete sources removed, for these connotations served to distract the lis-
tener away from the sound itself and subseqeuntly, this sound’s musical qualities.
Schaeffer was also one of the first to comment on how we perceive and conceive of
sound differently dependent upon our context and outlook. In his text Traité des
object musicaux, which was the culmination to his research, Schaeffer provided a
table of listening modes that address this phenomenon.
Luc Ferrari was a French composer who was initially affiliated with Schaeffer’s
Groupe de Recherches Musicales. However, Ferrari soon rebelled from Schaeffer’s
strict code by including within his compositions field recordings that had only
been subtly edited and treated, and which maintained their references to an every-
day source. Ferrari’s most famous work, Presque rien No.1 (1967) was considered
scandalous at the time of its first performance because of its general disregard
of all prevalent musical ideologies (Robindoré, 1998), bringing into the concert
hall a seemingly unrefined and unaffected recording that documented the early
morning activities of a fishing village in rural Croatia. This piece echoed the sen-
timent of John Cage’s 4’33”(1952) in that it utilised its musical context to guide
the audience’s listening attention onto an ordinary, everyday sound situation. It
was also in keeping with avant-garde art’s questioning of what art is and what
the artist’s role is within the production of art, which was most clearly addressed
by Marcel Duchamp within his series of ‘readymades’ and later by the Surrealist
through the ‘objet trouvé’ (Iversen, 2004).
The most extensive and wide ranging use of field recordings by musicians and
through music’s various channels is that initiated by the WSP (World Soundscape
Project). The WSP were a Canadian group of interdisciplinary practitioners,
formed in 1971 by R. Murray Schafer, a musician and sound activist. This unit
collated field recordings together into an archive that they analysed, producing
written reports and graphical transcriptions. The WSP also released collections of
6
1. Introduction
field recordings upon widely distributed LPs, and presented compositional works
within the concert hall and upon Canadian national radio. WSP intended to reach
a different audience with each means of presentation, seeking to raise awareness
towards our everyday sound environments, which the group felt were undervalued
and under threat from unsympathetic design and construction.
The WSP also conceived of ‘soundscape composition’, which they posited as

sub-genre of musical composition. Soundscape is a term devised by Schafer to
denote a portion of a sound environment to which a listener attends (Schafer,
1994, p.7). Barry Truax, a founding member of the WSP, suggests there to be
two extremities to soundscape composition, namely ‘found sound’ compositions
and ‘abstracted’ compositions (Truax, 2002). The former are compositions that
comprise of sparsely edited, incidental field recordings (Ferrari’s Presque rien
No.1 can be said to be of this type). Abstracted compositions comprise of mu-
sical elements and enigmatic sounds that are not clearly of any known source
but which are brought together into systems that mimic the dynamic of an ob-
served environment. Examples of this type of composition that are given by Truax
are, firstly his own work Basilica (1992), Trevor Wishart’s Red Bird (1973), and
Hildegard Westerkamp’s Fantasie for Horns (1978). The practice of ‘soundwalk-
ing’ was also important to the WSP. In a soundwalk the participant is expected
to listen intently to the sounds around them as well as perhaps produce an anal-
ysis or mapping. They may also make contributions to the soundscape through
their own activity. Westerkamp made recordings of her soundwalking practices
and presented these as soundscape compositions both within the concert hall and
on national radio.
Another notable composer to whom field work is of importance, is Francisco

Lopez, a botanist and sound artist, who is known for his ultra-minimal compo-
sitions that often entail long periods of silence or sustained periods of abrasive
‘noise’ (Cox, 2001). Lopez is also renowned for his revival of the ‘Schaefferian’
approach (López, 1997), insisting that the sounds he distributes be listened to
within themselves, upon their own merits. To aid this request, Lopez suppresses
7
1. Introduction
all visual/textual stimulus that may otherwise succeed the sound. For example,
since 1997 Lopez has refused to give titles to any of his works and has distributed
his compositions on clear, unmarked CDs; Lopez has even gone to the lengths of
blindfolding his audience (Cox, 2001).
In addition to these artists there are a further group of musicians and prac-
titioners who can be said to have produced compositions that comprise of field
recordings that have been distributed through more popular, commercial chan-
nels. For example, Tony Schwarz released a LP entitled New York 19 (1954) that
was distributed by Folkways Records2 and incorporated a number of recordings
documenting the lives of those who reside in his home neighbourhood of Mid-
town Manhattan in New York. Additionally, Chris Watson, a nature recordist
who works mainly for documentary television, released a collection of recordings
entitled Weather Report (2003), which was included in the Guardian Newspa-
per’s ‘1000 albums to hear before you die’ report3 . Joining Chris Watson and
Tony Schwarz within more popular, contemporary music markets are musicians
who utilise field recordings that are either mixed with musical elements or pro-
cessed so as to achieve a musical sheen. The compositions these musicians create
are comparable to Traux’s abstract soundscape compositions. I include within
this category artists such as Christian Fennesz and Thomas Kóner among others.
I would also like to note that in recent years field recording has also had a
presence upon the internet, with a number of sound artists keeping online journals
that they update with recordings of the places they visit. A good example of this is
Ollie Hall’s blog entitled Binaural Diaries. Other good examples are the websites
of Philip Harding or Quiet American4 . I utilised this type of output for two of
2
Folkways Records is renowned for being the label through which many American folk mu-
sicians released materials including Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly.
3
http://music.guardian.co.uk/1000albums
4
See http://www.binauraldiaries.co.uk/ for Ollie Hall’s blog; http://www.
phillharding.org/ for Phil Harding and http://www.quietamerican.org/ for Quiet
America.
8
1. Introduction
my own works, namely Present Place and In Hear, Out There: Yokohama. Both
of these works were accompanied by online blogs upon which I collected sound
materials.
The first example I have identified of field recordings utilised within a com-
positional structure is Wochenende by Walter Ruttman (1930), a German film
director. This work sought to provide an abridged account of the weekend ac-
tivities of Berlin’s public through a montage of sound recordings. This piece
was presented on national radio and followed very much the same structuring as
Ruttman’s film Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grostadt (1927). Although the record-
ings used in this piece were recorded on site, within Berlin, it has been speculated
that they were indeed staged (Chion, 1991, p.41).
1.2 An Introduction to Sound Installation
Two of my own artworks are sound installations. Sound installation is a term

devised by Max Neuhaus. Neuhaus posited sound installation as a subsidiary of
installation art, which is a genre of the visual arts that was gaining prominence in
the 1960s and 1970s when Neuhaus first began practicing professionally (Duck-
worth, 1982). Installation art is defined within the Tate glossary as ‘mixed-media
constructions or assemblages usually designed for a specific place. . . works often
occupy an entire room or gallery space that the spectator invariably has to walk
through in order to engage fully with the work of art’5 . In keeping with this defi-
nition, sound installation can be defined as works of installation that occupy and
envelop specific places chiefly through the use of sound media.
Although it may be more common for sound installation works to be gallery

based, this was not the case for any of Neuhaus’ constructions. All of Neuhaus’
installations were either erected in public space (e.g. streets, parks and roadways)
or in the corridors and passageways of selected buildings (e.g. museums and office
5
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
9
1. Introduction
spaces). Furthermore, Neuhaus always integrated the mechanics of his installa-

tions with the architecture and infrastructure present on site and the sound of
each installation was designed to blend with those of the surrounding sound field.
For example, in Times Square (1977) rather than introducing new sound to an
environment, Neuhaus’ installation served only to accent or ‘colour’ (Neuhaus,
1992a) the everyday sounds already present on site, namely the sounds of auto-
motive traffic and pedestrians. Because Neuhaus’ installations are configured in
this manner, many of those who come into contact with these works are either
unaware they have done so, or do not perceive this work to be art or as being
distinct from the wider environment.
Bill Fontana is another sound installation artist who creates works for pub-
lic spaces. Fontana’s work is of interest not only because it is site-specific but
also because this work often incorporates field recordings. Fontana’s installations
frequently involve the overlaying of sounds from an outside location upon a visi-
bly eminent, physical landmark that is present within a second location (e.g. the
Brooklyn bridge, World Trade Centre and the Arc de Triomphe). This is achieved
either through the projection of multi-channel field recordings or the real-time
broadcast of sound from an outside site through phone line, satellite or radio
transmission. The reasoning behind this bridging or merging of two disparate
localities is either to give over to the receiving site the dynamic of the recorded
or broadcast site (as in Vertical Water, 1991), to raise a conceptual link between
the two that addresses the history of either site (as in Sound Island, 1994) or
to bring the sound field of an unobservable site, which is so because it is either
too remote, inhospitable or too vast, into one, manageable listening zone (as in
Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns, 1981).
Robin Minard is a further artist whose sound installations can be said to be

both site-specific and in public space. He has installed works within courtyards,
entrance halls, foyers and gardens6 . In each case, Minard projects into the host
6
Music for Passageways (1985) was conceived for entrance halls and through spaces. Sound-
catchers (1991) was installed within the courtyard of the Berlin Social Science Research Centre.
Intermezzo (1999) was installed within an ornate garden.
10
1. Introduction
location a ‘musical ambience’ (De la Motte-Haber, 1999) as a means to beatify

and temper this location, creating zones of ‘calm’ that encourage and support
‘concentration and recreation’ (Tittel, 2009). Minard’s motivation for doing so
echoes some of the sentiment of Schafer’s World Soundscape Project. Minard
holds the view that our everyday sound environments have become severely pol-
luted. This is due in part to a lack of regard for sound within urban planning
and construction. Minard builds installations that serve to correct some of the
damage done to our sound environments. The sounds of Minard’s installations
act to mask or ‘condition’ the more unpleasant sounds present within a location
(De la Motte-Haber, 1999).
Artists such as Michael Asher, Michael Brewster and Bernard Leitner have
produced installation works that are most generally gallery based and explore
sound’s correspondence with space, i.e. how sound may affect space and space
affect sound. Asher’s installations often entail the treatment of the spaces they
are housed within. In certain works he has removed walls or installed sound-
proofing materials (LaBelle, 2006, p.88) as a means to deaden sound or make
sound more reverberant. In Brewster installation’s new sound is projected into
a space, demonstrating how different frequencies propagate within it, which in
turn makes observable some of sound’s spatial qualities (see for example See hear
now (2001), (LaBelle, 2006, p.169)7 . Leitner has produced a number of instal-
lations that consist of complex, multi-channel speaker configurations. Through
these systems Leitner is able to move sound across a space and around a listener,
sketching out three-dimensional vectors and planes purely through sound (see for
example Leitner’s early experimentations from 1970-19738 ).
7
I suggest that Brewster’s work owes a debt of gratitude to Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a
Room (1970) that similarly addressed how the materials and dimensions of space affect sound.
8
List of Leitner’s work can be found upon his website (http://www.bernhardleitner.at/).
11
1. Introduction
1.3 An Introduction to the Mobile Sound Walk
The primary and most prominent artist who can be said to produce mobile sound
walks is Janet Cardiff. Cardiff’s overlays are held on CD or as an mp3 file, hence
they are essentially temporal compositions. The duration of Cardiff’s composi-
tions is intended as being the duration of the listener’s walk. Throughout her
walks, Cardiff gives verbal directions to the listener that guides them along a
specific path. In addition to this guidance, Cardiff can be heard to speak more
intimately with the walker as though present and familiar with him or her, mak-
ing comment upon things to be seen within the landscape as well as recounting
a number of dreams and memories. Beneath this layer of speech, Cardiff places
binaural recordings of the sites visited within the walk, hence layering onto the
present an aural image of the past. This acts to demonstrate what is transient
within the traversed environment as well as what persists. In Cardiff’s most fa-
mous work, The Missing Voice: Case Study B (1999) the listener is lead through
the east end of London whilst listening to a composition that follows a film-noir
narrative, with Cardiff as both the pursuer and the pursued. This work serves to
frame the city as an unknowable entity filled with intrigue and danger.
Christina Kubisch is an artist who can be said to have produced mobile sound
walks that are technologically driven, delivered through mobile devices capable
of translating the electromagnetic waves encountered within a walk into audible
tones. The first series of walks that Kubisch designed, involved the placement of
induction cables within a given site. When headphone wearers approached these
cables certain sounds would raise to the fore. In one particular work, Oasis: Music
for a Concrete Jungle (2000) these sounds were those of wildlife (e.g. birds and
crickets) and were overlaid upon a long balcony overlooking the Thames and
South London. Leading on from this work, Kubisch started orchestrating what
she termed Electric Walks, the first of which was exhibited in Cologne in 2004
(Tittel, 2009). Rather than seeking to fabricate her own sounds for these pieces,
Kubisch went out into the hosting city and identified regions where interesting
12
1. Introduction
patterns of interference could be found. These arise in areas where electronic

devices and machinery are in abundance (e.g. mobile phones or ATM machines).
After each expedition Kubisch would produce a map of her findings that she
would make available to her audience prior to commencing their own explorations.
Regarding the Electric Walks, Kubisch remarks that every city gives rise to a very
different composition of interference due to the differing technologies present and
the density of these within the scrutinised environment (Cox, 2006).
Since Kubisch’s use of electromagnetic receptors there have been a number of

mobile sound devices that have been exhibited in the last few years that make
similar use of sensor technologies to make audible the seemingly inaudible. For
example, Sonic City (2003) by Lalya Gaye and Lars Erik Holmquist used a se-
lection of sensors that measured light levels, the presence of metals, movement,
proximity and sound amplitude so as to translate a listener’s walking gesture, and
their concurrent interaction with the built environment, into music. The real-time
creation of music in response to, and through the sampling of, the walker’s exter-
nal sound field is another process that has appealed to some artists. For example,
Noah Vawter’s Ambient Addition (2006) was capable of recording, editing, re-
sequencing and spectrally transforming the external sound field encountered by
the walker, resulting in a rhythmic and melodic composition. This is similar to
RJDJ, an ‘app’ released for Apple’s iPhone in 2008 by the company Reality
Jockey that likewise samples the mobile carriers external sound field and submits
the captured audio to a musical model.
My own mobile sound walks are aided by location-aware technologies, specif-

ically GPS (Global Positioning System). This system enables a mobile device to
know where the walker is in a geographic co-ordinate space. With this capabil-
ity, media (e.g. sound files) and computer coding can be attached to a region of
space, and initiated upon the listener’s entry into the marked zone. When used
creatively, this system falls into what is known as locative media (Tuters and
Varnelis, 2006) or locative art (Hemment, 2006) and the specific type of loca-
tive media I describe here (i.e. the attachment of media and coding to regions
13
1. Introduction
of geographic space) has been termed ‘annotative’ (ibid.). Regarding sound, one
marketable use of the annotative methodology is the production of intelligent
audio guides that provide verbal description of a locality, or related to a locality,
upon entry into it (e.g. description of Buckingham Palace and the Royal Fam-
ily upon arriving at the gates to the palace). These are commercially available
upon the new generation mobile phones such as the iPhone and Google Android
phones9 .
Artists such as Teri Rueb, Duncan Speakman and I create locative art works
that are annotative in style, but are experienced by the walker as evolving, fluid
bodies of sound, rather than a series of tags. This is achieved through layering
sounds onto one another, with one sound raising to the fore as another fades into
the background. In effect, these walks are structurally equivalent to Cardiff’s
audio walks except each event or scene is tied to a geographic point or region
rather than hard set within a temporal span. This enables walkers to experience
the work in their own time and exercise some control over it’s content, by way of
the speed and course of their own walk. Teri Rueb’s styling is similar to Cardiff’s
in that she produces walks that involve spoken word, music and narration but
which explore themes of loss or of being lost10 . Many of Duncan Speakman’s walks
are also speech driven and are underpinned by field recordings. Speakman has also
produced walks in which sections of a musical composition are distributed across
a landscape and brought together through the listener’s walking gesture11 . For
my own walks listeners explore simulated sound environments that are spread out
across a site and are constructed from many separate, overlapping field recordings.
9
See for example the Lonely Planets iPhone City Guides (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/
mobile/apple/iphone.php)
10
See for example Trace (1999) or Drift (2004).
11
See for example My World is Empty Without You (2009).
14
1. Introduction
1.4 Theoretical and Methodological Underpinning
Throughout this thesis I will introduce a number of theories, ideas and concepts
from schools of thought and practice that are not often associated with sound art,
as a means to underpin my own work and underpin the practice of others working
within the branches of sound art that I address. In particular, I believe that it is
those art genres and those scholarly enquires that address the everyday environ-
ment and how we act within it that are of the greatest relevance. This is because
the majority of the works I will discuss in this thesis, including all of my own,
are either situated within urban, public space or make use of the recorded image
of an everyday place. With this in mind, I would like to briefly introduce some of
the ideas that are to be pursued throughout the course of this thesis, which are
put forth by three particular groups, namely the phenomenological geographers,
everyday critical theorists, and twentieth-century avant-garde artists. Within my
discussion of each I will briefly highlight how the concepts raised are evident in
my own work. Hence, it is in the following three sections that the reader will find
a preliminary description of each of my five works.
1.4.1 Phenomenology and Geography
Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy that was initially developed by Ed-

mund Husserl and furthered by theorists such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty12 . Renowned geographer Yi-Fu Tuan defines phenomenology as
‘a philosophical perspective, one which suspends, in so far as this is possible, the
presuppositions and method of official science in order to describe the world as the
world of intentionality and meaning’13 (Tuan, 1971). Tuan and his contemporaries
such as Edward Relph, Anne Buttimer, David Seamon and Edward Casey have
12
I highlight Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger as they are the two thinkers to whom geographers
most generally gravitate, see (Relph, 1985).
13
Intentionality in the context of phenomenology denotes a directing of one’s mentality onto
some object, event or state of affairs (Relph, 1976, p.42).
15
1. Introduction
adopted phenomenology as a means to address their discipline, geography, from

the perspective of the experiencing subject. This opposes the classical, objective
approach to geography that preceded theirs. Phenomenological geographers focus
upon what Seamon terms ‘everyday environmental experience’ that he defines as
‘the sum total of a person’s first hand involvements with the geographical world
in which he or she typically lives’ (Seamon, 1979, p.16). There are two main topics
of discussion within the field of phenomenological geography that I deem relevant
to my practice: Firstly, geographers such as Seamon have sought to define the
ways of attending to our everyday environments. Secondly, geographers such as
Relph have tackled the issue of place, and how place is perceived, conceived and
constructed by the experiencing subject.
Seamon defines the ‘natural attitude’ as ‘the unquestioned acceptance of

the things and experiences of daily living’. For Seamon, the world encountered
through the natural attitude is termed the ‘lifeworld’. Seamon defines the life-
world to be the ‘taken-for-granted pattern and context of everyday life, by which
the person routinely conducts his or her day-to-day existence without having to
make it constantly an object of conscious attention’ (Seamon, 1979, p.12). Each
one of my six artworks addresses how the audience ordinarily relates to a par-
ticular everyday environment. More specifically, my work confronts our lack of
consideration for the sounds around us. With reference to Seamon, generally we
perceive sounds ‘preconsciously’ (Seamon, 1979, p.115), which is to say that these
sounds are heard but not listened to. Some of my work plays upon this attitude;
for instance in Resounding Rivers, sound was projected into a number of streets
in central Belfast from six separate installations. For this work I expected that
the majority of my audience would only preconsciously apprehend the introduced
sounds because these sounds were deliberately understated and because the au-
dience were probably otherwise engaged or otherwise distracted. In other works,
such as Present Place, I sought to counter the audience’s natural attitude and
turn their attention on to their external environment, paying heed to the objects,
events and sounds around them.
16
1. Introduction
In Place and Placelessness, Relph defines a ‘sense of place’ to be the abil-

ity to recognise different places and different identities of a place (Relph, 1976,
p.63). He goes on to suggest that places are sensed both ‘selfconsciously’ and
‘unselfconsciously’ in a ‘chiaroscuro of setting, landscape, ritual, routine, other
people, personal experiences, care and concern for home, and in the context of
other places’ (Relph, 1976, p.29). A selfconscious experience of place is one in
which place is held as an object of our attention, when it is thought upon and
conceived of (Relph, 1976, p.66). An unselfconscious experience of place is one
in which place is felt as we act within and upon it, in this case we are scarcely
aware of it’s effect (Relph, 1976, p.65). I suggest that each of my artworks seeks
to adapt or enhance an individual’s sense of a place by either (1) appearing to
add to or change some aspect of a place (e.g. it’s soundscape); (2) by altering the
balance of a place by magnifying or obscuring some aspect of it; (3) by making
reference to and challenging a place’s conceptual significance; (4) by changing
the audience’s orientation and/or ‘intention’ (Relph, 1976, p.43) towards a place.
As an example of this process, in my mobile sound walk, In Hear, Out There:
Yokohama I overlaid recordings of the studied site back onto this site. These
recordings documented the many uses of, and ways-of-being in, this site, which
I had witnessed over a number of days of observation. My expectation for the
work was that by listening to recordings in the site of their capture, under the
guise of an artwork, I could lead my audience into actively engaging with, and
acknowledging, the place that they were in and hopefully, by doing so, gain a new
perspective upon this place.
1.4.2 Critical Urban Theory
There are two key everyday, critical theorists that I have found to be the most
relevant to my study, namely Michel de Certeau and Walter Benjamin. Michel de
Certeau will be referenced mostly for his reflection upon the practice of walking
in the everyday. One key issue that de Certeau raises in his discussion is that a
city cannot be adequately grasped through its representation, such as the map,
17
1. Introduction
because such images omit the essential practices of everyday life (De Certeau and
Rendall, 1988, p.93). For de Certeau, the only way that we could ever hope to
understand the city is through taking to it’s streets for it is here that we encounter
real activity and real event (De Certeau and Rendall, 1988, p.96). De Certeau’s
caution has bearing upon my practice, in particular the creation of mobile sound
walks, because these works involve the annotation of a map and the subsequent
articulation of this annotation in the field. Hence there is an inherent tension
between the process of creation, which happens off-site and upon a map, and the
real, lived environment that this mapping is exercised in because the map does
not provide the creator with any notion of the phenomena that the walker will
encounter or that the walker will themselves initiate.
Benjamin provides a definition of urban experience and of the everyday men-

tality that suggests that the urban dweller acts forever in a state of distraction
and ‘shock’, overwhelmed by the shear volume of the activity that the city puts
before them (Benjamin, 2006b, p.178). Benjamin attests that in this state, the ur-
ban dweller is unable to assimilate events into meaningful, conscious and coherent
experience and instead these impressions are ‘parried’ or ‘deflected’ into the realm
of the ‘unconscious’ where they remain embedded (Gilloch, 1996, p.143). This no-
tion resonates with the phenomenologist’s natural attitude, although somewhat
more severely worded.
Following on from this, for Benjamin the city is full of triggers. These triggers
spark memories, more specifically they spark forgotten or unrealised memories
(i.e. those held within the unconscious). This notion, Benjamin adapts from Mar-
cel Proust’s ‘involuntary memory’ (Gilloch, 1996, p.59). An involuntary memory
is that called to mind by a sign within perception (e.g. a certain taste, smell,
sound or image). Benjamin extends his idea that the city may act as a personal
mnemonic to propose that a pooled memory be gathered in the cityscape, await-
ing realisation (Gilloch, 1996, p.71). These memories are those that have failed
to be assimilated into a city or territories’ prevalent history. Therefore by going
18
1. Introduction
out into the city and combing its streets, it is possible to unearth the fragments
necessarily to reawaken these forgotten thoughts and images.
The notion that the things and events of the city can act as carriers and
conveyors of memory and the past, emerges in a number of my works including
Blackstaff is Belfast. In this work I sought to reintroduce the sound of a buried
and forgotten river. This piece was a mobile sound walk and along the selected
route for this walk, which followed the previous course of the river, I identified
numerous marks, signs and ‘ruins’ within the cityscape that eluded to the rivers
past presence. These features were then highlighted by my composition, raising
the listener’s awareness towards how the river and its history are evident in the
city’s topography.
1.4.3 Avant-garde Art Movements
Dadaism, Surrealism and Situationism are three turn-of-the-century art move-

ments. There are a number of ideas and methodologies that are common to all
three of these movements and also a number of ideas and methodologies that
have been reworked, reinterpreted or renamed, as one group reflects upon the
practice of the other. Within this list there are two that are the most relevant to
my study, namely the method of montage and the suggestion that urban walking
can be a critical and creative practice.
Within the discussion of two of my mobile sound walks, I approach montage

as it is articulated by Jane Rendell in her text ‘Art and Architecture: A Place
Between’ (Rendell, 2006). Rendell speaks of montage in relation to Walter Ben-
jamin’s ideas of allegory and the dialectical image (Rendell, 2006, p.75). Rendell
demonstrates how the montage principle has been adapted for architecture and
site-specific art. In Rendell’s understanding, the history of montage begins within
Dadaist practice. Rendell defines montage to be ‘the juxtaposing of elements in
a way that make them question one another’ (Rendell, 2006, p.103). After the
Dadaists, montage then became a chief process within Surrealist practice, mainly
19
1. Introduction
as collage, assemblage or within film. Through the Situationists montage was re-
worked and renamed détournement. Guy Debord, the Situationist leader, defines
détournement to be ‘the integration of present or past artistic production into
a superior construction of a milieu’ (Debord, 1958a) and suggests that in doing
so ‘the mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the bringing together of
two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a
synthetic organisation of greater efficacy’ (ibid.).
All of my works involve the ‘insertion’ of field recordings from one place into
another, or from a previous time into the present. Hence, my work can be in-
terpreted as an act of montage in keeping with a number of Rendell’s references
(Rendell, 2006, p.105). In some instances the layering of the sound of one place
onto the physical, visible form of another serves to enliven, exhilarate or exag-
gerate the recipient place, echoing the playfulness of the Surrealists. In other
instances, my juxtaposing of recordings is a critical act more in keeping with the
Dadaists and Situationists. For example, in In Hear, Out There: Madrid an aural
image of three sites (an opera house, the botanic gardens and the library) were
overlaid onto the green belts, passageways and through spaces of AZCA, a finan-
cial centre at the fringes of central Madrid. These three amenities were within
the original plans for the site but never realised due to the reallocation of funds.
The work sought to make the audience aware of these forgotten expectations and
demonstrate what AZCA could have been, which stands in sharp contrast to the
actual, barren site of present.
Both the Surrealists and Situationists devised programmes in which walking

through urban space became a creative and critical act. The Surrealist’s version is
most often referred to as ‘errance’ (Cocker, 2007). Similar to this but following a
more political intent, was the Situationist’s ‘dérive’, which can be broadly defined
as ‘a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances’ (Debord, 1958b). In a
dérive the participant is expected to walk through an environment following an
agenda that counters routine, which is to say that it follows a new, unanticipated
route that is guided by something other than habit. One means of inciting a dérive
20
1. Introduction
highlighted by the Situationists was the following of alternative maps (Debord,

1955).
In Chapter five, I suggest that my work Resounding Rivers may have initi-
ated something close to an act of errance or dérive. For this work, a map was
made available, which detailed the location of six sound installations that were
positioned through out the city of Belfast. Each of these installations was situ-
ated upon the past course of one of Belfast’s three rivers, two of which no longer
flow over ground and the third was once much wider. Upon the map, in addi-
tion to the location of the installations was an outline of where the three rivers
used to flow. Hence, as individuals walked between installations they would have
knowingly been following the old rivers. I suggest Resounding Rivers can be af-
filiated with the Situationists’ dérive because the work’s map encouraged the
audience to follow underused paths and visit places, which they may generally
avoid. Whilst walking, this audience may have also found physical remnants of
the rivers or imagined the rivers flowing once more through the city, in either
case this resonates with the Surrealist’s errance.
1.5 A Note Regarding Hewlett-Packard
My PhD study has been funded and supported by Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bristol
(HP Labs). HP Labs developed the software (mscape) that I utilised to create
all of the locative media projects that are discussed in this thesis (i.e. Blackstaff
is Belfast and the two In Hear, Out There works). Within Chapter six, and
within a great majority of the appendix, I discuss how I utilised the mscape
software to produce coherent, immersive sound environments that a listener can
explore on location concurrent to an exploration of a real, physical landscape.
In this dialogue, I relay how best to edit and handle sound materials to suit the
capabilities of the mscape software, with the understanding that unfortunately
mscape was not designed with sound composition or sound organisation in mind
and hence is missing some of the functionality that sound practitioners perhaps
21
1. Introduction
expect or require. Also within my discussion of mscape, I address the problem of

working upon a map so as to produce work that is subsequently exercised within
a real environment and which relies upon technologies that are not always stable
(i.e. GPS). Hence, in part this thesis acts as a guide to creating mobile sound
walks through the use of the mscape platform and more broadly location-aware
technologies.
Although HP labs have never stipulated that I carry out any particular re-
search on their behalf and have never prevented me from exploring the avenues
of practice that interest me, I have within the term of my PhD, and within this
thesis, sought to repay their faith and support by firstly dedicating a lot of my
time and labour to using their software and secondly feeding back to them my
experience of using mscape; this I believe is what HP labs were expecting. The
Fountain Experiment which I discuss within the final conclusion (chapter 7) was
devised within a residency with the mscape team in April of 2009, and was my
suggestion to them towards a new functionality for their mobile systems that
makes accessible more of sound’s parameters and which responds to the real
sound present within a site. This was demonstrated to HP labs within a public
presentation at the end of my residency.
22
Chapter 2
Everyday Sound, Field

Recording and Composition
In this chapter I will explore how recordings of everyday sounds and real sound
environments have been utilised within the creative and investigative work of
three composers: Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari and R. Murray Schafer. In the
context of my discussion, Schaeffer’s musique concrète serves as a good intro-
duction to the work of Ferrari and Schafer. Whilst Schaeffer did not utilise field
recordings, he did on occasion make use of everyday sounds and pioneered meth-
ods for composing with recorded sound materials. Furthermore, there is a direct
link between Schaeffer and Ferrari, for Schaeffer was once Ferrari’s mentor.
Ferrari and Schafer have been selected because they both utilised field record-
ings within their compositional work but did so for different reasons and with
a different outlook. Ferrari always presented his compositions as music, whilst
Schafer utilised composition as a means of presenting his arguments for an acous-
tic ecology and acoustic design profession, which were concerned with more than
just music and aesthetics. Furthermore, although Ferrari’s work can be described
as documental, which Schafer’s compositions can similarly be said to be, Ferrari’s
work is far more subjective than Schafer’s because Ferrari’s personality is always
23
2. Everyday Sound, Field Recording and Composition
evident in this work in some way. Conversely, Schafer’s compositions are more
objective than Ferrari’s to the extent that on releases such as the The Vancouver
Soundscape, compositions were not even attributed to individual creators.
In the final section of this chapter I will also speak of Hildegard Westerkamp
because her work provides practical exemplification of how many of Schafers
ideas can be articulated through music. Westerkamp’s work also serves as a good
bridge between the practice of Ferrari and Schafer. Westerkamp was a contributor
to Schafer’s World Soundscape Project and took the reins of this group when
Schafer retired. In my discussion of Westerkamp, I will describe her soundscape
composition Kits Beach Soundwalk as well as a number of her soundwalks.
2.1 Schaeffer and Musique Concrète
On 5 October, 1948 Pierre Schaeffer premiered five compositions known collec-

tively as Études de bruits (Studies of Noise) on French National Radio (Holmes,
2002). Each of these ‘sonic collages’ (Diliberto, 1986) were composed entirely
from recorded sound materials. For these five works, Schaeffer collected together
recordings of both musical and non-musical occurrences (Palombini, 1993). Études
aux chemins de fer, the first of the five Études de bruits, consists of a montage of
locomotive sounds that Schaeffer captured at Batignolle Station, France (ibid.).
Étude aux tourniquets incorporates the sound of two whirligigs as well as record-
ings of African instruments. Étude au piano is a deconstruction of a piano impro-
visation performed by Schaeffer’s colleague Pierre Boulez. The source material
for the forth work, Études pour orchestre was a recording of an orchestra warm-
ing up. The last of the five studies, Étude aux casseroles, comprises of over five
hundred separate samples, many of which are reworked selections from a com-
mercial sound library that Schaeffer had access to through his position at the
Radiodiffusion-Television Francaises (RTF). Schaeffer took from this library the
sounds of things such as saucepan lids, a barge and a harmonica (ibid.).
24
In 1950 Schaeffer first published the term ‘musique concrète’ within the arti-
cle ‘Introduction a la musique concrète’ 1 Following this, in 1951, Schaeffer and
his colleagues (most notably composer Pierre Henry and sound engineer Jacques
Poullin) formed the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC). The
aforementioned five Études de bruits are considered Schaeffer’s first contribu-
tions to musique concrète (Palombini, 1993). Michel Chion, within his guide to
Schaeffer’s research, describes musique concrète as follows:
When. . . Schaeffer gave the name concrète to the music he invented,

he wanted to emphasise that this new music came from concrete sound
material, sound heard in order to try and abstract musical value from
it. And this is the opposite of classical music, which starts from an
abstract conception and notation leading to concrete performance
(Chion, 2002, S15) 2 .
Paramount to each work of musique concrète is the notion that through recording
any sound occurrence, derived from either a musical or non-musical source, can
be materialised and in this state any occurrence can be isolated, manipulated and
ultimately incorporated into a musical composition. For Schaeffer, each work of
musique concrète was a ‘process of discovery’ (LaBelle, 2006, p.29) that was ‘cre-
ated and defined by a series of approximations, by going back and forth between
doing and listening’ (Chion, 2002, S10). Each sound had to be repeatedly listened
to and subsequently reworked within the studio until it’s musical qualities were
eventually revealed and every composition had to be reworked again and again
in response to repeat reflections.
The GRMC sought a method for producing and classifying what Schaeffer
termed the ‘objet sonore’ (sound object); Chion defines the sound object as ‘a
sound unit perceived in its material, its particular texture, its own qualities and
1
The article was published in Polyphonie 6: La musique mecanise (1950), pages 30-52.
2
In the English translation of Chion’s Guide des Objets Sonores the text is collated under
numbered headings rather than page numbers.
25
perceptual dimensions’ (Chion, 2002, S12). Similarly, the group sought a theo-
retical underpinning and a methodology for composing these objects into works
of musical merit. Schaeffer’s mandate for the group, which he would maintain
throughout their term, was as follows:
You have two sources for sounds: noises, which always tell you some-
thing - a door cracking, a dog barking, the thunder, the storm; and
then you have instruments. An instrument tells you, la-la-la-la (sings
a scale). Music has to find a passage between noises and instruments.
It has to escape. It has to find a compromise and an evasion at the
same time; something that would not be dramatic because that has
no interest to us, but something that would be more interesting than
sounds like Do-Re-Mi-Fa... (Diliberto, 1986)
The conclusion to Schaeffer’s research was the book Traité des objets mu-
sicaux (1966), which outlines the procedures necessary to obtain sound objects
and a number of tabularly systems for categorising sound objects according to
their characteristics and suitability for music. Schaeffer’s assessment of a sound’s
suitability was based both upon the character of this sound and its potential to
work well with others. In subsequent re-workings of this text, Schaeffer expressed
his regret at never publishing a Traité des organisations musicales (Chion, 2002,
preface) that would describe how suitable objects (which were the outcome of the
first Traité) could actually be brought together within a compositional system
specifically devised for them.
2.1.1 Schaeffer’s Listening Modes
Schaeffer was one of the first composers to stress the importance of listening,
adopting a phenomenological attitude towards sound and music (Chion, 2002,
S10). In Traité des objets musicaux, Schaeffer defines a number of listening modes,
which outline the different ways that a sound may be apprehended, dependent
upon the observer’s context and attitude. In Chion’s guide to Schaeffer’s text, four
principal modes are identified: ‘ècouter’ (Listening), ‘ouı̈r’ (Perceiving), ‘entendre’
26
(Hearing) and ‘comprendre’ (Comprehending) (see figure 2.1). In Listening, the

individual aims to identify the source of the sound, hence the sound acts as a
‘sign’ for this source. Perceiving is passive; the individual does not attend to or
seek to understand the sound. In Hearing, the individual chooses to focus upon
certain sounds, exploring those sounds in themselves. In Comprehending, sounds
act as signs for mental concepts, such as the words of a language. With reference
to Schaeffer’s table of listening modes, Listening and Perceiving are ‘concrete’
types and Perceiving and Comprehending are ‘abstract’ types (figure 2.1).
Schaeffer is clear to point out that, although each of the four modes are dis-
tinct, they may be employed in tandem, with one dominant over another (Chion,
2002, S6). Furthermore, the individual is able to swiftly move between each of the
modes, despite not being aware that he or she is doing so. Schaeffer also suggests
that under each of the four modes, sounds are interpreted differently, resulting in
a different experience of the same sound.
Although Schaeffer utilised recordings of musical instrument sounds more of-

ten than everyday sounds, he did utilise recordings of everyday sounds within a
number of compositions, most notably Études aux chemins de fer. Schaeffer was
of the opinion that an everyday sound’s musical potential (if it had a musical
potential at all) could only be revealed if this sound was apprehended appropri-
ately, i.e. the individual would need to adopt an abstract approach to the sound
rather than a concrete one3 . However, typically this is not the case, in ordinary
circumstances everyday sounds are, with reference to Schaeffer’s modes, either
Listened to or Perceived (modes 1 & 2). We do not generally Hear or Compre-
hend (modes 3 & 4) these types of sounds, which we would need to do if we
were to realise these sounds to be musical. So as to bring about a shift in how
everyday sounds (or otherwise) are apprehended, Schaeffer developed a number
of strategies, the most radical of which was the eradication of a sound’s references
3
Schaeffer also refers to these two different types of listening as ‘specialist’ and ‘ordinary’
(Chion, 2002, S7).
27
to a physical source. For Schaeffer this procedure was essential because without
it he believed an abstract approach could not emerge, for our natural, concrete
tendencies would continue to dominate (Chion, 2002, S11).
2.1.2 Reduced Listening and the Production of Suitable Objects
Schaeffer termed the listening to sounds with a musical attitude ‘reduced listen-
ing’, of which Chion comments:
In reduced listening, our listening intention targets the event which

the sound object is in itself (and not to which it refers) and the values
which it carries in itself (and not the ones it suggests) (Chion, 2002,
S11).
One of Schaeffer’s methods for inciting a state of reduced listening was to simply
remove a sound from its original context, through recording, and bring it into
the context of the concert hall, through loudspeaker playback. Thus, separating
a sound from it’s source and placing it within a venue void of any other stimulus
(aural, visual or otherwise), which could distract the listener from the sound;
Schaeffer termed this an ‘acousmatic situation’ (Chion, 2002, S1).
Schaeffer’s other means of bringing a listener to reflect upon the detail of a

sound was to modify this sound in some way through studio editing and pro-
cessing. There were two stages to this operation. First, Schaeffer would remove
from a sound all reference to its original source, thus rendering the sound il-
legible and unfamiliar. Second, Schaeffer would experiment with the sound that
remained, extenuating or enhancing particular aspects of it. The outcome of this
second stage was sounds that were, for many different reasons, suitable for use in
composition. Schaeffer aptly referred to these types of sound object as ‘suitable
objects’ (Chion, 2002, S40). There were no set properties that suitable objects
had to have, for Schaeffer was open to all possibilities. However, in Guide des Ob-
jets Sonores, Chion provides a vague guideline, suggesting that suitable objects
should be:
28
simple, original and at the same time easily ‘memorable’, with a

medium duration; therefore be balanced typologically; lead them-
selves easily to reduced listening, therefore not be too anecdotal or
too loaded with meaning or emotion; be capable, finally, combined
with other sound objects of the same genre of producing a salient and
easily identifiable musical value (Chion, 2002, S40).
As Schaeffer’s career progressed, he utilised recordings of everyday sound mate-

rials less and less. Schaeffer preferred the sounds of musical instruments because
he felt that these could be made into suitable objects more easily than everyday
sounds (Palombini, 1993).
One method for the removal of reference devised by Schaeffer was the cut-bell
technique, which is named such because it was through experimentation with the
sound of a bell that the process was discovered. In this experiment, Schaeffer
recorded the sound of a bell and then re-recorded it, minus its initial attack.
What remained could no longer be said to be clearly ‘of’ a bell (Chion, 2002,
S2). Leading on from this, Schaeffer then caused this iteration to continually
loop through the creation of a ‘lock-groove’: a cut into the recording disc that
repeatedly returned the stylus to a point at the beginning of the sample. The
newly formed sound was described as being reminiscent of a flute and ‘all most in
a static state, enabling a listener to dwell upon its detail’ (LaBelle, 2006, p.27).
Schaeffer was fond of repetition for he believed that our reception towards sound’s
original meaning (e.g. as a word or referent to a physical source) dwindled with
every listen, ultimately lulling us into perceiving only the sound itself (Landy,
2007, p.78).
In addition to the cut-bell and lock-groove techniques, Schaeffer would also

subject his recorded materials to numerous other studio processes, which were
afforded by the technologies available to him. Sounds could be reversed, the pitch
and length altered through varying the speed of playback, amplitude envelopes
could be controlled, reverberation could be applied and a moderate array of audio
filters could be brought to bear upon any sample.
29
2.1.3 Schaeffer’s Faults and Fortes
In the preface to Chion’s Guide des objets sonores, Schaeffer suggests that music
is made when sound objects reveal a particular structural relationship. In tradi-
tional Western music Schaeffer suggests there are two dominant structures: ‘rela-
tionships of interval’ and the ‘interplay of tonalities and/or modalities’. Musique
concrète, despite its wish to revolutionise music, never found an equivalent to
these conventional structures. Schaeffer failed to develop a musical language that
specifically addressed concrete materials. As Schaeffer himself writes, his research
‘remains open, its discoveries, certainly full of possibilities, are incomplete, and
its conclusion, alas, desired by everyone, is totally lacking: i.e. a treatise, not on
musical objects, but on the musical work’ (Chion, 2002, preface). In an interview
in 1987 Schaeffer is even more critical of his contributions towards music:
Musique concrète in its work of assembling sound, produces sound-

works, sound-structures, but not music. . . unfortunately it took me
forty years to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoRéMi... in
other words, I wasted my life (Kahn, 1999, p.110).
Although Schaeffer may not have been conscious of it, he did actually con-
tribute quite a lot to music and sonic arts. He demonstrated that any sound could
be made material and in doing so that any sound could be rendered malleable
and employable within composition. Furthermore, Schaeffer was one of the first
to utilise recordings of everyday sounds within composition, although never in
their raw state and less and less so as his research progressed. Likewise, Scha-
effer was one of the first to speak of different listening modes, suggesting that
the same sound may be interpreted differently depending on the context and the
perceiver’s outlook. This in turn suggests that a sound’s aesthetic may not be
realised by us because we do not attend to it in the manner required. Schaeffer
also contributed much thought towards how sound could be edited and treated
in the studio. Many of his techniques are still in use in studios today in one form
or another.
30
As a final remark before approaching the work of Luc Ferrari I wish to address
one of the greatest criticisms of Schaeffer’s work that relates to his concept of the
sound object, in which he suggests that sounds need to be divorced from their real-
world connotations so as to be appropriate for music. Numerous commentators
(Emmerson, 1986; Norman, 1996; Young, 2007) have argued that it is impossible
to prevent the listener from imagining origins to the sound which he or she hears,
this is a natural and resolute phenomena, often occurring unconsciously (Andean,
2010). Therefore, if a sounds reference to the actual events is removed then the
listener will likely just envisage new events for the perceived sound, calling upon
memory and imagination to do so. The produced images can be quite ordinary but
also, when the sound tends to abstraction, they can be quite fantastical (Norman,
1996; Young, 2007). For many subsequent, real-world composers the capacity for
sound to conjure real and imagined objects, events and places is an important
compositional device. Thus, the criticism of Schaeffer is that in his insistence on
producing something musical he failed to embrace and accept a phenomena that
is integral to listening at all levels, whether in the everyday or in the concert hall:
that of sound being an unpreventable trigger of memory and imagination.
31
Figure 2.1: Table of Schaeffer’s four listening modes - Redrawn version of

the original table that is included in the preface to (Chion, 2002)
32
2.2 Introduction to Luc Ferrari
In 1958 Schaeffer’s Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète assumed the

broader title of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM, (Robindoré, 1998))4 .
The newly formed GRM delivered their first concert at the 1958 Brussels Univer-
sal Exposition. Amongst the presenting members was Luc Ferrari who had joined
the group only a few months prior to this event. Ferrari premiered three taped
pieces: the Ètude aux accidents (Study of accidents), the Ètude floue (Blurred
study), and the Ètude aux sons tendus (Study of tense sounds) (ibid.). These
three works were in keeping with musique concrète and influenced by the mu-
sical styles that Ferrari had been exposed to in the years prior to entering the
GRM. Ferrari had been educated in piano performance and composition at the
the École Normale de Musique and the Paris Conservatoire and proceeding this
had spent several terms at the Darmstadt Summer School of New Music practic-
ing under the purveyors of Serialism (namely Boulez, Nono, Berio, Pousseur and
Stockhausen) (Palmer, 1999).
In 1964 Ferrari presented Heterozygote; this work demonstrates a radical de-

parture from his serial and ‘post-serial’ (Yavelov, 1984) concrète work of the
preceding six years. The piece opens very much in the style expected of any af-
filiate of the GRM: it comprises of patterns of abstracted sounds that adhere
to an atonal musical structure. However, Ferrari’s composition soon transcends
these roots, becoming something all together different, discordant chords and per-
cussive recursions underpin an array of scantly treated, elongated recordings of
situated conversations, social events and activities. Heterozygote was presented
the year that Ferrari resigned from his position at the GRM (Robindoré, 1998). I
interpret the piece as a synopsis to Ferrari’s time in Schaeffer’s school: beginning
under the strict code of musique concrète and slowly, with a building confidence,
4
Schaeffer chose to rebrand the unit as a means to subdue the common misapprehension
that his research was solely about the application of environmental and commonplace sounds
within music (Robindoré, 1998).
33
rebelling against it, allowing the gathered sounds to retain their references to an
everyday source and thus enabling an ‘anecdotal’ and dramatic structuring to
develop (Robindoré, 1998).
2.2.1 Exploring the Wider Arts and Real life
Ferrari describes the years after his exit from GRM as a period of both ‘subversion-
derision’ and ‘encounter’ (Yavelov, 1984). Tired of the ‘closed world’ (Robindoré,
1998) that was the French music scene, Ferrari began to seek inspiration from
outside the fields of traditional and contemporary music, firstly looking to the
broader arts, such as new realist artists such as Yves Klein, the surrealists, the lit-
erature of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and avant-garde film (Palmer, 1999).
Ferrari also worked creatively outside of music, most notably within film as both
a sound designer and director of documentaries (Robindoré, 1998). With every
new endeavour Ferrari would acquire a new perspective and aptitude, which he
could bring back into his primary practice of musical composition.
Ferrari cites his ‘ability to observe’ and the ‘ability to imagine the sound’
(Palmer, 1999) as two principle skills which have allowed him to clearly perceive,
and subsequently assume, the commanding traits of differing mediums. In an
interview with John Palmer, Ferrari explains this potential more clearly through
the use of an example:
I see, for example, a 12th century Italian painting in a museum —

maybe a Christ with something else in the picture — and suddenly
I have a musical idea. . . I see some kind of repetition, some kind of
connection between the colour, the form, the sense of motion and the
expression of the characters in the painting. (ibid.)
Ferrari believed that ‘synesthetic’ encounters are possible and do indeed occur
because every art endeavour – be it sculpture, paint or music – shares a com-
mon practice, namely composition; for Ferrari, composition and creativity were
the same (ibid.). This goes some way to explain why Ferrari was so comfortable
34
assuming so many different guises: musician, sound artist, installation artist, film-
maker and journalist. For each creative undertaking, Ferrari believed that only
the ‘ingredient’ changes and that the ‘energy and dynamic at work’ remains con-
stant throughout (ibid.).
Ferrari’s quest for inspiration, which led him outside of music into the broader
arts, concluded in everyday life. Post GRM, Ferrari had begun to exhibit a ‘socio-
political intent’ (Yavelov, 1984) within his compositional work which was fuelled
by an increased interest in ethnographic documentation and observation. Ferrari’s
biggest influence was no longer his contemporaries but the individuals he observed
and conversed with: ‘the people I would meet who did not have such a defined
role in society. I met them in Italy, Algeria, and Germany, on the street, at the
market, in the factories.’ (Robindoré, 1998).
The documentation of everyday life was an important act for Ferrari, and
his creative flare and subversive tendencies took this act in new and unusual
directions:
The problem was to try to express ideas, feelings and passing in-
tuitions through different means; to observe everyday affairs in all
their realities, whether they are social, psychological or sentimental.
This can manifest itself in texts, instrumental textures, electroacous-
tic compositions, reportings, films etc (Slater, 2010).
A good example of Ferrari’s documenting of everyday life through sound is his

collection of ‘sound reports’ (Yavelov, 1984) that were produced at the request of
the Algerian Ministry of Education and entitled Algérie No.1,2,3 and 4 (1978).
In these four reports Ferrari sought to answer the question ‘how does a country
that liberated itself of French colonialism express its independence?’ (ibid.). A
question with no reference to either music or sound but one Ferrari tackled, to
the satisfaction of the commissioners, through sound composition.
35
2.2.2 The Simplicity of Presque Rien No.1
Everyday patterns and processes are evident in Ferrari’s compositional work both
directly through the field recordings that he brings into play and also indirectly
through the structuring of his compositions, which often assume the form of an
observed, real-life practice. I will discuss Ferrari’s replicating of real life processes
in section 2.2.3; however, here I will consider Ferrari’s most famous piece: Presque
rien No.1 - le lever du jour au bord de la mer (Almost Nothing No.1 - Sunrise
by the Sea, 1967-1970), which provides an example of Ferrari’s work with field
recordings.
Presque rien No.1 comprises of a small selection of field recordings that are
subtly edited together to create one seamless composition. Each recording docu-
ments the progression of events that Ferrari observed over a number of mornings
in the harbour of a small fishing village in Croatia. The final composition, al-
though constructed from more than one recording and condensed in time, main-
tains the dynamic of the harbour scene to such an extent that it is not obvious
how Ferrari has intervened. Of the work, Ferrari comments: ‘very little, almost
nothing, takes place. . . The work is a series of sequences that represent a natu-
ral, given situation captured by a given manner of recording. This was the most
radical composition I had ever composed’ (Robindoré, 1998).
Presque rien No.1 was considered radical at the time of its first performance
because it opposed the modernist/abstract approach to music that was then dom-
inant; in particular it opposed Schaeffer’s musique concrète. Ferrari recalls in an
interview with Warburton that his peers at GRM upon hearing the Presque rien
No.1 were less than impressed, claiming that it was not music (Warburton, 1998).
In musique concrète, recordings are cut into single sounds then processed and
spliced together to produce musical montages. One outcome of these procedures,
which is quite deliberate, is that each sound loses its referential qualities. Counter
to this, for Presque rien No.1, Ferrari’s recordings were wider in scope, framing
36
whole environments and each sample covered a greater span of time, incorporat-
ing more than one sound. Furthermore, Ferrari did not process his samples and
did not remove from his sounds their connections to external sources, indeed he
made these a feature of his work. Ferrari then reassembled his samples in accor-
dance with the harbour scene that each recording accounted, rather than follow
a known musical model.
In Presque rien No.1, Ferrari has deliberately played down his talents as a
musician and composer in favour of allowing the situation and environment that
the work frames to stand proud and take the limelight. To the untrained or over-
trusting ear the harbour scene framed by Presque rien No.1 may appear unrefined
and unaffected5 , as though Ferrari has done little more than select the situation,
hold a microphone up to it and play the results back in the concert hall. When
interpreted in this manner, Presque rien No.1 serves to criticise music in much
the same way that Marcel Duchamp’s ‘readymades’6 criticised the visual arts.
Duchamp’s readymades were objects that were severed from their everyday
contexts and brought into the gallery and exhibited as art. The function of the
readymade was to push the bounds of what may be considered art and raise ques-
tions such as: ‘need [art] involve craft? Is the signature of the artist or the work’s
location in a gallery sufficient to single out an object as art? Are aesthetic quali-
ties necessary? Does a replica have the same value as the original work? Or does
this distinction collapse in the face of the readymade?’ (Iversen, 2004). Presque
rien No.1 poses similar questions, asking whether attributing what appears to
many to be a simple snapshot of a pre-existing environment to a composer and
presenting this within the concert hall is enough to suggest that this recording
has musical value? Similarly, it questions whether musical conventions (e.g. pitch
relations) need to be adhered to for a work to be accepted as music. Presque rien
5
Numerous commentators have noted this, see (Norman, 1996) and (Emmerson, 1986).
6
An example of a readymade is The Fountain, which was a urinal that Duchamp signed and
placed upon a pedestal at the Society of Independent Artists exhibit, New York (1917).
37
No.1 also pays homage to John Cage’s 4’33”(1952), both works employed the
context of concert hall and the duration of performance to guide an audience into
a detailed reflection upon everyday sounds and in doing so hopefully realise the
aesthetic of these sounds.
Related to the readymade, one of the key influences upon Ferrari at the time
of creating Presque rien No.1 was the ‘objet trouvé’ (found object) (Robindoré,
1998), which has its origins in Surrealism. The Surrealists define the found object
to be an item that is happened upon by chance and happens to appeal to the
individual who finds it, fulfilling an ‘unconscious desire’ in the process (ibid.).
For Ferrari, the found object can be reinterpreted as ‘sound found by chance’
(Robindoré, 1998). In an interview with Dan Warburton, Ferrari accounts having
spent a considerable amount of time travelling around Europe always carrying
with him a tape recorder and microphone, recording the various events and envi-
ronments that he encountered along the way: ‘I recorded anything that took my
fancy, things which probably weren’t much use to anyone’ (Warburton, 1998).
In this yearlong expedition, Ferrari had no preconceived expectations regarding
what he would like to record and likewise had no expectations regarding how he
would subsequently utilise the gathered recordings, he merely made recordings
as a means to collect the sounds that he happened upon and took interest in.
The materials brought together in Presque rien No.1 were recorded within
Ferrari’s European expedition. In an interview with Dan Warburton, Ferrari re-
calls that there were two things that appealed to him about the harbour scene
that subsequently became the focus of Presque rien No.1. Firstly, the small vil-
lage in which the harbour was set had an ‘extraordinary acoustic’ due to being
set within a deep sided valley (Warburton, 1998). Secondly, from his bedroom
window Ferrari was able to observe the harbour and notice that over the course
of sunrise this harbour would slowly come to life, from being silent into being a
bustling hub of activity. It is this transition that appealed to Ferrari, for such
a trajectory was absent in his native Paris where both silence and subtlety are
a scarcity (ibid.). So as to capture the early morning harbour scene, Ferrari set
38
a microphone up at his bedroom window and recorded each day between the
hours of 3am and 6am (ibid.). It is these recordings that were the raw materials
from which Presque rien No.1 was composed. Ferrari selected from these record-
ings the events that he believed best portrayed the harbour scene as well as best
demonstrated the aesthetic appeal that Ferrari believed the scene to have. Hence,
although Presque rien No.1 may on the surface appear to be an objective image
it is in fact rather subjective. Ferrari’s personality, although not overt, is there
to be observed.
Even though the finished composition may appear to be ‘almost nothing’, to

produce the piece required a lot of skill and effort from Ferrari, non more so than
in making the separate recordings of which Presque rien No.1 comprises come
together to form a credible whole. The skills that Ferrari demonstrates through
Presque rien No.1 are not what were then (in the 1960s) considered to be the
skills of a musician (perhaps why Ferrari’s colleagues at GRM did not regard the
work as music) and are skills that are still rather unappreciated today. Hence,
to end my discussion of Presque rien No.1 I’d like to highlight four aspects of
Ferrari’s fieldwork and post-fieldwork activities that I believe contribute to the
success of Presque rien No.1 :
• Ferrari was adept in his use of recording technologies; in particular Fer-

rari was, as he himself suggests, the first to produce stereo field recordings
(Robindoré, 1998), which enabled him to capture images of real-world lo-
cations that had a breadth and depth to them, and which included spatial
movements.
• Ferrari was able to discern an aesthetic within the sound environments that
he encountered, he had an ‘ear’ for perceiving naturally engaging composi-
tions within the localities he scrutinised.
• Ferrari was able to successfully frame and capture the aural scenes that
he identified as being extra-ordinary; to do so I suggest that Ferrari would
have had to determine where he should position his microphone relative
39
to the discovered scene; deciding what events should be in the foreground

and which should be in the background; furthermore, Ferrari would need
to decide when to commence a recording and when to end it.
• In the studio Ferrari acted with great care, never over working his materials
and never giving in to urges to shape his sounds in accordance with a pre-
conceived notion of what music should be. Ferrari was also able to conceal
his own artistry yet at the same time leave a trace of his own personality
for more seasoned listeners to discover.
2.2.3 Mimicking Real Structures through Composition
Within the article ‘I Was Running in So Many Different Directions’ written in

1996, Ferrari speaks of two ‘obsessions’ that have remained prominent throughout
his career: the first being a ‘concubinage with repetition and cycles’ and the sec-
ond, a ‘flirtation with story and narration’ (Ferrari, 1996), both of which Ferrari
derives from observations of everyday life.
Ferrari confesses that his early work, Visage 1 (1958) is credited as a serial
piece but is in fact produced from a number of repeating cycles (Ferrari, 1996).
Each of these cycles was a different length and therefore they were never in synch,
always meeting at different points along each of their courses. The net effect of
these intersections simulated the ‘perpetual variation’ (ibid.) expected of serial
work. Hence, from a series of cyclic repetitions Ferrari was able to attain and
accentuate difference. It is this idea of difference accentuated by repetition that
Ferrari believes is evident in all his works; Ferrari references everyday life as the
origins of this notion and provides an illustration of this connection:
If one takes real-life individuals, you see that each one follows his own
rhythm, has his own activities. And then there are encounters inside
these rhythms, due to chance and the rules of society. Each individual,
following his own path, can come across other people, notice them or
not, look at them without changing direction, although some encoun-
ters can be significant. Some, in the impersonal tide of humanity find
40
themselves in a position to communicate and so to interact with one

another (Ferrari, 1996).
Regarding narration, Ferrari identifies two types that are evident within his port-
folio of work: the ‘diary’ (Ferrari, 1996) and the ‘anecdote’ (Ferrari, 1996). The
first is more apparent in Ferrari’s early work, pre-Heterozygote, and the second
is more apparent in all the works post-Heterozygote.
Ferrari claims that he tends not to rework his compositions, leaving each
section as he had first envisaged it, never reflecting back, always pushing forwards.
Hence, each of Ferrari’s compositions can be interpreted as a chronicle of Ferrari’s
working life and practice. Over the course of creating a composition (over days,
weeks or months), Ferrari would accrue new skills and experience, and his attitude
towards the work and to life in general would constantly shift. This change is
evident through the course of his compositions because he would add to them each
day; in this sense these compositions can be said to form a ‘private diary’ (Ferrari,
1996). Ferrari references Tautologos 2 (1961) as an example of this journaling:
Ferrari confesses that he had difficultly composing a satisfactory introduction to
the work and ultimately decided to thread each of his failed preludes together in
order of creation, commencing with his most ‘awkward’ effort and culminating
with his most complete and ‘dexterous’ attempt (Ferrari, 1996).
A good number of Ferrari’s compositions post-Heterozygote, rather than chron-

icling Ferrari’s professional progress, account an everyday or ‘real-world’ experi-
ence that he has had (Norman, 1996). Ferrari terms these works ‘musique anec-
dotique’ (anecdotal music, (Ferrari, 1996)). The Cambridge English dictionary
defines an anecdote as: ‘a short often funny story, especially about something
someone has done’. Anecdote is an appropriate heading for Ferrari’s work because
there is a humour to it and because many of his compositions are structured like
stories that are told from the perspective of a storyteller; each work is a chronicle
of Ferrari’s real life experiences as he remembers them. These tales are laced with
Ferrari’s own thoughts, fantasies and mis-rememberings.
41
Presque rien No.2 (1977) serves as an example of Ferrari’s anecdotal music.

This piece simulates a night time walk through an unspecified rural environment
from the walker’s perspective, the walker being Ferrari. We listen to Ferrari’s
own listening and hear his imagining upon what he perceives. This imagining is
rendered sonic through the use of abstract musical sounds such as a ‘terrifying
subito quintuple forte (subito fffff)’ (Yavelov, 1984) that cuts across a recording
of a thunderstorm. This particular scene encapsulates Ferrari’s overall premise
for the piece:
[A] description of a night time landscape that the recording engineer

attempts to capture with his microphone. But the night surprises
the hunter and penetrates into his head. It then becomes a double
description: the interior landscape modifies the exterior night, then
the composer juxtaposes upon it his own reality (or imagination of
reality) - or we could say, the psychoanalysis of his own landscape of
the night(Yavelov, 1984).
The repeated ‘terrifying’ note suggests Ferrari’s own fear and anxiety towards
the events unfolding before him under the cover of night. These events threaten
Ferrari because they cannot be seen, only heard, and therefore cannot be fully
apprehended or appreciated.
2.3 An Introduction to Schafer, Acoustic Ecology and

the WSP
At the same time that Luc Ferrari was employing field recordings within his
compositions, over in Canada R. Murray Schafer was similarly concerned with
recording and showcasing environmental sounds and sound environments. How-
ever, Schafer’s motivation and tact was quite different to that of Ferrari; whereas
Ferrari drew inspiration from many aspect of everyday life, including many pro-
cesses that are not distinctly sonic, Schafer concentrated purely on the sound field
and how people relate to and communicate through this. Furthermore, whereas
42
Ferrari provided compositions that accounted subjective experiences or through

which his personality was in some way evident, Schafer adopted a more objective
approach to the point were compositions were not even attributed to individual
creators. Finally, whereas Ferrari always operated through the arts, creating mu-
sic or otherwise, Schafer went much further, making his exploration of natural
and everyday sound environments an interdisciplinary act that incorporated as-
pects of music, acoustics, psychology, architecture and sociology (Schafer, 1994,
p.4).
Schafer termed his enquiry into everyday sound ‘acoustic ecology’ (Schafer,
1994, p.271). Schafer conceived of acoustic ecology in the late sixties whilst acting
as the head of Communication Studies at the Simon Fraser University, Canada
(Wrightson, 2000). Schafer defines acoustic ecology as ‘the study of the effects of
the acoustic environment or ‘soundscape’ on the physical responses or behavioural
characteristics of creatures living within it’ (Schafer, 1994, p.271). ‘Soundscape’
is a term devised by Schafer to denote a portion of a sound environment to which
a listener attends (Schafer, 1994, p.7). Schafer posited acoustic ecology across
disciplines, inviting input from schools of thought and practice outside of music:
The home territory of soundscape studies will be the middle ground

between science, society and the arts. From acoustic and psychoacous-
tics we will learn about the physical properties of sound and the way
sound is interpreted by the human brain. From society we will learn
how man behaves with sounds and how sounds affect and change his
behaviour. From the arts, particularly music, we learn how man cre-
ates ideal soundscapes for that other life, the life of the imagination
and psychic reflection. (Schafer, 1994, p.4).
In 1971, through funding from both UNESCO and Donner Canadian Founda-
tion7 , Schafer established the World Soundscape Project (WSP). WSP brought
7
See the online Canadian encyclopaedia article upon Schafer’s life and practice (http://
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0003133).
43
together a number of professionals from differing disciplines. Hildegard West-

erkamp, a musician and member of the WSP, describes the aims of the group as
follows: ‘[To] study the acoustic environment and the impact of technology on it. . .
The project’s focus [was] to find solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape
where the relationship between the human community and its sonic environment
is balanced.’ (Westerkamp, 1991). Schafer had two main ambitions for his acous-
tic ecology and the WSP: to bring soundscape studies into the academic/school
curriculum and to establish the profession of ‘acoustic design’ (Schafer, 1994,
p.4). The acoustic designer was expected to improve and maintain the everyday
acoustic environment through the creation and introduction of new sound and
the preservation, redevelopment or removal of sounds already present; Schafer
defines this practice as such:
The principles of acoustic design may... include the elimination or

restriction of certain sounds (noise abatement), the testing of new
sounds before they are released indiscriminately into the environment,
but also the preservation of sounds. . . and above all the imaginative
placement of sounds to create attractive and stimulating acoustic en-
vironments for the future (Schafer, 1994, p.271).
Regarding education, Schafer devised of a number of ‘ear cleaning’ (Schafer, 1994,

p.272) exercises that were expected to bring about an awareness to, and interest
in, the everyday acoustic environment. Schafer then went on to suggest that
such procedures be part of early education, believing this to be the only way
of securing a sustainable, acoustic future. Schafer released a book entitled Ear
Cleaning (1969) that outlined his devised listening exercises. This publication
was one of many releases written by Schafer that addressed sound education,
included in this catalogue is Schafer’s most extensive work, A Sound Education,
first printed in 1984.
Schafer’s work as the head of the WSP culminated with the publishing of
his text The Tuning of the World in 1977. Included within this text is a short
44
history of the Western soundscape, recounting how it has been impacted by in-
dustrialisation and recent advances in technology; a methodology for notating
and classifying soundscapes; a call for government analysis of urban soundscapes
to move from quantitative to qualitative measures; and an extended proposal for
soundscape education and design. At the rear of The Tuning of the World is a
glossary of terms that Schafer has devised over the course of his study.
Schafer left Simon Fraser University in 1975, retreating to a farm in Ban-

croft, Canada8 . After this time, Schafer continued to have a silent input into
the activities of the WSP and has, to this day, been active in the field of acous-
tic ecology through the occasional release of literature and by lecturing through
invitation across the world. Following Schafer’s withdrawing from the WSP, musi-
cians Hildegard Westerkamp and Barry Truax took the acoustic ecology mantle.
Truax released his own book on the subject entitled Acoustic Communication
(1984). Westerkamp has also written of acoustic ecology and until 2007 she co-
edited the Journal of Acoustic Ecology, (also known as Soundscape). However,
Westerkamp is perhaps better known for her ‘soundscape compositions’. Within
the WSP, soundscape composition is perhaps the closest we get to a realisation
of Schafer’s concept of acoustic design.
2.3.1 Field Recordings as Analytical Evidence
In addition to being utilised as a material with which to compose, in the WSP

the field recording served as an article of evidence and as an object for analysis.
One key requisite for the WSP was the creation of an archive of recordings of
various environments in Canada and further afield. This archive was Schafer’s first
step in righting the wrongs of previous generations who had kept no account or
history of their sound environments. Schafer believed that due to our disregard for
how the acoustic environment has changed over time, we have allowed erroneous
8
See Canadian encyclopaedia (http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?
PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0003133).
45
noise to propagate unquestioned and have been oblivious to the obliteration and
disappearance of sounds that were previously of value (Schafer, 1994, p.8).
The WSP began their campaign of field recording in their home country of
Canada and extended the breadth of their study out across Europe in 1975.
After returning from Europe, the WSP archived over 300 tapes (Truax, 1996).
This collection is still available for reference from the Simon Fraser University
and further records have been added to the archive since Schafer’s first entries.
According to Truax, each of the field recordings submitted to the first archive
were all catalogued, their subject matter classified, and many of the sounds anal-
ysed according to spectrum and level (Truax, 1996). This analysis stage was of
great importance to Schafer and a great deal of the Tuning of the World is ded-
icated to a discussion of it. In this section, Schafer provides an overview of a
number of methods for describing, classifying and depicting sound environments
and environmental sounds. Schafer suggests that sounds can be categorised in
four ways: ‘according to their physical characteristics (acoustics); according to
their function and meaning (semiotics and semantics); or according to their emo-
tional or affective qualities (aesthetics)’ (Schafer, 1994, p.135). In a mock table
that Schafer includes in his book, a car horn is described acoustically as ‘steady-
state, reiterative; predominant frequency of 512 hertz; 90 decibels’; semantically
as both ‘Get out of my way!’ and ‘I’ve just got married’ and aesthetically as
‘annoying, unpleasant’ and ‘festive, exciting’ (Schafer, 1994, p.149). In a separate
list of example semiotic classes and subclasses, the car horn is filed under ‘Sounds
as Indicators’ and ‘Horns and Whistles’ (Schafer, 1994, p.144). Schafer’s semantic
and aesthetic descriptions for the car horn demonstrate that the same sound can
have multiple meanings and effects, dependent upon context and culture (Schafer,
1994, p.149).
Regarding sound environments, Schafer provides a similar list of semiotic

classifiers. In addition, Schafer provides several graphs that demonstrate how the
content of a soundscape changes over different periods of time (hours, days and
months) (Schafer, 1994, p.229, 231 and appendix). Schafer also provides three
46
maps onto which measurements such as decibel levels have been marked. These
three maps were the outcome of analysis conducted whilst on a soundwalk, which
I describe in greater detail in section 2.4.1.
By transcribing his field and sound recordings into visual materials, Schafer
was able to raise the argument towards the preservation and improvement of the
acoustic environment through channels that were not purely sonic and thus bring
his arguments to a new and broader audience. Most importantly, by putting
his analysis of sound environments into print, Schafer was able to address an
academic and bureaucratic audience. Schafer explains the reasoning behind his
classifying as such: ‘We classify information to discover similarities, contrasts and
patterns. Like all techniques of analysis, this can only be justified if it leads to the
improvement of perception, judgment and invention’. This statement once more
makes clear that Schafer’s analysis methods were devised as a means to educate
and ultimately bring about change.
2.3.2 Making Use of Music’s Channels of Reception
The WSP made use of a number of aural networks through which they could
present their library of recordings and their arguments towards an acoustic ecol-
ogy. Most notably the group produced a series of radio programmes for CBC
(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and released a collection of recordings
upon double LP entitled The Vancouver Soundscape (1973). Both of these av-
enues put the WSP’s research and practice before a wide audience, bringing their
exploits into the home and thus into the ears of the general public.
In 1974 the WSP broadcast 10 one-hour radio programmes through the CBC.
These included the ‘fairly traditionally narrated’ (Truax, 1996) episode entitled
‘Signals, Keynotes and Soundmarks’, which defined the three terms of its title.
Additionally, there were listening exercises conducted by Schafer and a discus-
sion entitled ‘Six themes of the Soundscape’; these six themes being: Rhythm
and Tempo, Ambience and acoustic space, Language, Gesture and Texture, The
47
Changing Soundscape, and Silence. Finally, there was a 50 minute soundscape

composition entitled ‘Summer Solace’ that fused together two-minute long record-
ings that were taken every hour over the course of a midsummer’s day. This piece
was recorded within a rural location in Vancouver (ibid.) and sought to demon-
strate the complexity and beauty of this natural environment.
The Vancouver Soundscape was released upon a widely distributed double

LP in 1973 and later re-released in 1993 upon CD. This release aimed to provide
a vivid portrayal of Vancouver’s most striking soundscapes and ‘soundmarks’9 .
The Vancouver Soundscape consisted of nine tracks, eight of which were sound-
scape compositions of varying type: one track comprising of pure, untreated field
recordings whilst another track was structured very much in keeping with musique
concrète. The final track, track nine, was a twenty-minute spoken word piece that
re-articulated some of Schafer’s argument from his text the Tuning of the World.
Schafer’s expectation for the LP was that listeners would achieve a greater under-
standing and appreciation of the sounds and sound environments gathered upon
the record because they could explore the gathered recordings in their own time,
in the comfort of their own home, and could also repeat this exercise as often as
they desired10 .
2.3.3 Acoustic Design, the Musician and Soundscape Composi-

tion
Schafer anticipated that the environmentally minded musician would best suit
the role of acoustic designer. In the first instance, the initial wave of acoustic
designers were expected to utilise their musical practice, and music’s channels of
9
Schafer defines a ‘soundmark’ as the sonic equivalent to a landmark, it is a sound that is
specific to a place and held in high regard by a community (e.g. a church bell or crossing signal)
(Schafer, 1994, p.274).
10
See linear notes to the Vancouver Soundscape, 1973.
48
reception (e.g. concert hall or radio), to present real and imagined sound envi-
ronments (Schafer, 1994, p.271). These compositions were to serve two purposes:
Firstly, to raise awareness to soundscape issues and to get audiences interested in
local and global sound spaces. Secondly, to demonstrate or experiment with the
aesthetic that certain sound environments are said to hold or could hold. After
this initial wave, the acoustic designer would be expected to enter into the field
and begin constructing and renovating real aural environments (Schafer, 1994,
p.240). Unfortunately, Schafer’s latter expectation of a real impact from acoustic
design, i.e. the transforming of real environments, never surfaced within the term
of the WSP. However, Schafer’s first wave of acoustic designers did come to light
under the banner of ‘soundscape composition’, which Schafer’s colleagues Truax
and Westerkamp developed (Truax, 2002).
Soundscape composition is a term devised by the WSP to represent a par-

ticular style of musical composition that is either constructed from soundscape
materials (i.e. field recordings) or arranged in such a way so as to mimic an ob-
served soundscape without necessarily using any recordings of it. Truax defines
the range of what classifies as soundscape composition as follows:
Soundscape compositions occur along a continuum between the nat-

ural ‘found’ composition (i.e., a soundscape whose organisation is so
compelling, varied, and interesting that a simple recording of it may
be listened to with the same appreciation that one has for conven-
tional music), through to those that are painstakingly constructed
from elements such that they appear to have plausibly occurred that
way, to those that have been substantially manipulated for musical
or other purposes, but are still recognisably related to the original
environment (Truax, 2001, p.237).
Each of the three types of soundscape composition that Truax introduces is ev-
ident in The Vancouver Soundscape. The opening track is of Truax’s first type,
it is a found composition. Entitled Ocean Sounds the track comprises of two
recordings of the Pacific Ocean captured from two different vantage points. The
second sample fades in upon the conclusion of the first. Both selections appear
49
relatively unprocessed with only the fade in and outs being obvious manipula-
tions of the material. Even the sound of the wind hitting the microphone has
avoided deletion.
One step on from the pure ‘found’ style of Ocean Sounds is Entrance to
the Harbour. It appears to be one long recording captured aboard a sea vessel
travelling from out in the ocean into the busy Vancouver harbour. The work is
in fact a fabrication, it is constructed from several recordings, which are edited
together so as to give the illusion of one continuous journey. Truax identifies
two reasons for structuring Entrance to the Harbour in this manner: firstly, if
an actual recording of the voyage had been used Truax suggests that it would
have been seeped in the engine noise of the boat required to take the crossing
(Truax, 1996). Secondly, the actual crossing would have been too long to commit
to record. The constructed composition was only a fraction of the duration of the
real voyage. Truax goes on to comment that the piece benefits from being familiar
in content yet unfamiliar and fictitious in structure for this feeds our everyday
imagination. In this sense, Entrance to the Harbour functions very similarly to
Ferrari’s Presque rien No.1 (see section 2.2.2).
The Music of Horns and Whistles completes Truax’s triad of soundscape com-
position. It is constructed in a manner very similar to that of musique concrète, in
fact it bears significant resemblance to Schaeffer’s Étude de chemins. Samples of
transport horns are severed from larger recordings of environments and presented
in quick succession, creating a collage from horns of various sizes and tones, and
demonstrating a concern for musical ideas such as ‘shaping, pacing, and pitch
relationships’ (Levack Drever, 2002). What separates this piece from musique
concrète is that each horn appears complete and situated within a particular
context; a real environment can be heard resounding beneath if only fleetingly.
Schaeffer would have taken measures to eliminate such reference.
50
2.4 From Schafer to Westerkamp
In this final section of my discussion of Schafer and the WSP, I wish to spend
some time speaking of the work of Hildegard Westerkamp. Westerkamp, alongside
Truax, has continued to contribute towards Schafer’s acoustic ecology, releasing
a number of articles on the subject over the last three decades. In particular,
Westerkamp has sought to better define the role of the musician within acoustic
ecology. On the whole this discussion has focused upon soundscape composition
but also the soundwalk. A ‘soundwalk’ is a programmed walk through an environ-
ment in which participants engage in listening and sound making activities. The
‘soundwalk’ is a term and practice that Schafer devised but it is Westerkamp’s
literature that provides the clearest insight into what this practice is and what the
expectations for it were. Westerkamp is also responsible for linking the soundwalk
with composition.
Regarding soundscape composition, Westerkamp has continued to produce

works of this type, maintaining the outlook that they are the best means by
which musicians can address real-world issues (Westerkamp, 1999). The com-
positions that Westerkamp produced, in the years after Schafer left the WSP,
are a little different to those of, for example, The Vancouver Soundscape. The
root sounds in Westerkamp’s compositions are still field recordings but are pro-
cessed so as to assume a more musical sheen and supplemented with abstract
timbres and flourishes so as to produce dreamlike environments. For instance, A
Walk through the City (1981) creates a lucid image of the city it frames through
editing together field recordings, pulsating tones and a poetry reading; and Fan-
tasie of Horns ii (1979) presents a haunting duet between a french horn and the
foghorns of real ships calling across the oceans. Just like Ferrari’s Presque rien
No.2, Westerkamp’s compositions account subjective and creative responses to
acoustic environments. In section 2.4.2 I will explore Westerkamp’s composition
Kits Beach Soundwalk, which comprises of field recordings that have been pro-
cessed in accordance with Westerkamp’s listening perspective and supplemented
51
with Westerkamp’s imagining upon the sounds of these recordings. Prior to this,
however, I will describe the practice of soundwalking, which Westerkamp’s com-
position references in its name.
2.4.1 The Practice of Soundwalking
In the article ‘Soundwalking: Aural Excursions into the Everyday’ (Drever, 2009),
John Levack Drever traces the origins and history of the soundwalk, which culmi-
nates with Schafer and the WSP. One key figure whom Drever highlights as having
pioneered sound walking practices, is John Cage. In Cage’s series of works, each
entitled Musicircus, Cage requested that the audience be mobile, moving around
the performers. In these works, Drever suggests that the audience played a part in
the outcome of the composition as each listener’s path took in a different combi-
nation of performers, who were at varying distances and degrees from the listener.
One of Cage’s Musicircus pieces was entitled Demonstration of the Sounds of the
Environment (1971) and consisted of an organised walk around the campus of
the University of Wisconsin. For the piece, the audience were instructed to walk
silently whilst attentively listening to the sounds around them. After Cage, Dr-
ever suggests that the Fluxus artists of the 1960s influenced the soundwalk. Many
of their artworks comprised solely of instructions for the audience. For example,
in La Monte Young’s Composition 1960 No.10 the audience were requested to
‘draw a straight line and follow it’ (ibid.). In the final section of his article, Drever
suggests that Schafer was very much aware of the work of artists such as John
Cage and that he adapted their practices so as to be serviceable to his acoustic
ecology (ibid.).
In Tuning of the World, Schafer defines a ‘soundwalk’ as being distinct from

a ‘listening walk’. According to Schafer, a listening walk is a ‘simple walk with
a concentration on listening’ (Schafer, 1994, p.212), whereas in a soundwalk par-
ticipants follow a ‘score’, which is very often in the form of a map (Schafer, 1994,
p.213). This score may prompt and support a listening walk yet it may also pro-
vide the instructions necessary for onsite ‘ear training’ exercises, an aural analysis
52
or musical intervention (ibid.). In walks where interventions are requested, Schafer

suggests that participants are enrolled as ‘composer performers’ and are expected
to add to an environment’s sound field either by way of their own voice or by
acting upon the things they find on site (ibid.). In walks where an analysis is
suggested, annotated maps or diagrams are often produced. There are a number
of these in the appendix to Tuning of the World including a map of Stanley Park
in Vancouver upon which contour lines have been drawn that are labelled with
numbers in accordance with decibel levels registered in different regions of the
park.
Whilst still working under Schafer’s direction, Westerkamp wrote her own
article on the subject of soundwalking that was first published in 1974 and later
revised in 2001. In this text, Westerkamp provides instructions for a number of
soundwalks. The first of these Westerkamp posits as being a preparatory exercise
that ‘expos[es] listeners to the total content of their environmental composition,
and is therefore very analytical. It is meant to be an intense introduction into
the experience of uncompromised listening’ (Westerkamp, 1974). Westerkamp
suggests that this first walk can be undertaken anywhere, at any time by any-
one. Westerkamps instructions begin by asking that the participant listen to the
sounds closest to them, i.e. those produced by their own bodies. She then requests
that nearby sounds be explored, then distant sounds, before suggesting that all
sounds be appreciated together, in summation, as one composition. Westerkamp
also suggests a list be made of all the sounds observed. Westerkamp then asks:
‘do you like what you hear? Pick out the sounds you like the most and create the
ideal soundscape... Is it just an idealistic dream or could it be made a reality’ ? Fi-
nally, Westerkamp comments: ‘when attentive listening becomes a daily practice,
requesting sound quality becomes a natural activity’ (ibid.). This last instruction
and comment demonstrates that the soundwalk was very much in keeping with
acoustic ecology’s ethos and also a practice that could go on to inform acoustic
design.
53
Westerkamp’s second walk from her ‘Soundwalking’ article is entitled Sound-

walk in Queen Elizabeth Park. This walk is far more definite than the first, it is to
be undertaken within a specific location and along a specific path. For the walk,
Westerkamp provides a map that she has annotated with notes regarding partic-
ular sounds and aural phenomena that the walker will encounter and may wish to
explore (e.g. the sounds of a fountain and the reverberant properties of a quarry
garden). In her notes, Westerkamp also suggests a number of opportunities for
the walker to intervene. For example, one feature of the park that Westerkamp’s
walk incorporates is a Henry Moore sculpture entitled ‘Knife Edge’. Westerkamp’s
instructions request that the walker play upon the sculpture, investigating the ar-
ray of sounds that can be produced from it before creating their own composition
from these sounds as well as those of the surrounding environment.
Westerkamp also employed the term ‘soundwalk’ within a number of compo-

sitions, most notably Kits Beach Soundwalk. Additionally, Westerkamp produced
a series of documentaries under the heading Soundwalking that were broadcast
each week on Vancouver Co-operative radio (1978-79). For these works, West-
erkamp recorded her passage through a variety of everyday environments includ-
ing a shopping mall, park, zoo and factory (Westerkamp, 1994). The presented
compositions comprised of these recordings as well as a small amount of onsite
commentary in which Westerkamp remarked upon the aural and visual nature
of the scrutinised environment as well as relayed her own thoughts and feelings
towards it. As with many of the WSP exploits, Westerkamps radio compositions
were part of a ‘desire to educate’ and to ‘encourage listening and questioning’
(ibid.). Westerkamp’s hope was, that by ‘highlighting’ (ibid.) these environments
upon the radio, listeners would be more willing to give their attention to them.
Ultimately, Westerkamp hoped that listeners would carry the interest sparked by
the radio broadcasts into the actual, physical sites explored in each episode, or
into similar locations.
54
2.4.2 Kits Beach Soundwalk
Kits Beach Soundwalk is similar to the ‘Soundwalking’ compositions in that it

focuses upon one environment, namely Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, and com-
prises of field recordings of this environment as well as spoken word commentary.
The difference with this work is that Westerkamp processed her recordings in
accordance with her own listening attention and layered onto these an array of
abstract, musical textures. Westerkamp’s speech in this work is also a little more
expressive and intimate than the radio broadcasts. The result is a composition
that is far more subjective, personal and fantastical. However, the expectations
are the same, the piece similarly wishes to encourage the audience to go out into
the everyday and engage in listening practices.
Kits Beach Soundwalk focuses upon a specific place, Kitsilano Beach, which
is situated at the fringes of the city of Vancouver. Both the ocean and the distant
din of the city are audible upon the beach. The work is constructed from the
point of view of Westerkamp, we are presented with Westerkamp’s own listening
as well as her own imagining upon this. In addition to this, Westerkamp verbally
annotates the work, guiding us through the various steps required to achieve a
heightened state of aural awareness. Throughout the piece, Westerkamp focuses
her (and our) attention onto a colony of barnacles over which she stands. As
Westerkamp listens to the ‘popping’ of these barnacles she begins to imagine new
sound overlaid onto it and ultimately Westerkamp recedes into a state of inner
dreaming that is away from, but informed by the fruits of her listening.
There are three aspects of Kits Beach Soundwalk that I would like to explore
in this section. The first, how the ear focuses our listening and how a sound
recording can be treated so to mimic this human partiality. The second, how a
listener may enter into a state of reflective listening, what this is and what the
benefits of doing so are. The third, how noise or ‘lo-fi’ sound impedes the journey
into reflective listening and how studio processes can alleviate this problem, which
in turn demonstrates how the real environment could be improved.
55
The Microphone and the Ear: In Linking Soundscape Composition and

Acoustic Ecology (Westerkamp, 2002) Westerkamp compares the ear with the
microphone, commenting that in her compositional works she likes to create sit-
uations in which the ear is imagined as a microphone and the microphone as
a human ear (Westerkamp, 2002). Westerkamp suggests that the ear ‘has a ca-
pacity to focus, to blend in and out, to pay attention to specific sounds and to
switch the attention from one sound to another’, whilst the microphone is ‘non-
selective’. Leading on from this, Westerkamp suggests that within the studio the
microphone signal can be processed so as to mimic the characteristics of the ear.
Kits Beach Soundwalk provides an example of Westerkamp’s incorporation of a
listening perspective through the manipulation of field recordings.
The real locations and events framed by Kits Beach Soundwalk are not as they
were in actuality because Westerkamp has manipulated her recordings of them,
pushing certain events forward within the mix, so to simulate her own listening in
the field. Throughout the course of the composition, alterations to what sounds
dominate and how these sounds are filtered correspond with Westerkamp’s ever-
changing listening state. As an example, at the beginning of the composition
Westerkamp plays with the prominence of the city backdrop, which primarily
comprises of distant traffic noise: the city is at a lower volume when Westerkamp
looks out to sea, the city being far from her thoughts at that moment. However,
when Westerkamp attempts to listen more intently to the minute sound of the
barnacles, the city din interferes. Westerkamp becomes conscious of the city,
unable to ignore it, and is in turn aggravated by it; at this point the city rises in
amplitude within the composition.
Reflective Listening: Through verbal annotation Westerkamp leads us through

the various steps required to enter into a state of what Norman calls ‘reflective
listening’ in which ‘we use our ears and minds to create, or reinterpret, imagined
meanings for sound[s]. . . we move toward a particular kind of inward attentive-
ness’ (Norman, 1996). Norman suggests that reflective listening is the second tier
of a two part listening process that begins with ‘referential listening’ (Norman,
56
1996). In referential listening we envisage a concrete source for the sounds we

hear based upon memory. We ultimately seek to support this listening with vi-
sual information, through locating the sounds source in visual space. To go from
referential to reflective listening takes time and concentration, as Norman writes:
‘time can suspend the source from its usual context.. [W]e listen to the song of
the sea after we’ve heard, and recognised, the waves’ (Norman, 1996). Norman’s
referential listening is similar to Schaeffer’s ‘ècouter’ (Listening). Reflective lis-
tening is similar to both Schaeffer’s ‘entendre’ (Hearing) and ‘reduced listening’
because it is abstract and because in this mode we listen solely to the sound in
itself. However, Norman’s reflective listening allows for, and encourages, a visual
imagination.
Westerkamp deliberately chooses barnacles as the focus of her listening be-

cause of their size; she cannot see the activities that produce the popping sounds
that she hears, hence referential listening is ineffective. Through sidestepping ref-
erential listening she makes her (and our) voyage into reflective listening all the
more easier. Westerkamp achieves reflective listening by focusing and holding her
attention upon the popping sound of barnacles. As their popping persists, West-
erkamp’s attention drifts towards an inner state of imagining that is punctuated
and nourished by the real sound of the barnacles. At first this imagining adds
to the real sound, in the composition the barnacles begin to glisten and tinkle
as well as pop. As Westerkamp’s hallucinating continues, the composition drifts
away from the barnacles into the wider wilds, bringing forth an assortment of
birds, insects and invented creatures before we are finally returned to the beach.
Westerkamp’s composition acts as an example of how imaginative, creative

and sensational our experience of everyday environments can be just through
listening. For the composition, Westerkamp uses studio technologies and musical
techniques to achieve this result but Westerkamp’s message is that everything
she demonstrates through composition is obtainable through one’s own mind.
The piece ends with Westerkamp commenting that she is ready to face the city,
what she refers to as a ‘monster’, once more with renewed vigour. She expresses
57
to us that through reflective listening, in addition to the pleasure of imagining,

we can arrive ‘at a changed, perhaps expanded, appreciation of reality’ (Norman,
1996).
Kits Beach Soundwalk and Acoustic Design: One of Schafer’s main

grievances was towards increasing levels of ‘noise’ in each of our sound environ-
ments (Schafer, 1994, p.3). Schafer’s fear was that our soundscapes were shifting
from being ‘hi-fi’ to being ‘lo-fi’ due to unsympathetic design and construction. A
lo-fi sound field is one overcrowded with sound, resulting in masking or a lack of
clarity (Schafer, 1994, p.272). Westerkamp encounters such a sound field on Kits
Beach. However, soon into the composition, Westerkamp eliminates the noise au-
dible to her on the beach by filtering it out of her recordings. Through her verbal
annotation Westerkamp makes clear to the audience that she has done so. Thus,
the audience are aware that what they hear is a synthetic version of Kits Beach
in which it is possible for Westerkamp to hear the ‘tiny’ sound of the barnacles.
The barnacle sound is Westerkamp’s entry into reflective listening. Hence, West-
erkamp makes clear that she could not have achieved a state of reflective listening
in reality because the barnacles are ordinarily masked by the noise present upon
the beach. In effect, Westerkamp is undertaking and achieving what Schafer had
proposed for acoustic design. Westerkamp uses the technologies and techniques
available to her to redesign the sound present upon Kits Beach so to obtain an
environment that is more favourable and more conducive to listening and commu-
nicating. This in turn acts as an advertisement to what could be achieved should
improvements be made in the real environment or what should be protected in
other environments that have not succumb to the same ills as Kits Beach.
2.5 Conclusion
Schaeffer followed modernist ideals, seeking to break away from traditional, west-
ern musical forms, in pursuit of a more abstract model for music. Schaeffer’s out-
look and ambition firstly lead him to believe that the sounds he recorded needed
58
to be liberated and elevated away from their real-world or ordinary status, but
ultimately lead Schaeffer to believe that he had failed in his task for a new mu-
sic because he could not manage to fully integrate concrete materials within an
abstract structure, for these materials resisted such. If Schaeffer had assumed a
different outlook, like that of Ferrari, he may have been more supportive of sounds
such as everyday sounds, and more welcoming of labels such as sound-work, sound
collage or sonic art.
Luc Ferrari’s attitude directly opposed that of Schaeffer, Ferrari was influ-
enced by the Dadaists and Surrealists, and also by experimental composers such
as John Cage. Ferrari was not afraid to leave his recordings unaltered, acting
as images of real-life situations and events, nor was Ferrari afraid to allow the
materials he had gathered to dictate the structure of his compositions. In certain
compositions, such as Presque rien No.1, Ferrari’s own artistry is all but absent
from the work; the Croatian fishing village that piece frames bears all of the aes-
thetic. In other works, such as Presque rien No.2, Ferrari is clearly present, but
only present as a narrator or actor within the real environment that is framed, he
does not try to embellish or sensationalise it, just provide a subjective account
of it. Ferrari was extremely skilled at perceiving the beauty in everyday life and
skilled at being able to capture this within the field and present it through his
compositions.
On the whole, R. Murray Schafer did not make art from the recordings he
gathered. Schafer employed field recordings as an article for analysis and as evi-
dence of both the diminishing state of the acoustic environment and its present
worth. Through his acoustic ecology and the WSP, Schafer sought to raise an
interest in, and change attitudes towards, the acoustic environment suggesting
that the value of sound and the values of listening be taught in early education.
One educational strategy that Schafer developed for this task was the sound-
walk, in which participants were expected to study the sounds around them
and perhaps even contribute their own sounds. Schafer also envisaged that the
soundwalk would be a tool that the acoustic designer could benefit from. Schafer
59
wanted acoustic design to be an established profession and suggested that it is

the musician who in the first instance would best suit this role. The musician was
to use composition to explore the acoustic environment suggesting what should
be protected, renovated or removed as well as demonstrating how this could be
achieved and what the results would be. Ultimately, acoustic design was to be-
come an actuality, with practitioners working in the field to bring about some of
what the composers had demonstrated. Hildegard Westerkamp, Barry Truax and
numerous others did manage to begin Schafer’s acoustic design by contributing
compositions, however within the WSP’s term acoustic design did not manage to
have an impact upon actual, physical everyday spaces. In the following chapter I
will suggest that the sound installation artist Max Neuhaus is perhaps the clos-
est to an acoustic designer there has been, but he was not directly affiliated with
Schafer’s school and was indeed a little sceptical of it.
60
Chapter 3
The Sound Installations of

Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana
In this chapter I will discuss the sound work of two artists, Max Neuhaus and Bill
Fontana. Both of these artists began their careers as musicians (Fontana, 1997;
Neuhaus, 1990) and both share the outlook that everyday sound can elicit an
aesthetic comparable to that of music if listened to with the same vigour. However,
unlike the musicians I introduced in Chapter one, Neuhaus and Fontana believed
that music venues, such as the concert hall, were unsuitable platforms from which
to explore everyday sounds and sound environments. Neuhaus’ opinion was that
the concert hall provided an experience that was too unlike, too abstracted from,
that of the real world and therefore was ineffective as an advertisement for re-
engaging with sound in situ (Neuhaus, 1990). Fontana’s dislike of the concert hall
came more from a practical perspective, he felt that in subjecting environmental
recordings to the concert hall’s configuration and to composition’s autonomy that
a lot of the essence of the real environment was lost. In particular, he believed
the concert hall was unable to provide an image of the true spatial dynamic of
an environment (Fontana, 1997) and that composition forced the listener into a
set period of engagement and a set perspective (Rudi, 2005). Fontana was also
dissatisfied with the lack of a relationship with a visual context (Rudi, 2005).
61
3. The Sound Installations of Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana
For these reasons both Neuhaus and Fontana abandoned the concert hall and
conventional music’s methods and decided to situate their sound practice entirely
within the real world, producing works tailored to ordinary, everyday situations.
3.1 Introduction to the Work of Neuhaus and Fontana
The clearest way to demonstrate what underpins Neuhaus’ and Fontana’s situ-
ated sound projections is to briefly outline an example for each artist: Neuhaus’
Times Square (1984) is a permanent work (which is still in operation today) that
is situated beneath a grating that is incorporated into a traffic island within Times
Square, New York. The piece projects simple, synthesised tones from underground
speakers into a busy pedestrian island positioned above. The work emits sound
continually twenty four hours a day and this sound shows little to no variation
over time, hence Neuhaus has referred to the work as being a ‘block of sound’
(Neuhaus, 1992b). In Fontana’s Vertical Water (1991) sound was cast across the
façade of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The façade is gra-
dated and separated into steep steps; onto each step of the façade Fontana placed
loudspeakers. Through this configuration, Fontana played a multi-track recording
that he had captured at Niagara Falls. For the recording, Fontana setup a grid of
microphones across the length of the falls and in doing so he was able to capture
an image of the site’s spatial dynamic. At the Whitney, Fontana’s loudspeakers
were positioned in reference to this microphone arrangement and hence a scaled-
down version of the falls could be constructed, giving the impression that water
was flowing across the front of the museum.
Concerning the structure and appearance of these two works, there are a
number of characteristics that can be identified that are consistent through out
all of Neuhaus’ and Fontana’s everyday projections. For example, each work is
situated within a specific place and is integrated into, or consistent with, the
architecture and infrastructure present in that place. Furthermore, in each work,
sound is spread out over a defined area through the positioning of loud speakers
62
across the available space. In the case of Fontana, this arrangement is often
quite detailed and involves many speakers. Finally, each sound work is ‘perpetual’
(Rudi, 2005) in that it never stops sounding. The work presents a continuous body
of sound that is without a notable beginning or end.
3.1.1 From Music to the Visual Arts
In being anchored to a place and configured as I outline above, Neuhaus’ and

Fontana’s sound work demonstrates a stronger affiliation with the visual arts then
with music. It is for that reason that Neuhaus saw appropriate to term his work
‘sound installation’, thus positing it as a derivative of installation art (Duckworth,
1982). Similarly, Fontana termed his work ‘sound sculpture’ (Fontana, 1997).
Although sound installation is the term that has prevailed over time, sound
sculpture is an equally appropriate heading because both artists’ work share a
number of the same concerns as public sculpture1 : public sculpture works adorn
everyday spaces and are expected to appeal to the public who reside there; each
work of public sculpture occupies a particular place and exists in three dimensions,
spreading out across its location; public sculpture can often be encircled, passed
through or passed under and thus can be witnessed from multiple viewpoints; and
public sculptures are always ‘in place’ awaiting our exploration of them. These
traits of sculpture are also the traits of Fontana’s and Neuhaus’ installations.
Fontana’s own description of his practice further demonstrates this connection:
In addition to their sculptural ability to belong to a particular space,

ambient sounds are sculptural as volumes of space in terms of how a
given sound source occupies its own sound field. Through multiple-
perspective field recordings and live relocations of environmental sound
processes, I have investigated this sculptural property of sound in
1
In the category of public sculpture I hold classical statutes and monuments as well as modern
works such as Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North (1998).
63
many different circumstances. Real-time multiple-acoustic perspec-

tives reveal qualities in sound sources that are not explicit in our
typical perception of them (Fontana, 1987)
Neuhaus’ and Fontana’s installations also hit upon another of visual arts interests,
that of site-specificity. The Tate gallery online glossary defines site-specific art
as: ‘a work of art designed specifically for a particular location and that has an
interrelationship with the location. If removed from the location it would lose
all or a substantial part of its meaning’2 . As Miwon Kwon book on the subject
makes clear, a work may be deemed site-specific if it adheres to, and references,
the physicality of it’s hosting site, both this site’s dimensions and material content
(Kwon, 2004). Site specific work may also make reference to the ways in which
it’s everyday location is inhabited, what activities it plays host to and how these
activities are carried out within the framework of the site. Furthermore, site-
specific art very often calls into play, or into question, the conceptual significance
of the hosting place by making reference to its social, cultural or political dynamic.
Both Neuhaus’ and Fontana’s work satisfy this definition but do so in differing
manners.
For Fontana, it is his exploration of the cultural/historic context of his sites

that make his work so clearly site-specific. Fontana tends to house his work within
or upon buildings and monuments of historic or iconic significance and always
makes reference to, and plays upon, this meaning within the content and concept
of his installations. For instance, Sound Island (1994) was positioned upon the
Arc de Trimophe, a memorial to war, and brought the sounds of the Normandy
coast to that monument in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the D-day
landings, which occurred across the Normandy coastline. Similarly, Fontana’s
installations often bring together the iconic sounds of a particular place so as to
celebrate them. For example, Metropolis Kóln (1985) is, in Fontana’s words, ‘a live
acoustic portrait of the city of Cologne’ (Fontana, 1987). For this work, sound was
2
http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=276
64
transmitted from various ‘acoustic landmarks’ around Cologne to one of eighteen

speakers situated within a plaza at the heart of the city (Roncalliplatz). This
work collected together the city’s most distinct sounds into one listening zone.
In contrast to Fontana, Neuhaus’ installations were always in common, unre-

markable locations (Neuhaus, 1994b) and were posited as augmentations to ordi-
nary sounds and ordinary, everyday events and situations. Furthermore, Neuhaus
adopted a more phenomenological perspective than Fontana. Neuhaus’ installa-
tions were a response to his observations as to how we perceive particular places
and how this then informs our action, and impacts upon our experience, in that
place. Neuhaus describes his installations as follows: ‘They exist not in isolation,
but within their context, the context of their sound environment, their visual
environment, and their social environment. The existing sound environment is an
important part of how the works are formed. They are not formed in isolation
but grow from those three aspects, their visual context, their social context, and
their sound context’ (Neuhaus, 1992a).
3.1.2 Sound Materials
One notable distinction between Neuhaus and Fontana is the type of sound ma-
terials that they utilised. Neuhaus worked with simple synthesised tones, which
he termed ‘sonorities’ (Neuhaus, 1992a). Conversely, Fontana utilised either field
recordings or a live sound feed from an external location. Neuhaus never used
recorded sound. In Neuhaus’ installations, the sound delivered by the speakers is
not the sound that the listener encounters. Neuhaus’ projections were expected
to undergo two transitions before they arrived at the ear: firstly, these sounds
are coloured by the physical spaces they inhabit or through which they pass; and
secondly, the introduced sounds are expected to bind with the sounds already
present on site and in the process produce an amalgamated sound. Of this sec-
ond process, with regard to Times Square, Neuhaus comments: ‘When you mix
sound, you can mix sound A and sound B and you don’t get sound AB, you get
65
sound C. So, even though the piece itself doesn’t by any means cover the sounds
of the traffic, it transforms them into something else while you’re standing in it’
(Neuhaus, 1992a).
Neuhaus’ expected the sounds of his installations to fuse with the everyday
sounds of the surrounding environment and thus seeming to be part of this sys-
tem. In this position, these sounds have the potential to influence an individual’s
perception of place: ‘They shape, transform, create, define a specific space, with
sound only’ (Neuhaus, 1992a). Tazzi describes this affect as a ‘colouring’, com-
menting on Neuhaus’ installations: ‘this work shows analogies to painting, we
could say that the space itself is equivalent to the pictorial space, and that its
sound correspond to the colours that define such a space and imbue it with form’
(Tazzi, 1997).
In Fontana’s work there is always at least two places involved: the first is
the location of the installation and the second is the subject of Fontana’s sound
recording or transmission. The second is always brought into the first through
loudspeaker projection. In the majority of Fontana’s works his sound projections
mask the real sound of the hosting site (Moore, 2005; Rudi, 2005). A great deal
of the meaning of Fontana’s work is derived from the relationship between the
projected sounds (and the place these sounds document) and the receiving site’s
physical, visible form, which these sounds are aligned with. He may use his sound
to elicit a comparison or to produce a synergy between the two places referenced.
The aforementioned Vertical Water is an example of the latter process. In this
work the sounds of Niagara Falls enlivened the façade of the Whitney Museum
because the spatial dynamic of the recorded place matched up with that of the
hosting site. The geographic or cultural context of the recorded place may also
conflict or correspond with that of the host. For example, in Entfernte Züge (1984)
the defunct Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin is reinvigorated through the introduction
of sounds from Kóln Hauptbahnhof, a fully functioning and busy train station.
Because of the importance of the site of recording within Fontana’s work the
act of field recording and microphone operation is as important to him as the
66
construction of his final installation. In a number of works, Fontana seeks to pro-

vide a platform from which to explore environmental sounds from hard-to-reach
locations or sounds that we cannot readily perceive without instrumentation. To
record such, Fontana uses microphone technologies such as hydrophones and ac-
celerometers so as to record underwater and to capture, and make audible, minute
material vibrations. He also plays with the scale of the locations he records or
broadcasts from, bringing sound from many distant points into one perceptible
listening zone.
3.1.3 Course of Action
My discussion above serves as an introduction to Neuhaus and Fontana, outlining

the main facets of their work and attitude, and how the two artists relate to one
and other. In what follows I wish to provide a more detailed account of some
of the work of these two artists, beginning by looking at Neuhaus. I will first
compare Neuhaus’ working ethos with that of R. Murray Schafer and suggest
that Neuhaus is an acoustic designer, a role outlined by Schafer, which he himself
never managed to instate. Following this, I will account the three types of sound
installation that Neuhaus has claimed to have created: ‘place works’, ‘moment
works’ and ‘passage works’. For each of these types, I will explore in detail at
least one work. For Fontana I will first look more closely at the associations that
arise between the places of his recording and the places that host his installations.
I will then look in more detail at his recording act.
3.2 Neuhaus, the Real Acoustic Designer
Driving Neuhaus’ creative work is an outlook similar to (but not the same as)
that of R. Murray Schafer: both practitioners sought to bring about an interest
in the acoustic environment and devised in situ listening practices as part of their
campaigns. Furthermore, both believed that the acoustic environment required
67
improvement and that this improvement should occur at the design stage of all
engineering/building projects rather then as corrective procedure post design (i.e.
through noise abatement strategies). Schafer requested such within his arguments
for an acoustic design and similarly Neuhaus spoke of ‘sound design’ and ‘aural
design’ (Neuhaus, 1994a). The main difference between Schafer and Neuhaus is
that Schafer only suggested acoustic design as an ideal, he never actualised it.
Conversely, Neuhaus actually sought to be an acoustic designer (although not by
that name), going into the field and conducting acts of sound design with the
intention of improving the acoustic environment, and in turn everyday life.
Both Neuhaus and Schafer devised in situ listening activities that they hoped
would instil an enthusiasm in everyday sounds and sound environments, and both
of these initiatives entailed walking. Schafer used the term ‘soundwalk’ (see sec-
tion 2.4.1) to refer to his own strategy whilst Neuhaus adopted the title ‘LISTEN’
(Neuhaus, 1990). In Neuhaus’ walks, which began a few years prior to Schafer’s,
an audience would be assembled at a specific point within a hosting city and
have the word ‘listen’ stamped upon their hands. Neuhaus would then guide the
audience along a path through the host city and request that the audience take
heed of the sounds they encountered along the way. Schafer’s soundwalks were a
little broader in scope then Neuhaus’ walks: a soundwalk may incorporate a ‘lis-
tening walk’, which is comparable to Neuhaus’ LISTEN walks, yet it may equally
involve the conducting of analysis, the undertaking of ‘ear training’ exercises or
on site musical performance etc. (Schafer, 1994, p.213).
Neuhaus claimed that the bureaucratic approach to everyday sounds was

too negative in its outlook because it spoke of these sounds as being ‘noise’
and suggested that such sounds are ‘bad for your health’ (Neuhaus, 1990). For
Neuhaus, this perspective marginalised the importance of everyday sound as a
conduit of information and positive sensation (Neuhaus, 1994a). This is likewise
the sentiment Schafer expresses in his introduction to the Tuning of the World
(Schafer, 1994, p.4). Neuhaus was also not in agreement with the bureaucratic or
commercial means of improving our everyday sound spaces, such as soundproofing
68
or sound masking, he believed these to be merely papering over any problems

rather than actually addressing them. Schafer raises a similar argument in his
own text, commenting that ‘no amount of perfumery can cover up a stinking job’
(Schafer, 1994, p.224). Neuhaus also opposed the notion that the sounds within
the built environment are inevitable:
I have probably encountered every misconception about sound known

to man. The one that was always present, though, was that the sounds
of our man-made sound environment were unavoidable – an unspo-
ken conviction that there were no alternatives; we could not change
them. . . Why then do we assume any given sound is inevitable? It
could be because until recently we have not had the knowledge or
means to shape sound. This is no longer true. (Neuhaus, 1994a)
Neuhaus believed that sounds of our urban environment could be designed and
called for the involvement of sound professionals at the early stages of all engi-
neering projects (Neuhaus, 1994a). Schafer made a similar call within his proposal
for an acoustic design profession (Schafer, 1994, p.237).
Both Neuhaus and Schaeffer believed that the musician was the best person to
undertake the role of acoustic/sound designer in the everyday; of music Neuhaus
comments: ‘it is the field with the most sophisticated knowledge about how people
react to sound’ (Neuhaus, 1994a). However, both Neuhaus and Schafer remark
that acoustic/sound design strategies should be informed by more than just mu-
sic. For Neuhaus, it is music’s insight into and approach towards sound that is
applicable, not music itself:
There is a danger here of not being able to separate insights that

knowledge provides, from the art – thinking that we can apply the
music itself to the sound signals of everyday life. Quoting musical
phrases to announce the arrival of elevators, and make us more patient
when someone puts us on hold on the telephone, simply perpetuates
the mistake of muzak... If we persist in this direction we will end up
with a world full of ’designer’ sound instead of one which functions
from sound design (Neuhaus, 1994a).
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Unlike Schafer, Neuhaus did not merely propose there be an acoustic design or
sound design profession but actually sought to be such a professional and in
many ways succeeded. Neuhaus posited each of his installations as an instance of
sound design, each served as an improvement of the sound environment that they
augmented. Many of these works are still present including Times Square. Due to
the scale of traffic through the location of this work, there can be no doubt that
this installation has had an effect upon many thousands of people’s lives even if
these individuals are unaware of the installation having done so.
Neuhaus’ greatest undertaking as a sound designer was his Siren Project (be-
ginning 1978) in which he redesigned the emergency vehicle siren. Neuhaus spent
over ten years on this project (Neuhaus, 1993). Neuhaus’ motivation for redesign-
ing the siren was not only so as to improve the acoustic environment but to also
save lives. Neuhaus’ new siren corrected a number of problems he had perceived
there to be with the standard siren, namely that it was difficult for the listener to
locate the siren sound, that the vehicle driver could not hear anything other than
the siren and that the siren induced states of panic and anxiety (Neuhaus, 1993).
Neuhaus’ new siren was directional and consisted of patterns of short, pleasant
‘bell-like’ timbres (Neuhaus, 1993).
Neuhaus’ siren received positive support from both the Oakland and New
York Police departments who he had demonstrated his design to (Neuhaus, 1993).
However, ultimately the manufactures of the sirens were less keen due to the cost
of installing the new alarm and also because, in Neuhaus’ opinion, they were per-
turbed by such a radical change to their practice (Neuhaus, 1993). Unfortunately,
Neuhaus encountered this attitude throughout his professional life, although the
arts were always keen to help Neuhaus brings his designs to fruition, Neuhaus
found commercial industries and local/national authorities far more reluctant
(Neuhaus, 1994b).
70
3.3 Neuhaus’ Three Types of Sound Installation
3.3.1 Times Square
Times Square is a permanent installation that was first installed in 1977 and
removed in 1992 when Neuhaus could no longer maintain the piece. It was rein-
stated by the DIA foundation in 20003 . The work is situated beneath a traffic
island within New York’s Time Square, Neuhaus describes this location as follows:
Times Square is the crossroads of many pathways through New York

City. . . the work is on an island in the rivers of traffic that move
through the city. The visual context is extremely active. There’s a
huge amount of advertisement in the square and very bright signs. In
terms of sound it is also active. . . not only are there cars and car horns,
but the movie theatres on the edge of the square advertise the movies
with sound. Also record stores play records through loudspeakers onto
the street (Neuhaus, 1992a)
The mechanics of Times Square are located in a chamber beneath a traffic

island (figure 3.1) that is exposed to the street above through a 10m long grill
(Ammann, 1983). The grill originally ventilated a subway station that lies a
number of metres further underground. The sound of the installation emanates
through loudspeaker horns that are two metres in length.
The sound that is released into Times Square is not the sound emitted by
the loud speakers but rather this sound contorted by the specific properties of
the chamber from which it emanates. Neuhaus’ selected his sonorities because of
their ability to ‘stimulate’ resonance within the chamber, as Neuhaus describes:
‘the easiest way to think about it is to think of the air confined by the walls of
the complex chamber as a block of material which the speaker is vibrating. The
vibration of that block of air is exposed through the opening of the grating in the
sidewalk, as the work’s sound’ (Neuhaus, 1992a).
3
http://www.diaart.org/sites/main/timessquare
71
Neuhaus’ expectation for the work was the creation of a ‘zone of calm’ (Rat-
cliff, 1983) that would serve as an ‘extreme contrast’ to the ‘active nature’ of
Times Square (Neuhaus, 1992a). This was achieved through the presentation of
a series of sustained, stable tones, or what Neuhaus referred to collectively as a
‘block of sound’ (Neuhaus, 1992b). These tones do not mask the real sound of the
square but rather merge with it and in doing so, sooth and solidify this sound.
Times Square can be termed site-specific not just because it is anchored to

Times Square but also because it is integrated into the existing infrastructure
of the square and requires the physicality of its housing so to arrive at the final
sound. Indeed, so key is the site to Neuhaus that he posits his sound as merely
being applied to the site, as one may apply paint to walls, as Neuhaus describes:
‘Fundamental to these works is that their sound is not the work; I use sound as a
tool to shape the site into a work.’ (Reust, 2007). Because of the fundamentality
of the site to the work, it would have been impractical for Neuhaus to design
or develop the piece anywhere but on site. This is the approach that Neuhaus
adopted for all of his works. Neuhaus never arrived onto site with any concrete
plan of what the installation would be, every creative decision came to the fore
through the exercise of exploring and working on site. Each installation was
arrived at through a process of trial and error, working with the real location
as a material element.
3.3.2 Experiencing Times Square
Although Neuhaus has produced installations for art institutions he never exhib-
ited his installations anywhere one would expect to find an artwork and never
framed his work in any way. Neuhaus positioned his installations in the thor-
oughfares, passageways and corridors of ordinary places and never in dedicated
exhibition spaces (Neuhaus, 1994b). Each installation was always integrated with
the existing architecture and infrastructure present on site, the mechanics always
hidden way. Furthermore, none of the sites of Neuhaus’ installations bear mark
72
of the work’s presence; there is no plaque, mounted caption or light near to, or
upon, these works. It is for these reasons that Neuhaus’ installations are very
often not recognised and when they are they are not viewed as artworks but as
being extraordinary aspects of the environments that they have assimilated with.
In the specific case of Times Square, the sound generated by the installa-
tion has been described as an ‘organ like sound’ that may be ‘mistaken for a
transformer’ (Ammann, 1983). Furthermore, Carter Ratcliff comments that the
installation’s sound never asserts itself and by doing so only serves to accent the
hum of traffic that surrounds it (Ratcliff, 1983). Plausibility within its context
and the subtle, passive nature of Neuhaus’ sound make acknowledging it as any-
thing but ordinary even more difficult. The artwork recedes into its everyday
environment to such an extent that it becomes indistinguishable from it. This is
quite deliberate, through works such as Times Square, Neuhaus’ sought to op-
pose the ‘authoritative traditions’ (Ratcliff, 1983) of western art, that insist that
art’s location be tempered and that the art object stand proud of its location
and separated from its audience. In contrast, as Ratcliff writes, Neuhaus’ wished
for his work to be neither an ‘imposition. . . on the site nor on those who wander
into it’ (ibid.).
Neuhaus employed the term ‘discoverable’ to describe Times Square as well

as each of his other permanent installations (La Barbara, 1977). Times Square is
perceived when the individual questions the authenticity of the environment they
find themselves in, i.e. when they notice something out of the ordinary. To do
so, a shift in ‘contextual focus’ (Neuhaus, 1992b) is required. Neuhaus’ describes
this process as follows: ‘I often make a sound which is almost plausible within
its context when you first encounter it. The point where a person realises that it
is not plausible is when he jumps into the piece’ (Neuhaus, 1992b). Only a few,
either by chance, an astute attitude or prior knowledge of the works whereabouts,
will consciously apprehend the unfamiliar sound of the installation. For each of
these types of realisation the work appears as a discovery; Neuhaus’ Times Square
is not readily apparent, it sits at the fringes of our awareness awaiting realisation.
73
Neuhaus has deliberately chosen not to assert any kind of message through
his work, he is not trying to incite any particular reaction or lay forth any par-
ticular concept; as Neuhaus describes: ‘I am not interested in knowing what [the
audience] are experiencing. In a way it is none of my business. I am concerned
with the catalyst, the initiator; their individual pathways are very private, their
own’ (Neuhaus, 1992b). In the absence of an artist, arts methods and rules of con-
duct, it is the individual who takes ownership of his or her discovery (Neuhaus,
1994b), he or she decides what to make of it, providing reasons for it being there;
the individual also decides whether the situation is of interest and how long to
spend exploring it. Ultimately, because the sound is indistinguishable from its
environment, it is the real everyday space rather than Neuhaus’ sound that the
individual believes he or she is investigating and making new sense of.
3.3.3 Time Piece: A Moment Work
Neuhaus groups his installations under one of three headings: ‘place works’, ‘mo-
ment works’ and ‘passage works’4 . The latter type are works in which sounds
are distributed along a path or across separated spaces and therefore the audi-
ence must be mobile in order to fully appreciate them. Place works are anchored
to a single region of space and persistently impinge upon it. Times Square is a
place work because it comprises of one perpetual, constant body of sound that
can be said to be audible only upon one specific traffic island in New York’s
Times Square. A moment work is ‘in all places, but only occurs for a moment in
all of those places’. Hence to experience a moment work you must be within its
range, at the ‘moment’ of it’s emergence. Neuhaus views place works and moment
works as complementary pairs, where one leads to a reflection upon the other’s
characteristic:
The moment pieces don’t construct places, but they cause this re-
alisation of place to happen when they disappear; in the same way
4
http://www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/vectors/
74
that the place pieces do not construct time, but they allow your own
realisation of time to happen within their static nature (Neuhaus,
1992b).
Neuhaus’ family of installations, each entitled Time Piece are examples of mo-
ment works. Neuhaus created five Time Pieces. The first was installed in the
grounds surrounding the Whitney Museum of American Art (1983) in New York.
The remaining four where situated in Bern, Switzerland (1989- 1993); Graz, Aus-
tria (2003- present); New York’s DIA:Beacon Gallery (2006-present) and Pul-
heim, Germany (2007-present). Each work, although tailored to fit a specific lo-
cality, shares the same concept and format: each work is a counter ‘alarm clock’
(Neuhaus, 1992b) that punctuates a moment in time through a sharp removal of
sound.
In their exterior setting, Neuhaus’ Time Pieces can be compared to the

church/town clock (Neuhaus, 1992b; Ratcliff, 1983); both mark the passing of
time through sound, both are cyclic, both are audible over a large area and to a
large populous. However, the difference is that the church/town clock address it’s
public through the chiming of a bell, which is an abrupt insertion into the acous-
tic environment. The Time Piece does the opposite: a sound slowly increases in
magnitude over a certain period of time and then very sharply falls away.
The sound projected by each Time Piece is an ‘aural reflection’ (Ratcliff,

1983) of the environment it is installed within. This is achieved through sampling
the host’s soundscape through a microphone placed within the site. For Neuhaus’
first Time Piece at the Whitney Museum, this microphone faced Madison Avenue,
a very busy street in central New York. The microphone signal is played back
at a different pitch, through loudspeakers positioned elsewhere within the site.
At the Whitney museum the loudspeakers where arranged within a small sunken
sculpture park, which faces a street that is far quieter than Madison Avenue.
The relayed transmission rises in amplitude over the course of twenty minutes
and then very rapidly fades out. This envelope is repeated every twenty minutes.
The maximum amplitude reached by the work matches that of the environment
it mirrors.
75
3.3.4 How Time Piece is Perceived
Each Time Piece is a comment upon our ‘deafness to the persistent buzz of the
city’ (Ratcliff, 1983). Each work relies upon our being ignorant to small changes
to intensity within our soundscape, particularly when these changes are to an
urban din. For the Whitney Museum piece, this din is that of automotive traffic
upon Madison Avenue. Truax terms this type of sound a ‘flat-line sound’ and
suggests that it is ‘habitually perceived’ (Truax, 2001, p.25), this is to say that
through its ceaselessness and lack of variance, and thus lack of any interest,
this sound quickly assumes a position at the fringes of our perception, it becomes
‘redundant’ (Truax, 2001, p.26). When the level of this redundant sound increases
very slightly, creeping slowly upwards, we do not notice it. On the contrary, a
sharp removal of this sound would be noticeable because the shift is so great and
also because it is unexpected.
Truax comments that flat-line sounds conceal the smaller sounds that lie be-
neath them and muddy all others; they are also known to cause stress and fatigue
(Truax, 2001, p.27). Therefore, Time Piece’s sharp reduction to the intensity of
the traffic sound, which the work had been slowly raising in amplitude, may be
experienced by individuals as a freeing up, or easing of, their surroundings and
in turn a relaxing of the pressures upon them.
Time Piece is an unconventional work of art because it is self-effacing, the

sound it produces is never actively perceived. Attention is only given to the work
at the moment it disappears. Hence, our attention is brought onto what remains
once the work has ceased, i.e. our real surroundings. Like Times Square, Time
Piece hands its aesthetic over to the everyday. Neuhaus’ sound is used to frame
a moment of the everyday. Once again, Neuhaus has declined the opportunity to
appear as the artist choosing instead to allow the listener to gain ownership over
the situation.
76
Figure 3.1: View to Max Neuhaus’ Times Square (1977) - Two girls sat
upon the ventilation grid through which the sounds of Neuhaus’ installation pass.
77
3.3.5 A Passage Work
Three to One (1992) is an example of a passage work (figure 3.2). The work
projects different sound into three different rooms, each on a separate level of
the AOK Building in Kassel, Germany. A visitor explores the three rooms via
a stairwell that connects these spaces. The sound presented in each room, like
in Times Square, is continual. Furthermore, this sound is not expected to assert
itself but to ‘colour’5 the space it occupies. Each of the three sounds originate in
a different room but are not confined to this single room because each sound can
diffuse into the other two rooms via a stairwell that links all three. The work is a
passage-work because it can only be fully appreciated if each room is visited. By
doing so the difference between each room can be acknowledged and compared,
allowing for a realisation of how sound impacts upon our perception of space.
Further to this, Neuhaus suggests that it is only by revisiting the rooms for a
second time that the individual can become aware that the sound in each room is
not distinct but a differing strain of the same three sounds heard in every room:
‘After you’ve heard these common components in their three different contexts,
your memory comes into play. The sounds of the three floors fuse into one whole
with many variations’ (Neuhaus, 1992b).
Another of Neuhaus’ passage works is Suspended Sound Line (1992), which is

installed across a pedestrian bridge in Bern, Germany. Neuhaus subdivided the
bridge into seven unmarked sections. At each section a speaker was placed that
played one of two tones (A or B). Each section plays the opposite tone to the one
before it, hence a simple pattern is ascertained: ‘A B A B A B A’ (Tarantino,
1998). Although there are only two tones, every point along the bridge sounds
different because of the walker’s varying distance from each of the seven speakers.
Also, just like Times Square, the sounds of day-to-day living audible upon the
bridge are expected to be incorporated into the work. In keeping with Three to
One, Suspended Sound Line can only be fully appreciated by walking along the
5
See text on figure 3.2.
78
bridge, moving in and out of the many differing zones of sound. Suspended Sound
Line differs from Three to One in that the latter appears to change the perceived
character of an existing, physical space whereas suspended sound line creates
space. The limits of these new spaces are perceived purely through sound and
therefore these spaces remain indefinite, interpenetrative and prone to drift.
As a final remark, for both passage-works the individual’s movement through

each sonified space can be interpreted as transforming a spatial system into a
temporal experience. In effect, individuals creates their own composition: they
decide how long they spend within every region of the work and the specifics of
their path through each. This is also evident in Neuhaus’ first installation Drive in
Music (1967) in which a number of short-range radio transmitters were positioned
along a kilometre of roadway. Each transmitter broadcasts it’s own particular
sound and all transmitters broadcasted to the same radio frequency. The work
was interacted with by driving through the embellished area with a car radio
tuned to the aforementioned frequency. By doing so, the driver would encounter
a composition of sound that was the product of all of the transmitters that they
were in range of. Each path through the site produced a different composition,
as Neuhaus explains: ‘depending on which direction a driver entered the piece,
how far to the left or right side of the road he was, how fast he moved through
it... the work was very different’ (Neuhaus, 1992a) . Just like the other passage-
works, although the participant has ultimate control over the experience, there
are bounds and a predetermined logic in place, which in the case of Drive in
Music is the logic and the laws of the road.
79
Figure 3.2: Neuhaus’ drawing of Three to One (1992) - Image taken from
Neuhaus’ website (http://www.max-neuhaus.info/)
80
3.4 Bill Fontana’s Sound Sculptures
3.4.1 The Early Years
Between the years of 1974 and 1978 Fontana was employed by the Australian
Broadcast Corporation (ABC) to document the aural life of Australia (Fontana,
1997). In 1976 Fontana was fortunate enough to be situated within a rainforest
region of Australia at the time of a solar eclipse. Fontana describes the aural
aspect of this event as follows: ‘All available species were singing at the same time
during the minutes immediately proceeding totality. . . when totality suddenly
brought total darkness, there was a deep silence’ (ibid.). For Fontana this was a
‘seminal’ experience because a total eclipse is usually conceived as being purely
a visual event and Fontana had witnessed it otherwise. This for Fontana was a
demonstration of the importance of sound, how it can impart an aesthetic equal
to that of vision. However, it also demonstrated how under appreciated sound
phenomena was in comparison to its visual counterpart.
For Fontana our lack of awareness towards the sounds of our environment
arises from our habitual attitude that assumes aural sensation to be an inferior
associate of vision, incomplete and inconsequential in itself. As a result we ‘tune
out’ (Rudi, 2005) from the sounds around us, allowing vision to dominate. With
an outlook that opposes this, Fontana decided very early in his career that he
wanted his practice to incorporate the transposition of sounds from one context
into another. For each of his subsequent installations a site’s real sound field
was replaced by sounds from another place for which there was no direct visual
counterpart on site and therefore this sound was able to stand distinct and have
a life and a significance of its own. The added expectation for this sound was that
it would be capable of affecting what is told to us through our visual sense by
providing a contrasting image (Fontana, 1997). In summary, Fontana describes
his practice as such:
Most of my projects have been created in urban public space, where an

architectural situation is used as the physical and visual focal point
81
of sounds that are relocated to these situations. Loudspeakers are

normally mounted on the exterior of a building or a monument and
are used to deconstruct and transform the situation by creating a
virtual transparent reality of sound (Fontana, 2004).
3.4.2 Recontextualizing
In Fontana’s sound sculptures there are at least two discrete places that are un-
der scrutiny. The differences or similarities between the two are always of central
importance to the concept of each installation. The first place is always the sub-
ject of Fontana’s recording processes, an aural impression of it is made and then
broadcast within the second place. For Fontana, the sound signal obtained from
the first site can never be divorced from its original context even when dislocated
because the sound still refers to its origins (Fontana, 1987). However, when set
within a new place this sound becomes ‘recontextualized’ (Rudi, 2005); it ex-
hibits a new dynamic, gains new association and evokes a new approach to, and
understanding of, the host locality. In the majority of his works Fontana uses his
sound projections to mask the real sound of the sites in which his work is placed
(Moore, 2005; Rudi, 2005). Therefore any congruity or incongruity between the
two places is brought to bear solely through the meeting of the sound field of one
place and the visual, physical form of the other.
In the first instance it is the spatial dynamic of the hosting site that is trans-
figured by the overlaid sound. In the second instance it is the host’s cultural or
historic significance that the sound overlay calls into play. The former is most ev-
ident in Fontana’s installation Vertical Water but also in Wave Memorie (1999).
In this work, the sounds of the Spanish coastline were cast into Trafalgar Square,
London. However, Fontana’s procedure for effecting a site’s spatial character is
arguably employed in every one of his installations.
82
3.4.3 Conceptual Significance
In many of Fontana’s installations there are conceptual factors that link his sound
images to the hosting place. These call upon the social, cultural and historic sig-
nificance of either place in question. For example, in Sound Island (1984) Fontana
distributed the sounds of the Normandy Coast across the upper tears of the Arc
de Triomphe, Paris. In one sense, this was done for reasons similar to Vertical
Water : The Arc de Triomphe is situated upon a traffic island. As a parody of this,
Fontana surrounded the arc with the sounds of the sea rather than that of the
real ‘sea of cars’ (Fontana, 2004) that encircle it. However, there is another link
to be made between the two juxtaposed places that relates to the monumental
importance of each.
Sound Island was exhibited in the year of the 50th anniversary of the D-
Day landings, a significant event within the second world war that took place
across the Normandy coast. Fontana was commissioned to produce a work that
commemorated this (Rudi, 2005). The Arc de Triomphe was selected to host
this piece because it is the resting place of the Unknown Soldier, a victim of the
First World War. Fontana believes this work creates the illusion that the Arc de
Triomphe is ‘dreaming out loud’ (Fontana, 1997), as though the monument were
lamenting those who had fallen in war.
Pigeon Soundings (2007) demonstrates a similar capacity for ‘acoustic evo-

cation’ (Fontana, 1997). Fontana once more views his sound as alluding to the
host’s recollecting. He describes this work in similar terms to Sound Island : ‘the
space dreaming to itself, returning to a primal state that lay in the realm of new
beginnings’ (ibid.). In Pigeon Soundings this dreaming is a direct memory. In-
stead of another place being brought into the site, an aural image from this same
site, but from an earlier time, is introduced.
Pigeon Soundings is a permanent installation housed within the Kolumba

Musuem, Cologne, Germany. This museum was built upon the remains of the
Church of Columbia that was destroyed shortly after the Second World War.
83
The dimensions of the museum are in keeping with that of the old church and a
number of the church’s surviving features were built into the new structure. In the
fifty years that the site remained unused and untouched, it was inhabited by many
thousands of pigeons. It was these pigeons and the ruin and neglect that they
heralded which was the focus of Fontana’s installation. Before the building work
commenced upon the museum, Fontana went into the devastated site and made
an 8-channel recording of the inhabiting pigeons. These recording can now be
heard in the museum dissipating out of 24 speakers, proving a spatially-authentic
simulation of the disbanded nesting space. This gives the impression that the
pigeons are once again active in the museum, hidden away above the rafters
(Moore, 2005). The pigeons appear as ghosts, haunting the museum preventing
our forgetting of the time of their rule.
3.5 Fontana’s Advanced Fieldwork
For Fontana the recording or capture of an environment is as important as the

subsequent installation that these sounds are utilised within. Fontana’s field tech-
nique and the tools he brings into service far out class those of his contempo-
raries: Fontana has produced many multi-track, spatially-detailed renderings of
sound environments. Furthermore he has utilised hydrophone and accelerometers
to record sounds that the ear can not reach or perceive, and employed network
technologies, particularly telephone and satellite services, to bring the sounds of
detached territories together into one ‘listening zone’ (Fontana, 2010). Fontana’s
aspiration for both of these strategies is to make accessible, inaccessible sounds
and sound environments.
3.5.1 Spatial Mapping
Fontana most generally frames an environment through at least eight microphones

that transmit simultaneously. Each microphone is directed onto a particular facet
84
of the aural environment and placed at a different point within the scrutinised
area. In doing so an aural map of the environment can be ascertained that doc-
uments sound across an entire region and frames the same sound event from
multiple standpoints. From this mapping, Fontana can then produce a simula-
tion of the original environment within a new context by positioning speakers in
a patterning that matches his original microphone arrangement.
Fontana often produces ‘kinesthetically correct’ (Fontana, 1987) renderings in

which he maintains the original scale of a studied sound environment. Fontana’s
first sculpture, Kirribilli wharf (1976) and the aforementioned Pigeon soundings
and Entfernte Züge are of this type. Fontana has many other installations in which
the scale of his recorded sound space is reduced. Fontana does so in order to make
large-scale territories, some of which are many miles in diameter, perceptible to
the individual. In these works distant sounds are brought together into a single
listening zone. A good example of this type is Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns
(1981).
Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns was installed upon the façade of a pier
building in San Francisco Bay (Fontana, 2010). The piece comprised of eight
loudspeakers that projected the sound received by one of eight microphones sit-
uated along the shores of the San Francisco Bay area (Figure 3.3). This was
achieved through the use of telephone lines. Within audible range of each of the
microphones were a number of foghorns; in total there were eleven foghorns in the
bay. Some of these foghorns were also aubile upon the pier without amplification
and therefore the pier became a ninth point within Fontana’s system.
The work explored the delay incurred by sound as it travels over distance and
also the effect that certain geographies (e.g. hills and valleys) have upon sound.
An example of the latter is the echo produced by sound reverberating within a
valley. A listener at the pier building, stood beneath the eight speakers, would
hear the same foghorn several times because it’s sound would have been picked up
by a number of the microphones; It may also be audible upon the pier itself. The
aural quality of this foghorn would be slightly different in each of the repetitions
85
and the time of arrival at the pier would also be different. The foghorn would be
received by the microphone nearest to it first and received last by the microphone
furthest away.
Landscape Sculptures with Foghorns presents it’s audience with a phenomenon

that they may otherwise be unaware of, for it would be impossible for them to
assume the perspective that Fontana’s system makes possible. The audience can
easily comprehend the effects of distance and geography upon an audio signal
because the region over which this usually occurs has been scaled down to a level
that is perceptible.
3.5.2 Fontana and Technology
Through using microphones/sensors that are not ordinarily used for the purposes
of art or music, Fontana is able to capture sounds and audible vibrations, which
pass through materials other than air, such as water or metals. In doing so,
Fontana is able to put before an audience sounds that they would otherwise be
unable to access. These sounds can be enormous such as the underwater motion
of the ocean or minute like vibrations in metals or other materials. Particular
microphones are able to surmount the capabilities of the ear so that these difficult
sounds can be rendered perceivable. In particular, Fontana utilises hydrophones
and accelerometers, both of which are usually the tools of the natural sciences
such as ‘geology, geophysics, oceanography’ (Moore, 2005) or listening devices
that ‘structural engineers use’.
Accelerometers translate vibrations into a signal. Essentially these vibrations

are the same as those of sound waves but require boosting and scaling up so to
be clearly audible. Fontana has utilised accelerometers within a number of works,
more commonly in his recent pieces6 As an example, for Harmonic Bridge (2006)
6
See Silent Echoes (2008) and River Sounding (2010) for more examples of Fontana’s use of
accelerometers.
86
Fontana attached accelerometers to the cable supports of the Millennium bridge

in London and transmitted the received signal within the entrance space of the
Tate Modern, London. Fontana describes this work as follows:
The tension cables each have a slightly different fundamental reso-

nance which you can hear. . . You will hear the sounds of footsteps,
luggage carts, bicycles, runners and so on. All these types of impact
sounds along the deck of the bridge are picked up by these cables.
The bridge becomes very excited if there are a lot of people on it or if
it starts to get windy. The balustrade cables start to produce a rapid,
pulsating, high-pitched sound that gets transferred to the tension ca-
bles. They sound almost like steel marbles rolling on some kind of
glass surface. . . When played in the Turbine Hall they generate flut-
ter echoes which are very beautiful (Borthwick, 2006).
By using devices that can be placed right upon the cables and can more readily
observe the nature of the vibration, Fontana, by means of his technology, manages
to bring to our ears sound which would have otherwise been unperceivable and
therefore seem not to exist. The same can be said of Fontana’s use of hydrophones.
For the work Tidal Waves (2002) which was exhibited in the Maratine Mu-
seum, Hull (UK), Fontana relayed in real time the sound from an old jetty on
the Humber Estuary. This jetty was four storey’s high and at high tide three
of these stories would be submerged. Fontana positioned hydrophones on each
of the three stories and the signal from these microphones was then projected
into the museum. Hence, when the tide was at its highest all hydrophones would
collect underwater sound. When at its lowest, none of the hydrophones would be
submerged and the water would have minimal presence within the transmission.
At this time, the hydrophones would act similar to an accelerometer and thus
capable of hearing ‘interior structural sounds of the jetty’ (Fontana, 2010, p.2).
This work yet again shows Fontana bringing forth a sound situation that would
otherwise go unheard because the location is not accessible and the position of
the hydrophone is not somewhere that the ear could be held for any length of
time.
87
Figure 3.3: The map that accompanied Fontana’s Landscape Sculptures

with Foghorns (1981) - Image taken from (Rudi, 2005)
88
3.6 Conclusion
Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana create sound installations that are situated in
public space. Neuhaus’ installations are devised in situ, in response an the aural,
visual and social context. Neuhaus integrates the mechanics of his work with
the architecture and infrastructure present on site, so as to minimise the visual
presence of his installations. The sound of each of Neuhaus’ installations (which
is generally a synthesised tone) is designed so as to assimilate with the real sound
present on site, and to correspond with the spaces that they are projected into,
with the space having an affect upon the sound and vice-versa. Because Neuhaus’
installations are configured in this manner, more often than not the public whom
come into contact with his work will be unaware they have done so, or they will
not perceive his work as art or as being distinct from the wider environment. For
this reason, Neuhaus termed each of his installations ‘discoverables’ and spoke
of the audience gaining ownership over the extra-ordinary situations and events
that these works could bring into being.
Fontana’s installations tend to be positioned upon visually-striking landmarks

and seek to counter or supplement these figures through the overlaying of a
spatially-detailed sound images that either comprise of multi-channel field record-
ings or a multi-channel, real-time relay from an outside location (or locations).
Fontana’s work generally involves the combining of at least two places, the sound
of one fixed upon the physical body of the other. For Fontana, there is frequently
a conceptual reasoning behind this association, which brings into play the cultural
and historic significance of both places.
Rather then working with muted tones and seeking to merge these with the
real sounds in situ, Fontana utilises bold, ‘out-of-place’ sounds and positioned
these over the top of the sounds on site, replacing the real sound field. Hence,
Fontana’s work is far more noticeable than Neuhaus’ and far more likely to be
acknowledged as art. With this in mind, I do not believe that Fontana’s work
can be classified as acoustic design, as I have suggested Neuhaus’ work to be
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(section 3.2). Although Fontana’s installations certainly enhance their site and
raise awareness towards the values of sound and listening, they are not designed in
support of their site or designed so as to have an effect upon the everyday systems
and practices present on site. Rather, Fontana’s installations, like the spectacular
buildings they adorn, stand distinct and request attention, bringing the listener
into suspending their ordinary activities so as to engage with the work. In other
words, Fontana’s work subscribes to the art-audience paradigm, which for me
is not quite in keeping with either Schafer’s acoustic design or Neuhaus’ sound
design.
As a final remark, I’d like to briefly make comment upon Neuhaus’ three types
of sound installation: place-works, moment-works and passage-works. First, I’d
like to suggest how Fontana’s work fits within these categories: I suggest that
on the whole Fontana’s installations are most comfortably place-works because
they can be said to bring sound into a specific place and are held in that place.
However, because of their size and spatial detail one may say that in order to
fully appreciate these pieces they must be listened to from multiple standpoints,
which involves walking a path around them, thus these installations are perhaps
better understood as passage-works. Moreover, certain works such as Landscape
Sculptures with Foghorns 7 position within one listening zone a series of delayed
versions of the same sound. Hence, these works reveal their content and concept
over time, making them more akin to moment-works. However, they do not bring
the listener into realising a moment in time quite like Neuhaus’ Time Pieces and
hence might not be in keeping with how Neuhaus intended a moment-work to be.
In the following chapter I will discuss Janet Cardiff’s audio walks, which
I include within my own category of mobile sound walks. However, these may
equally suit the heading of ‘passage-works’ for they request that a listener be
mobile, moving between a series of distinct places/ambiences onto which sounds
7
I note two further works of Fontana’s explore similar themes: Time Fountain (1995) and
Speeds of Time (2004). Time is also of significance to Acoustical Views of Kyoto (1990).
90
have been overlaid. In Neuhaus’ Drive in Music (one of his passage-works), each
driver’s path through a grid of antennas, which Neuhaus had erected, produced a
unique composition because each driver’s course between the antennas would be
different in direction, orientation and speed. This is very similar to the circum-
stances of the mobile sound walk, particularly my own contributions that involve
the use of location-aware technologies. In such works, listeners can take as long
as they please in investigating the annotated location, sketching out their own
unique path, which in turn gives rise to their own unique composition. The great-
est distinction between Neuhaus’ passage-works and mobile sound walks is that
in the latter sound is delivered through headphones and hence can only address
one listener at a time, and must separate the listener from the wider environment
so as to achieve this. As I will go on to demonstrate within my discussion of
Cardiff’s work, this isolating of the individual can have quite an impact upon the
experiential effect and conceptual focus of such works.
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Chapter 4
Janet Cardiff ’s Audio Walks
Janet Cardiff creates what she terms ‘audio walks’ (Gordon, 2005). Over the last
twenty years Cardiff has produced over twenty audio walks. Each audio walk
comprises of a sound composition that is recorded onto CD (or equivalent), for
playback upon a mobile device (most generally a portable CD player). Each sound
composition is site-specific; i.e. it is designed to be an accompaniment to a walk
through a specific location. The route for each work encompasses a number of
differing spaces and places, has a predefined start and end point and, when walked
at a set pace, takes a certain length of time to complete.
Each of Cardiff’s audio walks entails replacing the real sound field present on
site with a new body of sound that comprises of field recordings and dramatic
sound materials. Cardiff’s expectation is that the listener will associate this sound
with the real, physical environment, producing what she terms a ‘third world’
(Traub, 2007), which is part real (in what is seen and felt) and part imaginary
(in what is heard). This system is in effect the same as that in operation in
Bill Fontana’s sound sculptures. A paramount difference between Cardiff and
Fontana’s work is that Cardiff creates overlays that address a sole individual
through headphones whilst Fontana’s installations address a far greater number of
individuals by way of loudspeaker. Additionally, Cardiff’s overlays have a notable
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4. Janet Cardiff ’s Audio Walks
beginning and end; they are not ceaseless, fixed bodies of sound like is expected
from a sound sculpture or installation.
Whereas installation artists like Fontana create static, public artworks, Cardiff
creates private, mobile listening experiences that take place in the public realm.
This notion is both of practical significance and conceptual significance to Cardiff.
Within her compositions, Cardiff utilises binaural recordings that are recorded
from the perspective of a walker, through the placement of microphones upon each
ear of the recordist. Cardiff captures these recordings along the same path that the
listener is then requested to walk along. Binaural recordings provide an image
of an environment from a listener’s perspective and hence, when played back
through headphones, the sounds of these recordings may appear to the listener
to be out within the real environment, at the same orientation and distance from
the listener as they were from Cardiff at the time of capture.
In addition to these recordings, Cardiff’s compositions comprise of invented

soundscapes and imagined events (produced via sound design in the studio) as
well as spoken dialogue and narration, which Cardiff herself provides. Within her
speech, Cardiff gives directions, which lead the listener along a predetermined
path and in doing, enable Cardiff to align her composition with aspects of the
landscape. Cardiff also speaks more personally and candidly within her compo-
sitions, playing upon the knowledge that only the listener can hear her and that,
through wearing headphones, this listener is isolated from all others. In effect,
Cardiff converts a private experience into a shared experience; she appears to
accompany the listener throughout the walk, speaks directly to the listener and
seeks to establish an intimate bond with him or her.
Through instructions set within her speech, Cardiff seeks to bring the listener
into attending to his or her own body. This is most evident in Her Long Black
Hair (2004), in which Cardiff sets a number of tasks for listeners that bring them
into reflecting upon their own physical correspondence with the outside world; for
example, ‘put your finger in your mouth, now put the wet saliva on your cheek.
It feels cold, bothersome, like a separate part of your face’ (Schaub, 2005, p.104).
93
Furthermore, Cardiff believes that without the listener her work is not complete,
for the listener contributes to the work by firstly making connections between
his or her own self, the sound and the external environment; and secondly by
supplanting Cardiff’s rumination with his or her own imagining: ‘[the listener’s]
remembered dreams, triggered by phrases and sounds, invade and add to the
artwork’ (Pinder, 2001).
All of Cardiff’s audio walks have a narrative that is relayed through the
composition. The themes, structuring and articulation of this narrative have been
compared to film by numerous commentators including Cardiff herself. It is for
this reason that Cardiff’s work has been termed ‘physical cinema’:
When somebody once described my work as Physical Cinema, I agreed.

The sound collages I make are like filmic soundtracks for the real
world. Also it’s because of the cinematic conventions that I use like
the voice-over or the sci-fi or film noir elements that give you a sense
of being in a film that moves through space’ (Cardiff in Schaub, 2005,
p101).
The expectation for each of Cardiff’s audio walks is that the listener will perceive
the location that each walk describes in a new light because they observe this
environment through the lens of Cardiff’s storytelling, which dramatises and sen-
sationalises this environment. For example, the narrative of The Missing Voice:
Case Study B (1999) follows a ‘film-noir’ styling. Film noir conventionally ex-
plores urban life and depicts the city as being somewhat strange, beguiling, un-
ruly and perplexing1 . Hence, by calling upon film noir’s devices Cardiff is able
to bring the listener to comprehending their external surroundings under these
same terms.
1
See ‘Something more than Night: Tales of the Noir City’ by Frank Krutnik (Krutnik, 1997)
for the origins of this sentiment.
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4.1 Introduction to Missing Voice: Case Study B
In the course of this chapter I will explore in detail just one of Cardiff’s audio
walks entitled The Missing Voice: Case Study B (1999)2 that was designed as
an accompaniment to a walk through the East End of London. The piece was
hosted by the Whitechapel Library, London, and funded by Artangel3 . The library
was both the venue from which the audience could collect the required mobile
device (i.e. a portable CD player) and the opening location within the walk, from
which Cardiff’s narrative began. I have chosen to focus my discussion on Missing
Voice because it addresses the city (both as a physical site and concept) and also
addresses how the individual thinks, feels and behaves in the city, which one may
also say is the focus of my own mobile walks and site-specific work.
In the discussion that follows I will firstly explore the concept underpinning
Missing Voice and look in detail at the content and structure of the Missing
Voice composition. Secondly, I will explore the work in reference to the device
through which it is delivered, namely the personal stereo. To begin this discussion,
I will provide a brief overview of Georg Simmel’s urban dweller. Simmel suggests
that as a defence against the city’s exorbitance and relentlessness, the urban
dweller has developed a particular mental and emotional attitude that he refers
to as the blasé attitude. In section 4.3.2 of this chapter I will demonstrate that
the personal stereo has been employed by the urban dweller as a technological
enhancement of the blasé attitude. Following this, I will suggest that, through
Missing Voice, Cardiff subverts the personal stereo’s common functionality and
in turn, counteracts the blasé attitude.
For my discussion of the personal stereo I will reference the writings of Michael
Bull. Bull infers that there are two contrasting types of personal stereo ‘user’
2
For the remainder of the chapter I will refer to The Missing Voice: Case Study B as simply
Missing Voice.
3
http://www.artangel.org.uk/
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(Bull, 2000, p.2): firstly, there are those that use their personal stereos as a dis-
traction, utilising the device as a means to escape from their everyday environ-
ments, in accordance with the blasé attitude; and secondly, there are a smaller set
of users who utilise the sounds that their personal stereos present as the backdrop
to an ‘aestheticization’ of the external environment, which Bull notes is very often
described in cinematic terms. In my concluding discussion of Cardiff’s Missing
Voice I will demonstrate that Cardiff’s composition engenders the second type of
use and gives rise to an experience that is very clearly cinematic in nature.
4.2 Content of Missing Voice
Missing Voice operates in the same manner as all of Cardiff’s audio walks. The
person who hands the required device over to the listener instructs this listener as
to where to begin Cardiff’s composition. The listener then moves to that location,
dons the headphones and presses play on the CD player. From then on, for the
next fifty minutes, the listener is under Cardiff’s direction. In Missing Voice, like
all of Cardiff’s walks, prior to beginning the walk participants have no idea where
they will be led or what they will encounter along the way; they are given no
map and given only the instructions necessary to begin the interaction, nothing
more.
The listener is guided around the route that Cardiff has designed her com-
position for by means of directions that Cardiff includes within the content of
her composition. In addition to this, Cardiff makes continued references to the
things that the listener should be seeing along the course of this route (‘Stop
for a minute, we’re at another intersection. I’m going to cross the street and go
in the direction of the orange restaurant with the red stripe, do you see?’, MV
Audio4 ). Through placing these instructions and indications within her speech
4
Over the course of this chapter I will reference some of Cardiff’s dialogue from Missing Voice.
Sections of this work are available to download at: http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/
walks/missing_voice.html
96
Cardiff can not only guide the listener along a specific path but can also align her
composition with the cityscape. As a further aid to this, at the beginning of the
piece when the listener exits the library, Cardiff asks them to follow the sound
of her footsteps, which are then audible throughout the rest of the composition.
These footsteps act as a metronome, keeping the listener’s walking in time with
Cardiff’s and thus supporting the syncopation of the composition with London’s
cityscape.
Underpinning the entire span of the Missing Voice composition is a great

number of binaural field recordings that were recorded in the same streets and
buildings around which Cardiff subsequently guides the listener. These captured
soundscapes encompass both ordinary ambiences and more prominent, salient
events such as a tour guide speaking about Jewish history, Christian hymn singers
and a group playing Always Look on the Bright Side of Life on Kazoos. Within
the piece there are also a number of invented scenes that have been rendered to
appear as though they are occupying real space. For example, at one point the
listener is faced with the sound of bombs, sirens, helicopters and fleeing civilians
that appear to resound within the streets to which the listener has a view. This
interjection acts both to startle the listener and relay Cardiff’s thoughts and
fantasies at that moment, in that particular place.
Throughout the course of Missing Voice there are primarily two characters
that the listener hears and engages with: firstly, there is an unnamed private
detective who divulges to the listener that he has been hired to track down a
red haired woman (‘As far as I can tell, she is mapping different paths through
the city. I can’t seem to find the reason for the things she notices and records’,
MV Audio). Secondly, there is Cardiff herself who poses as the listener’s guide,
claiming to be walking with them in the present (‘I’m standing in the library with
you’, MV Audio) and leading this listener along a path through London’s streets
via spoken direction. In addition to delivering instruction, Cardiff also speaks
more candidly and intimately with the listener, directly addressing him or her
and sharing her own thoughts upon topics such as love, life and loss (‘Have you
97
ever had the urge to disappear, to escape your own life for just a little while?’,
MV Audio) as well as recounting a number of dreams and past memories (‘Sitting
here I am transported back to another church, years ago. Sitting next to me is
my little brother’, MV Audio).
At numerous times through out the composition, Cardiff can also be heard
talking from a tape recorder (figure 4.1). The recorded Cardiff is of course, Cardiff
speaking in the past; of this voice Cardiff comments: ‘the voice became some-
one else, a separate person hovering in front of me like a ghost. . . she describes
things I don’t remember seeing’ (MV Audio). The past’s correspondence with,
and appearance within, the present is a theme that is evident in further aspects
of Missing Voice: Cardiff’s composition includes field recordings that were cap-
tured in the same locations that the listener then encounters these recordings
in, thus layering a past image of the site onto itself. Cardiff also provides within
her composition commentary upon what is to be seen along the course of the
walk. However, much of what Cardiff mentions could not possibly still be present
within the listener’s observed cityscape because they are transient and imperma-
nent things such as the daily headlines upon newspaper stands and banana peels
that Cardiff finds upon the ground.
Rather than following a linear structure, the plot of Missing Voice is somewhat
fractured, disordered and without a clear conclusion. The content and styling of
Missing Voice is very much in keeping with the kinds of narratives employed
within a number of films and novels that similarly explore, and make comment
upon, the city. In particular, Cardiff’s work shows a strong resemblance to Paul
Auster’s New York Trilogy and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch,
as well as many films in the genre of film noir. City-based works such as these
are very often unconventionally structured and frequently employ urban figures
such as the detective, stranger, doppelganger, femme fatale and phantom so as to
present the cities that they explore as a place of mystery, threat and intrigue. In
his article ‘Ghostly Footsteps: Voices, Memories and Walks in the City’ (Pinder,
2001), David Pinder makes similar connections between Cardiff’s audio walks and
98
urban film and literature. Like myself, Pinder believes Missing Voice presents a
narrative that is very much ‘of’ the city:
It is the very condition of the city to be plural with a multiplicity of

stories, an inexhaustibility of narratives, peopled with strangers and
difference. Here the stories are elusive and fragmentary; thoughts and
perceptions shift, threads and clues are hinted at, dropped, circled
round and pursued (Pinder, 2001).
4.3 Cardiff, the Urban Dweller and the Personal Stereo
Rather than seeking to transform the physical environment through the overlay-
ing of sound directly onto it, Cardiff seeks to transform the individual’s perception
of, and responses to, the physical environment by acting directly upon the lis-
tener. To do this Cardiff utilises the personal stereo. Cardiff’s first employment
of the personal stereo within an artwork was in 19915 . At this time, the personal
stereo was already a widely known and widely circulated everyday device. Beyond
its intended functionality as a means to listen to music on the move, the personal
stereo has been appropriated as an instrument through which some of the ills of
urban living can be circumvented. In particular, it is the personal stereo’s provi-
sion of a private, isolated zone of listening and the effect that sound/music can
have upon one’s temperament and thinking that the urban dweller has found
most useful.
The urban dweller is a figure that sociologist and urban critic Georg Simmel
has helped to define through essays such as ‘Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1903).
This essay was written at the turn of the century, towards the end of the period
known as the the Industrial Revolution. In this period, a great portion of Europe’s
population migrated from the country into towns and cities. Simmel suggests that
5
This first audio walk was Forest Walk (1991), which was produced within a residency at the
Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada (http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/forest.
html).
99
concurrent to this alteration in location, was an alteration in the individual’s day

to day attitude, for the city provided a very different set of circumstances to
village and rural life that the individual had to acclimatise to. What follows is an
overview of Simmel’s urban dweller, which I propose to be of benefit both to my
discussion of the personal stereo, and Cardiff’s use of it, as well as the discussion
that appears in later chapters upon the subject of my own work.
4.3.1 Simmel’s Urban Dweller
In ‘Metropolis and Mental Life’, Simmel proclaims that the crowded spaces of
the city pose a serious threat to the unaccustomed dweller:
If the unceasing external contact of numbers of persons in the city

should be met by the same number of inner reactions as in the small
town, in which one knows almost every person he meets and to each of
whom he has a positive relationship, one would be completely atom-
ised internally and would fall into an unthinkable mental condition’
(Simmel, 1903).
According to Simmel, as a defence against the crowd, the urban dweller has
developed an outer ‘reserve’ (Simmel, 1903) and an inner ‘indifference’ or what
may be referred to in totality as a ‘blasé attitude’ (ibid.). Through doing so the
urban dweller has been able to place distance between him or herself and others;
being neither of interest to, nor interested in, those with whom he or she comes
into contact.
For Simmel, the urban dweller’s blasé attitude also serves a second purpose. It
acts as a defence against the excess of stimulus that the city brings to bear upon
the individual both within its own form (i.e. architecture and infrastructure) and
within the many things that it contains. The urban dweller’s response to this
excess, under the blasé attitude, is to disregard the differences between things
so as to ‘make less’ of everything. According to Simmel, to the blasé individual
100
everything appears ‘in a homogeneous, flat and grey colour with no one of them
worthy of being preferred to another’ (ibid.).
Simmel believed that the urban dweller’s adoption of the blasé attitude pro-
duced a number of side effects, both positive and negative. To deal firstly with the
negative, Simmel observed that our indifference to others could easily degenerate
into responses less favourable such as a ‘slight aversion’, ‘repulsion’ or, in the
most extreme of circumstances, descend into ‘hatred and conflict’ (ibid.). Fur-
thermore, Simmel suggests that the urban dweller is prone to pangs of loneliness
and hopelessness, which are due to the realisation that those whom surround the
urban dweller care little for their well-being and would most likely dismiss any
attempt at contact.
More positively, in contrast to village life, in the city the urban dweller is on
the whole free to do as he or she pleases because very few people are aware of
the individual. The city grants the urban dweller a certain amount of freedom.
They can make more diverse choices on how to look and how to act, for they are
only answerable to a very select few. However, Simmel is keen to note that in
the presence of so many others and under the weight of so many things, many
more than can be parried by indifference, the individual is constantly bombarded
with influences and therefore it is very difficult for them to make truly individual
choices:
The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the
individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his ex-
istence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of
the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life.
(Simmel, 1903).
101
Figure 4.1: Janet Cardiff in The Missing Voice: Case Study B (1999) -
Cardiff is seen here talking into a tape recorder. This recorded version of Cardiff
appears regularly within the Missing Voice composition.
102
4.3.2 Bull’s Personal Stereo User
To best define how the personal stereo has been appropriated as a device with
which to manage one self and one’s surroundings, I will draw upon the writings
of Michael Bull, in particular his book Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereo
and the Management of Everyday Life (Bull, 2000). Bull believes that the per-
sonal stereo has produced, permitted and presented a number of opportunities
for listeners to control their experience of, or experiences in, public spaces. Bull
suggests that the personal stereo erects a zone of privacy over which listeners,
through their aural selection, have unquestioned control. Furthermore, listeners
may either retreat into this private zone, turning their attention away from the
external environment and onto their own thoughts and fantasies, or they may
employ the sounds of their personal stereo as the soundtrack to a private ‘aes-
theticization’ (Bull, 2000, p.171) of the external environment. The latter is less
common than the former, and is the mode that Cardiff’s Missing Voice seeks
to promote; I will tackle this mode in section 4.4. Here, I will approach Bull’s
examination of those listeners who utilise their personal stereos as a means of es-
cape from the everyday and as means to temper the undesirable aspects of urban
living that these listeners actively encounter or are passively stricken by.
In his text Sounding out the City, in support of his claims regarding the
personal stereo, Bull makes reference to a series of interviews he has conducted
with personal stereo users. Bull notes that many personal stereo users comment
that personal stereo use gives rise to a feeling of being ‘somewhere else’ (Bull,
2000, p.73). These users appear to recede into a second space that is separate
from their actual, physical location. So as to attend to the things of this space,
these individuals seemingly gives up their place in the real world, neither engaging
with it nor appearing to others to be part of it:
[Personal stereo] users often become indifferent to the presence of oth-

ers. . . [They] appear to achieve a subjective sense of public invisibility.
They essentially disappear as interacting subjects, withdrawing into
their chosen privatised and mobile states’ (Bull, 2004).
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Many personal stereo listeners actively seek an escape from the outside world. For
some, the everyday environments that they frequent lack intrigue, they appear, as
Simmel would suggest, ‘grey’ and lifeless; such listeners turn to the sounds of their
personal stereos in search of the vibrancy that they perceive to be absent from
their external surroundings (Bull, 2000, p.33). Other listeners, Bull comments,
find public space an aggravation and the personal stereo allows these listeners to
separate themselves from the everyday, retreating into a private space that they
control, which is as they desire (Bull, 2004). In this state, outsiders are not only
ignored because they irritate but also because they challenge the listener’s sense
of control (Bull, 2004) .
In effect, the personal stereo acts as a technological enhancement of the lis-

tener’s blasé attitude in that it masks real sensation, provides a distraction and
advertises to others that the listener is otherwise engaged. However, in addition,
Bull highlights that some listeners utilise the sounds of their personal stereo as a
means to temper the negative emotional states that urban living is said to give rise
to, such as, in reference to Simmel, loneliness, anxiety, hostility and fatigue (Bull,
2000, p.79). To do so, Bull suggests that either (1) the listener selects materials
that are capable of triggering memories of past experiences, which are of comfort
to the listener; or (2) the listener selects materials that contextually or charac-
teristically oppose an expected adverse state. Regarding the latter, Bull suggests
it is either a sense of intimacy or a sense of security that listeners most regularly
seeks from their listening (Bull, 2000, p.31). A state of intimacy, Bull notes, is
most generally attained through listening to the radio, where the broadcaster or
radio DJ may appear to speak directly to the listener, forming an ‘imaginary
communion’ with him or her (ibid.). In addition, the key to a listener’s sense of
security is a familiarity with the materials listened to because these materials
directly oppose the city and the crowds unfamiliar nature (Bull, 2000, p.34).
Through the personal stereo, listeners can be brought to remember a past

event in which the materials they listen to played a part, or in which similar
materials featured. In doing so, the listener may either re-experience the emotions
104
that they felt at the time of the remembered event, re-visualise the event or recall
the place of this event. Regarding the latter recollection, most predominately Bull
notes that it is a sense of one’s home that is most commonly conjured, which in
turn produces a feeling of familiarity and comfort.
Encompassing the act of recalling an experience is a broader process that

Bull refers to as ‘daydreaming’ (Bull, 2000, p.38). This act of daydreaming often
follows a narrative structure; the materials listened to move the listener through
a variety of linked events and situations that call upon the listener’s memory and
imagination. Bull believes that this sound/music-induced daydreaming provides
for the listener a fluidity and sense of progression that is otherwise absent from
everyday life: ‘[The user] attempt[s] to construct a sense of narrative within urban
spaces that have no narrative sense for them. The construction of a narrative
becomes an attempt to maintain a sense of pleasurable coherence’ (Bull, 2000,
p.39).
Bull notes that the listener’s act of remembering and imagining is generally
only possible because of the sounds that he or she hears via the personal stereo.
Listeners cannot get to the positive state they desire merely through their own
volition or via the sounds of their external surroundings: ‘The random nature
of the sounds of the street do not produce the correct configuration of force to
successfully produce or create the focusing of thoughts in the desired direction’
(Bull, 2000, p.38). Bull suggests that listeners may become adept at knowing
what thoughts, feelings and memories certain materials can trigger and thus, a
listener can become fairly proficient at controlling his or her own self through use
of the personal stereo.
4.3.3 Cardiff ’s revision of the Personal Stereo Manifesto
In re-appropriating the personal stereo as the channel through which she presents
the audio for her walk, Cardiff alters the relationship between this technology and
its user. More than anything it is her seizing control of what is heard through
105
this device that is most effective. By losing control of the sound selection, the
listener also loses control over the private space that the personal stereo is said
to erect.
Because Cardiff has control over the personal stereo and the materials listened
to, Cardiff is able to conduct any emerging daydream, elicit certain emotional re-
sponses within the listener, bring particular images and thoughts to the listener’s
mind, and persuade the listener to seek influence from their external surround-
ings. Furthermore, through an appearance within the listener’s private listening
zone by way of her own voice, Cardiff is not only able to guide the listener’s
thinking and daydreaming (and indeed walking) but also strike up a close union
with him or her; posing as the listener’s companion and guardian. Yet Cardiff
is a stranger to the listener; she brings from the outside her own thoughts and
her own responses to the crowd and the city. Through her speech, Cardiff seeks
to heighten the listener’s awareness to the urban environment that he or she
inhabits, demonstrating it’s dangers but also its intrigue, which serves to snap
listeners out of their apathetic state and provoke them into attending to the ev-
eryday places and everyday things that they may previously have deemed bereft
of interest, or to be an aggravation.
4.3.4 Intimacy and Insecurity
As I have already shown, a number of Bull’s personal stereo listeners remark

on having found solace in listening to the radio. These listeners imagine that
the radio presenter converses directly with them. Like the radio presenter, in
Missing Voice Cardiff appears to speak directly to the listener and may equally
be accepted as a companion by the listener. However, unlike the radio presenter,
Cardiff does not speak from a position ‘off-site’ (i.e. the broadcast studio) but
rather speaks as though stood next to the listener, walking and conversing with
the listener in his or her real surroundings: ‘I’m standing in the library with you’
(MV audio). Moreover, whereas the radio presenter speaks formally and more
106
generally, seeking to relate their discussion to many listeners at once, Cardiff

speaks more casually and intimately, confiding in the listener as though a close
confidante.
It has been commented that due to the close proximity of Cardiff’s voice
and the soothing, trance-like rhythm of her voice, Cardiff is not only capable of
assuming an intimate bond with the listener but also breach the listener’s self
and in doing so ‘meld’ (Pinder, 2001) her own thoughts with those of the listener.
Cardiff has herself commented that this was an expectation for Missing Voice, but
has also noted that the contrary may be possible: ‘My surrogate body starts to
infiltrate their consciousness while in reverse their remembered dreams, triggered
by phrases and sounds, invade and add to the artwork’ (Pinder, 2001). Indeed,
listeners may get so carried away in the experience of Missing Voice that they lose
any separation between themselves and Cardiff; what she thinks becomes what
they think and vice-versa. It is for this reason that Cardiff has been described as
posing as the ‘conscience’ (Schaub, 2005, p.167) of the listener.
However, there is a danger in letting Cardiff so close, for she is a stranger.

The listener is not aware of Cardiff’s intentions and they do not know whether
she means them harm. In this sense, Cardiff assumes the role of a ‘femme fatale’
within Missing Voice, a figure from film-noir who is charming and seductive but
also disturbing for both her past and present agenda are unknown: ‘[She] draws
you in, but you know [she’s] not good for you. . . [She] completely seduces you and
absorbs you and compels you to go with her. I mean she hardly needs to say follow
me, you would follow that voice almost anywhere’ (Schaub, 2005, p.176). Listeners
follow Cardiff, sympathise with her and are fascinated by her but ultimately must
ask themselves where are they being led to and question why a stranger would
be so quick to surrender her own guard?
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4.3.5 Memory and Missing Voice
Bull’s personal stereo users utilise sound materials, particularly music, as a means
to remember and imagine. To do so these listeners choose to break away from
their external surroundings, directing their attention inwards and onto their mu-
sic. In Missing Voice, the listener is presented with Cardiff’s remembering and
imagining, which she relays through her speech and the content of her composi-
tion. For example, Cardiff speaks of family visits to church and the death of her
father (Schaub, 2005, p.217) as well as accounting a number of dreams and night-
mares. Unlike the majority of Bull’s personal stereo users, Cardiff’s reflections
are not premeditated or expected, she does not seek to recall anything in par-
ticular, such as an image of home. Neither does Cardiff wish for these memories
to counteract the conditions of her environment; providing an antidote by way
of materials that are familiar and untroubling. On the contrary, Cardiff’s memo-
ries are ‘involuntary memories’ (Schaub, 2005, p.234) that are brought about by
chance encounters with the things, events and sensations (e.g. a certain smell or
sound) that Cardiff finds within her walk through London’s streets.
The term involuntary memory is rooted in the literature of Marcel Proust, a

novelist and modern critic. Proust’s most famous example of involuntary memory
is an anecdote that concerns the eating of a tea-soaked madeleine, a small cake.
The cake brings Proust to recalling being given tea and madeleines by his aunt.
This first recollection then prompts a broader series of memories for Proust, of
times spent with this aunt as a child (Proust, 2006, p.1152). Proust’s involun-
tary memory is a concept that Walter Benjamin has also spoken of in relation to
the city (Benjamin, 2006b, p.173). In Berlin Childhood around 1900 (Benjamin,
2006a) Benjamin provides an account of his own childhood that rather than be-
ing structured in a linear, chronological fashion is structured in accordance with
Berlin’s streets. This is because each of the incidents Benjamin recalls are invol-
untary memories whose perceptual trigger lies in the Berlin cityscape. Because of
this, Benjamin’s account is somewhat broken, incomplete and disordered, mim-
icking the nature of the environment that gave rise to it (Crang and Travlou,
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2001). This is likewise the state of Cardiff’s Missing Voice; there is no clear tra-
jectory running between the events that she relays, for each recollection arises
through an encounter within London’s streets, which, like those of Berlin, are
similarly fractured and confused. Unlike Benjamin, Cardiff’s recalling does not
take place within the locality that her memories pertain to; she did not grow up
in London and has not lived in London. Hence, Cardiff finds within the places of
London, resemblances of other places once visited.
Through vocalising her remembering and dreaming to the listener at the site
of its inception, where the trigger for it can be found, Cardiff advertises to the
listener the effect that the cityscape can have upon his or her thinking. Through
regular reference to the listener’s external environment within her speech and
recordings, Cardiff urges the listener to embrace the everyday and thus urges
him or her into a similar pattern of involuntary remembering. Furthermore, the
listener’s thoughtful drifting is not only under the influence of the cityscape but
also Cardiff’s own reminiscing. The listener’s thoughts assimilate with Cardiff’s
own and are thus carried off in new directions, and out towards the everyday.
4.4 Bull’s Auditory Gaze
In my prior discussion of Bull’s literature, I revealed that the personal stereo has
been utilised as a means to produce a private space for imagining that negates
influence from any external stimuli other than that put forward by the personal
stereo. This is certainly the most common type of use but not the only type.
Bull identifies a second type of use in which the sounds of the personal stereo are
employed as an accompaniment to an ‘aestheticizing’ (Bull, 2000, p.85) of the
external environment. Primarily it is the individual’s ‘looking’ that is enthused
by his or her listening; Bull refers to this look as an ‘auditory gaze’ (Bull, 2000,
p.83) and defines it as ‘an aestheticized look in which the narcissistic orientation of
the viewer predominates. The engagement with the visual becomes real with the
added ‘beautiful background’ to heighten the visual component of experience.
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In doing so the experience becomes phantasmagoric, a spectacle’ (Bull, 2000,

p.82). The ‘beautiful background’ to which Bull refers is that produced by the
sound/music heard through the personal stereo.
Bull’s interviewing of those personal stereo users who have engaged in audi-
tory gazing revealed that these individuals considered their aestheticizing to be
cinematic in nature (Bull, 2000, p.86). Bull highlights two discrete manifestations
of the cinematic aesthetic: firstly, listeners may chose to engage in a ‘filmic-type
experience’ (Bull, 2000, p.87), in which their real surroundings are employed as
the setting of a film these listeners invent and direct. In the filmic-type experience,
Bull suggests that listeners selects certain events from all those they encounter
within an environment that suit a narrative, which these listeners devise in situ
under the influence of the sound/music that they listens to. In addition to being
the director, listeners may also assume a role within the imagined film, viewing
themselves as the protagonist of this film and believing that the events perceived
happen as a consequence of their own imagined actions. Otherwise, listeners may
think of their own gaze as being that of the camera, for it is their looking that
frames the action necessary for the devised narrative (Bull, 2000, p.176).
Bull’s second type of cinematic encounter is far subtler than the first. Bull
notes that some listeners have described their everyday experience as ‘appearing
to be like a film’ (Bull, 2000, p.86), which arises from the music that they listen
to aligning with the things seen within the external environment to produce a
scene that is either reminiscent of a specific film or just appears filmic. Regarding
this type of encounter, Bull references the statement of an interviewee named
Mags who describes an experience in which she listened to the music of U2 whilst
walking down an empty street at night in the rain. These conditions and the
music that accompanied these conditions aligned to give Mags the uncanny sense
that she was within a film, assuming the role of the film’s ‘tortured heroine’ (Bull,
2000, p.88).
Bull also suggests that there are listeners who assume the mood of the films,
film types and film characters that their music recalls. In this case, listeners do
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not perceive their present circumstances to be filmic or invent their own film in
relation to what they see and hear. Rather these listeners approach their everyday
environment through the guise of the film/character that the music they listen
to recalls. As an example, Bull refers to an interviewee named Catriona who, by
listening to the soundtrack to Reservoir Dogs (a violent, neo-noir classic), could
acquire the confidence and swagger of the characters in that film (Bull, 2000,
p.91).
4.4.1 The Auditory Gaze, Cinema and Missing Voice
In Missing Voice, Cardiff leads the listener into cinematic imagining through call-
ing upon more than just music, she employs snippets of sound from old film-noir
movies as well as narration, dialogue, scenic ambiences and sound effects. In do-
ing so Cardiff creates a dramatic, eventful encounter within real space that is
undeniably cinematic. More than this, Cardiff achieves the full sensual intensity
of a film by bringing the listener into pairing the soundtrack with a visual image,
through their gazing upon the real world: ‘With the audio walks I want people to
be inside the filmic experience and have the real physical world as the constantly
changing visuals of the screen’ (Cardiff in Egoyan, 2002). Cardiff further inten-
sifies the experience by getting listeners to both sympathise with the characters
she presents to them and become one of these characters, which in turn may lead
the listener into taking on, as his or her own, some of the attitudes, thoughts and
emotions of these characters or take on the mood of the narrative that Cardiff
relays.
In Missing Voice, the listener is granted a role within the cinematic imagining
that Cardiff’s composition brings into effect, over and above merely being an
audience member. In the first instance the listener is implemented as a character
within the narrative: listeners are not removed from the action and neither are
they positioned away from these events like within the auditorium, rather these
listeners are right within the action; events surround and incorporate their bodies.
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Further to this, through the composition, Cardiff requests that listeners undertake
a number of physical acts that serve to intensify the sense of being involved
and implicated in the Missing Voice plot. The listener’s walk is the primary
undertaking but there are numerous others throughout the course of the work.
For instance at the start of the Missing Voice, when the listener is in Whitechapel
Library, Cardiff requests that he or she seeks out a book entitled Dreams of
Darkness and gives directions to its whereabouts. Cardiff then requests that the
listener turns to page 88 and upon doing so Cardiff begins to recite this page
aloud.
In Missing Voice, the listener cannot make claims to be the director of the film
inferred through Cardiff’s work for they have no control over the content of the
narrative, its characters or the lead events, in fact they have only limited control
over how this narrative is played out over time and space. Hence, in Missing Voice
it is not the listener who directs but Cardiff. However, there is an additional role
that the listener fulfils; The listener also provides the image to which Cardiff’s
soundtrack is the accompaniment. The listener does this through his or her own
looking and imagining. Hence, in Missing Voice the listeners also serves as the
cameraman or cinematographer.
Cardiff directs the listener’s gaze in two key ways: firstly, Cardiff continually
makes reference throughout her speech to things that can be seen in the external
environment (‘there should be a metal railing and a brown building to your left’,
MV Audio) or things that were visible at the time of Cardiff’s production (‘there
is a lime green car parked across the street’, MV Audio). This prompts listeners
to search for these things, repeatedly relocating and refocusing their gaze; and
secondly, the soundtrack is filled with aural events that Cardiff has recorded
binaurally at a previous time, along the same route that the listener now follows.
These recorded events may appear to have a place within the ‘here and now’,
because they conform with the listener’s perspective and with the dimensions
of the location they are heard within. Within Missing Voice, examples of these
events include dogs barking, church bells, music playing from inside shops, cars
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passing and strangers conversing. Each event I list may appear to occur at a
different location in the listener’s auditory field, for example, some behind, to the
left or above. Equally so, they may occur over a range of distances, some near
and some far. Hence, the listener’s pursuit to certify the events he or she hears, a
clarification entrusted to the sense of sight (Connor, 2008), brings his or her eyes
across all depths and along all surfaces.
4.5 Conclusion
Cardiff’s audio walks are private listening experiences that are initiated in public
space. Whereas the focus of an installation work, such as those created by Bill
Fontana or Max Neuhaus, is the dynamic of the site into which the artist projected
sounds, Cardiff’s focus is upon how the individual thinks, acts and feels within the
selected site. Furthermore, in reference to Fontana, Fontana ‘sites’ were always
single places such as the Arc de Triomphe or the Millennium Bridge, whilst in
Missing Voice Cardiff’s ‘site’ is the East End of London, which is far greater
in scale, encompassing a multitude of spaces and places. In keeping with this,
Cardiff also exaggerates the scale of her discussion; in Missing Voice she explores
the individual’s responses to, and way-of-being in, ‘the city’ in its entirety, as an
abstract entity. This is the perspective that many works of literature and film
adopt. These works enlist a number of allegoric figures and forms that embody
certain urban sentiments and ideals (e.g. the femme fatale and the detective).
Cardiff’s Missing Voice is likewise full of this same symbolism. The difference is
that Cardiff returns these figures and forms to the kinds of places they are said
to have derived through layering her narrative onto a real, physical portion of the
city.
Cardiff’s audio walks utilise the personal stereo, a device that has assumed
a specific role in everyday society. Through analysis of Michael Bull’s literature,
I have suggested that there is a very common tendency for the personal stereo
to abstract listeners from their real surroundings. This is in part due to the
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barrier between the listener and the external environment, which headphones
naturally instate, but is additionally due to the fact that the materials that are
listened to through these headphones most generally refer to something other
than what is present in, or associated with, the listener’s location. Hence, it is
near impossible for listeners to attend to both the sounds of their stereos and
the external environment at the same time, for they refer to different things.
What Cardiff does is present sound materials through the personal stereo that
DO refer to what is present within the external environment, and DO agree with
the composition and constitution of this environment. In these circumstances it
is far more likely that listeners will turn their attention onto their surroundings,
which is Cardiff’s hope.
In this chapter I have also introduced a second set of personal stereo users who
initiate for themselves what Cardiff aims to do through her composition; these
listeners select materials that they feel prompt and support an aestheticization
of the external environment, which for these listeners is, as Bull comments, very
often cinematic in nature. I have suggested that Cardiff takes this notion of the
world appearing as though a film when accompanied by music, one step further
by putting into her composition many more direct references to cinema (e.g. the
inclusion of sound snippets from films) and calling upon many more of cinema’s
devices (e.g. spoken narration etc.). By doing so, Cardiff is able to create a very
engaging, compelling drama from what may seem to many as a mundane set of
circumstances.
Another important idea that my discussion of the personal stereo raised is how
certain sounds/musical materials can recall certain memories and also feed the
imagination; this is also what Cardiff’s Missing Voice can do. However, Cardiff
does not wish for the images called to mind by her composition to remain in the
mind, as occurs for Bull’s personal stereo listeners, but rather be projected out
into the listener’s surroundings, which he or she is to remain attentive to through-
out his or her dreaming. In Missing Voice, Cardiff also explores involuntary mem-
ories, demonstrating that the things, events and sensations we encounter in our
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daily lives can act as triggers for personal memories. Again this indicates to lis-
teners that there is much to be gained by attending to the everyday environment
and much that the personal stereo can do in supporting such explorations.
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Chapter 5
Two Site-Specific Sound

Installations
In this chapter I will discuss two of my own works, both of which I would term
site-specific sound installations. This is because, like the work of Neuhaus and
Fontana (section 2.1.1), both were designed to be appropriate for the physicality
of the sites they are housed within as well as sympathise with the social and
cultural context of this site. One of these works, Resounding Rivers (2010), I
would also classify as a public artwork because each of the work’s six installations
were situated upon the exterior of a building and projected sound out into the
street, thereby addressing the broadest possible public. Furthermore, Resounding
Rivers explored local history and therefore I would hope that the work would
also be deemed ‘in the public interest’1 . The second work, Present Place (2008)
was installed within a gallery rather than a public space and therefore cannot
make claims to being a public artwork. However, this work did provide a view
on to public space and also guided the audience’s attention on to this location.
1
Miwon Kwon suggests there are three types of public art: ‘art-in-public-place’, ‘art-as-public-
place’ and ‘art-in-public-interest’ (Kwon, 2004, p.60); Resounding Rivers can be shown to satisfy
each of these types.
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5. Two Site-Specific Sound Installations
What follows is a brief overview of these two projects.
Present Place began with a study of the gallery that played host to the
work. The gallery is a former shop with a large storefront window that gives a
view onto a busy city centre street. The relationship between the space and the
street became the focus of both the study and the subsequent installation. The
outcome of the study was a definition of the gallery in terms of what kind of
place it is. This was achieved by analysing the gallery’s three contexts: the aural,
visual and social. To aid this analysis periods of observation were conducted and
audiovisual recordings were made. The installation comprised of two components:
a presentation of the findings of the study and a four-channel composition of field
recordings captured in the space. The composition was projected into the gallery
via four speakers that surrounded the audience who sat within a small auditorium
(i.e. a dedicated seating area for an audience), which I constructed at the centre of
the gallery; this auditorium faced the gallery window. I configured the installation
in reference to cinema, suggesting the window to be the cinema screen and the
gallery’s sound field (which comprises both of the events of my composition and
real events) to be the cinematic soundtrack. This configuration, the composition
and the exhibited materials were expected to incite, support and enhance the
audience’s own act of observation that was to match, or even surpass, that of my
own study.
Resounding Rivers comprised six sound installations that were situated at

six locations across Belfast city centre at points upon the past course of one of
Belfast’s three rivers: two of these rivers no longer flow over land and the third
was previously much wider. This work sought to present the history of the rivers,
how they have contributed to Belfast’s growth, as well as posit this history as a
critique of present urban development. Each installation occupied a venue where
art is not ordinarily expected and each installation projected sound directly into
the street. Hence the work addressed not just the art-going public but the widest
possible public, who I expected would apprehend and respond to the work in a
myriad of ways.
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In the discussion that follows, I will firstly provide a detailed account of

Present Place. I will describe where it was located, who commissioned the work,
the various stages of my study, the design of the subsequent installation and my
method of construction. I will then go on to describe the content of the sound
composition that was projected into the space and suggest how this projection
may have impacted upon the audience’s act of observation. In support of my
claims I will reference some of the feedback I received from visitors to the space.
Following my discussion of Present Place I will account Resounding Rivers, de-
scribing the commission process, my proposal, my method of construction and the
structure of the exhibited work. Following on from this, I will suggest a number
of ways of approaching and engaging with Resounding Rivers. In my discussion I
will reference Filipa Matos Wunderlich’s three types of pedestrian (the purposive,
discursive and conceptual walker) as well as all the feedback I received from my
audience.
5.1 Present Place
5.1.1 The Gallery Commission
Present Place was exhibited at the PS2 gallery from the 26th of June until the
5th of July, 2008. It was the first in a series of works commissioned by the gallery
under the heading of Sounding out Space. The subject for each work within this
series was to be the gallery space itself, and each work was to be undertaken
by an artist or practitioner from a different discipline (e.g. visual artists, musi-
cians, architects and dancers). Each invited participant was expected to conduct
a study of the space through utilisation of his or her own tools, methods and un-
derstanding. Ultimately, all studies were to conclude with a presentation of the
findings through means appropriate to the invited practitioner. Each participant
was allocated up to three weeks to conduct their investigation of the space and
to conceive, construct and deliver their exhibition and/or performance.
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PS2 gallery is not the isolated, featureless, white-cube that one may expect but
rather a place with a particular character and history. The gallery also has a very
definite position in, and relationship with, the community and geography that
surrounds it. The gallery is a former shop in a Victorian terrace property that is
located at the very heart of Belfast. The most prominent feature of the gallery is a
large storefront window that fills the breadth of one wall, bringing into the gallery
the sights and sounds of a busy city-centre street that lies outside of it (figure
5.1). Housed within the same building as the gallery is a number of independent
retailers and businesses. The region of the city surrounding the gallery is famed
for its art venues, eateries, public houses, early history and architecture.
5.1.2 Project Proposal
In response to the heading ‘Sounding out Space’ I proposed to conduct a survey of

the gallery that would pay particular attention to its soundscape. However, rather
than being an act of quantification as one may expect of a sounding2 , I proposed
to undertake a qualitative analysis of the gallery through an act of observation,
by which I mean an act of looking, listening and reporting. I proposed that the
outcome of the study would be a description of the gallery in terms of place rather
than space. In other words, I proposed to provide a subjective, embodied account
of the gallery rather than an objective or rational representation3 .
I proposed that my analysis would follow a similar format to the analysis

that Max Neuhaus carried out prior to the conception of his sound installations.
As outlined in section 3.1.1, Neuhaus sought to fully understand the context
into which each installation was placed prior to making any decisions as to the
2
I note that Oxford Dictionaries Online defines ‘sounding’ to be ‘the action of measuring the
depth of a body of water’ as well as ‘information or evidence ascertained as a preliminary step
before taking action’. My study was to be in keeping with the latter definition.
3
Place is a concept that numerous phenomenological geographers have contributed to (see
section 1.4.1), these thinkers define place to be ‘experiential space’ (Tuan, 1977, p.136) or a
‘centre of felt value’ (Tuan, 1977, p.4).
119
concept, form or content of each work. Furthermore, he believed this could only
be done in situ through examination. Neuhaus separated his examination of each
site down into three parts, focusing upon three sub-contexts: the sound context,
visual context and social context (Neuhaus, 1992a, p.1). I proposed to conduct an
investigation of the gallery space under these same three headings (i.e the sound,
visual and social context) and, just like Neuhaus, I proposed that my findings go
on to inform the form and content of a sound installation that was to be conceived
on site, post exploration.
What follows is a list of questions for each of my three proposed analyses.

Although many of these questions could be applied to any site, the list as a
whole is specifically tailored to the gallery. This is because, prior to beginning
my residency, I was already familiar enough with the space to know where in
the city it was, that its window and view were dominant features, and that I
was to be the only ‘event maker’ in the space. Furthermore, I foresaw that my
description of the gallery’s social context would be influenced by what I already
knew of the city of Belfast, theories of the urban dweller such as that provided
by Simmel (section 4.3.1) and also my findings regarding the gallery’s other two
contexts (i.e. visual and aural).
The questions that I raise regarding the sound context are devised with ref-
erence to R. Murray Schafer’s methodology for classifying environmental sounds
(Schafer, 1994, p.148). In particular, when I ask ‘what are the foreground sound
textures’ ? I expect the reply to be in psychoacoustic terms, which corresponds
with a category of Schafer’s own questioning4 . To borrow on example from
Schafer, in psychoacoustic terms flute music could be described as an ‘active
patterned sound of shifting pitch.. pure tones.. moderately loud’ (ibid.).
Aural context: What are the foreground sound textures? What are the back-
ground sound textures? What are the perceived origins of these sounds (e.g. sound
4
Schafer’s method for sound classification involves analysis of the sound under five headings:
sample sound, acoustics, psychoacoustics, semantics and aesthetics (see section 2.3.1).
120
of car engine)? How do these sounds play out over space and time? What is the
effect of the gallery space upon this sound? How does the content of the sound
space change over extended periods of time (e.g. hours, days or weeks)?
Visual context: What are the dimensions of the gallery space? Of what does
the space comprise (i.e. fixtures, fittings, materials and furniture)? What other
spaces can be seen from within the gallery? In what way does the gallery limit
the view to these spaces? Of what do these additional spaces comprise? What
events can be seen in these spaces? Does the visual context change over periods
of time (e.g. hours, days or weeks)?
Social context: Who is to be the audience to the work? What is the wider
geographic setting of the gallery? What types of activities are carried out in the
other spaces seen and heard? What types of individual carry out these activities?
What might the motivation be behind these activities? What might the actor’s
attitude and emotional state be throughout these activities?
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Figure 5.1: The PS2 Gallery window - the street visible is located in central
Belfast, UK in the city’s historic Cathedral Quarter.
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5.2 Study of Gallery Space
I adopted two strategies for my aural and visual analysis of the space: (1) Real-
time observation in which I would sit in the gallery and look and listen, and
note down my responses; and (2) the recording of audio and video in the space
followed by a written reflection upon these recordings. By utilising recordings
within my investigation, I was able to repeatedly study events, slow them down,
skim through them and focus upon certain aspects of them. Furthermore, I could
compare events to one and other and study the aural and the visual components
of these events in isolation of each other, all of which I could not do through
real-time observation alone.
Each audio recording consisted of four channels fed by two microphones that
I had positioned at the front of the space. These two microphones either faced
towards the gallery window or were stuck on it5 . A stereo microphone was also
positioned at the rear of the space, raised up towards the ceiling (figure 5.2). The
majority of the recordings I made did not capture anything specific. I did not
initiate any of the sound and I did not establish in advance what I would like to
capture. I simply set the apparatus to record and let it run for a certain period of
time. The recording sessions were conducted at different times of day and night
and on different days of the week. The length of the recordings varied, although
on the whole they were around 10 -20 minutes long. By the end of my residency,
I had complied an eight-hour long catalogue of audio recordings.
The video recordings framed the front window. Each video recording was
paired with an audio recording. I did not make as many video recordings as I did
audio recordings. On the whole there were ten video recordings taken and these
5
For approximately half of the recordings the front two microphones were large diaphragm
condenser microphones (AKG 414) attached to stands that leaned out towards the front window.
In the remaining recordings I utilised very small condenser microphones that could be stuck onto
the window (DPA SMK4061). The latter provided a clearer sense of the aural activities outside
and picked up the vibrations happening across the two windowpanes more readily.
123
were on average 12 minutes long. Each of these videos were captured at different
times of day and on differing days of the week.
Quite early on in my residency I decided that in addition to analysing the

gallery’s audio and visual contexts independent of each other, I would also like to
explore the interplay between aural and visual phenomena so as to understand
what one revealed that the other did not, or how one may confirm or contradict
the other. I decided that this was of importance and of relevance because the
gallery placed a number of restrictions upon what I could see (for instance by
giving me only a limited view of the street) yet could not prevent sound’s entry
into the space with quite the same vigour. Hence, in many respects, the aural
image was far more comprehensive than the visual image. In order to gain an
understanding of the visual and aural interplay, I spent a great deal of time
studying my video recordings and accompanying audio.
For each of the ten video recordings I made two graphical annotations, one
for just the audio and one for the video. I undertook each notation in isolation
of the other, i.e. I listened to the audio first without watching the video then
watched the video without the audio. An example of my analysis can be found
within the appendix (appendix A). A section of one of the audio transcriptions
became a frieze upon the back wall of the gallery in the final installation (visible
in figure 5.3). I derived the method for this analysis from Michel Chion’s masking
method, which he posits as a means to expose the specific contribution of the
soundtrack within cinema, compared to the image (Chion, 1994, p.187). Chion
comments that through the masking method two ‘deceptively simple’ questions
are addressed: ‘What do I see of what I hear... What do I hear of what I see?’
(Chion, 1994, p.192). I sought to address similar questions through my study of
the video documents I had collected.
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Figure 5.2: Images depicting the recording phase of my study of the

gallery space - panel 1 : two condenser microphones orientated towards the gallery
window; panel 2 : a small lavalier style microphone placed onto the gallery window;
panel 3 : stereo microphone at the rear of gallery raised up towards the ceiling.
125
5.2.1 The Results of the Study
In what follows I will provide a short summary of each of the three divisions
of context that I investigated, i.e. the sound context, the visual context and
the social context. Provided here are only the key points that have the most
bearing upon the installation I subsequently designed. I have arrived at each
description having reflected upon the annotations I produced for my audio and
video recordings, through subsequent reviews of these documents and through
real-time observation. Throughout this process I have continually referred back to
the questions I posed in the proposal. Following my outline of the three contexts,
I will also provide an overview of my findings regarding the interplay between
aural and visual phenomena within the gallery from the observer’s perspective.
Again, the points I raise in this discussion are those that had the greatest bearing
upon the installation I subsequently designed.
5.2.2 The Aural Context
The majority of sound present in the space bleeds into it from the street outside.
The glass in the front window is very thin and as a result the sound of the street
is unusually loud. This sound is further exaggerated by the space itself, which in
being all but empty readily reverberates and resonates. In addition to the street,
sound from the office space above the gallery enters through the ceiling and from
the entrance hall, which is to the side of the gallery through one of the walls.
There is little-to-no sound that can be said to originate in the gallery itself other
than that of my own activities and the occasional call to the gallery’s phone.
Regarding the temporal character of the space, the sound in the gallery fluc-
tuates in accordance with the working day and working week. During rush hour
there was a lot of traffic noise on the street and hence also within the space.
Throughout the day, Monday to Friday, there was more activity in the inter-
nal spaces that surround the gallery (e.g. the office above) and also construction
noise could be heard outside, in the immediate vicinity. The sound levels usually
126
dipped at night except on the weekend when revellers on their way to the local
bars and eateries would increase the volume of activity.
The most frequent event heard in the space was that of automotive traffic
passing by the space. In addition, the fleeting conversations of passing pedestrians
were prevalent, so too were the squawks of seagulls. The frequency of traffic could
often rise to a level where the sound of each passing car would be picked up by
the next producing a sustained hiss or hum within the gallery as the engine sound
resounded throughout. Furthermore, when vehicles waited in front of the space
with their engines still running, the glass of the front window could be heard to
vibrate quite rigorously. The sound of large vehicles passing the space could often
be quite distressing as they proceeded with such force that they made the space
shudder.
5.2.3 The Visual Context
The gallery is around the size of a moderately proportioned living room; the floor
is covered by grey vinyl and the walls are painted white (figure 5.2). Facing the
front window, to the right of the space is a door and beneath it on the floor is
a modern digital telephone. On commencing my residency the telephone was the
only object in the space. A window fills the length of one wall (figure 5.1). Through
the window a street can be seen that stretches beyond the gallery, running parallel
to it, both left and right. The surface of the street cannot be seen because the
gallery’s window stops short of the floor. Out in the street, between the gallery’s
two windowpanes is a parking ticket machine. Three terrace properties can be
seen across the street: one is a café, one an estate agent, and the final one is
unmarked.
The most common act witnessed through the windows was that of vehicles
driving past the space or queuing at traffic lights near to the gallery. Vehicles being
parked and loaded (or unloaded) were also quite regular occurrences. The volume
of traffic would alter throughout the day and throughout the week to the same
127
patterning as I described for the audio. Passing pedestrians were probably the
second most frequent act; some of these pedestrians would exit through an alley
between the café and the estate agents. A good number of these pedestrians would
stare into the gallery space on passing. Nighttime obviously made a difference to
the amount of light on the street and thus the amount of what could be seen.
5.2.4 The Social Context
The gallery is situated within a portion of the city referred to as the Cathedral
Quarter. In this district there are many bars, restaurants and hotels as well as
small, independent businesses. The Cathedral Quarter is of historical importance
because it incorporates many of Belfast’s oldest streets and buildings. A great
deal of this region is pedestrianised, comprising of cobbled streets and alleyways.
The street to which the gallery has a view leads down towards the city centre and
up towards Ulster University and the city’s ring roads. I expected the audience
to my work to have been both those whom regularly frequent the city’s galleries
(a great number of which are in the same district) and also those drawn into the
space on passing, intrigued by what they see through the gallery window.
The two primary activities conducted within view and earshot of the gallery
both occur out on the street: driving and walking. I assume that for the majority
of individuals the expectation for either act is the arrival at a particular destina-
tion that is not in the vicinity of the gallery. Hence, I assume that the individual’s
attention is probably not upon the things and events immediately around them,
which includes the gallery and the street. I arrive at this conclusion because I
understand that the driver and the walker inhabit an everyday space, the street,
and therefore probably succumb to the ‘blasé attitude’ (section 4.3.1) or what
phenomenologist’s might call the ‘natural attitude’6 in which the external envi-
6
Phenomenological geographer, David Seamon defines the natural attitude as ‘the unques-
tioned acceptance of the things and experiences of daily living’ (Seamon, 1979, p.12). See section
1.4.1 for a more thorough discussion.
128
ronment is ‘habitually’7 perceived. Speaking specifically of the pedestrian, the

type of walker I describe here is akin to Filipa Matos Wunderlich’s ‘purposive
walker’ (Wunderlich, 2008). She defines purposive walking as a ‘necessary ac-
tivity performed while aiming for a destination’. The purposive walker ‘rush[es]
through’ a locality in a ‘rather anxious mode’ in which they long for and think
towards their destination rather then attending to the present (ibid.).
5.2.5 The Results of the Masking Method
The following is a summary of what I perceived the interplay between sight and
sound to be within the gallery from the point of view of an observer at the
centre of the space. I note that a more generalised discussion of the symbiotic
relationship between aural and visual sense perception can be found within the
literature of Steven Connor in articles such as ‘Ear Room’ (Connor, 2008) and
‘Sounding Out Film’ (Connor, 2000). This topic is also addressed by Don Ihde
in his text Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of Sound (Ihde, 1976). I will
reference some of their discussion within my own through use of footnotes.
There are many events audible in the space that cannot be seen (e.g. the office
staff working above the space). There are also events that begin solely aurally but
that subsequently come into view. The most common of these events is passing
traffic, which can be heard in advance of being seen because the front window
limits the amount of the road on view. There were also events that I could hear
but not see simply because of my own orientation or because my attention was
elsewhere within my field of vision8 . In these two instances, I am able to hear
the event even though I do not see it because am able to perceive sounds coming
7
‘Habituality’ is a term used by Seamon, who defines it to be ‘the tendency of the person
to take his everyday world for granted and notice little that is new or different’ (Seamon, 1979,
p.118).
8
Ihde would refer to this as the ‘focus-fringe’ ratio in which certain events are perceived but
not consciously attended to whilst others are (Ihde, 1976, p.74).
129
from all directions and because I am not able to limit what I hear quite as easily
as I may limit what I see9 . It is worth noting that these out-of-sight sounds may
gain my attention and thus I may move or refocus my gaze so as to meet them.
In contrast to sounds whose sources cannot be seen, there is a plethora of

things to be seen that appear to make no sound. Things such as buildings, street
furniture or stationary cars have absolutely no presence within the aural field
yet they are of course perpetually visible; this is because sound needs action.
Likewise, events that are visible may be too slight (i.e. it is lacking in force, mass
or friction) or too distant to produce audible sound. For example, pedestrians seen
walking on the opposite side of the street from the gallery were often inaudible
and thus had no presence within my aural transcriptions. Sounds may also be
masked or merge with other sounds and in the process lose their own distinction,
meaning that the events to which they pertain go by unnoticed within an aural
appraisal.
Within a number of my audio annotations of the video recordings I note that

on occasion I failed to correctly judge the direction of passing traffic10 . This
may be because the stereo profile provided by my recordings was not consistent
with reality but may also be due to three further factors: First, the speed of
particular vehicles may have been too quick to judge aurally11 ; second, the sound
of the passing vehicle may have appeared to have merged with that of another
approaching from the opposite direction and in doing so the directionality of
either vehicle would have been effectively cancelled out; and third, the sound of
the vehicle may have reflected within the gallery and by doing so its directionality
may have been blurred12 .
9
This is a point raised by Connor through his observation that there are no ‘earlids’ to
correspond with our eyelids (Connor, 2000).
10
Connor suggests that in comparison to vision, sound is severally ‘impoverished’ with regard
to dimensional features such as ‘distance, orientation and elevation’ (Connor, 2008); this is
likewise my argument.
11
Connor notes that we are unable to focus our listening with anywhere near the speed that
we can focus our looking (Connor, 2008).
12
Ihde refers to these aural reflections as ‘auditory shadows’ (Ihde, 1976, p.101).
130
5.3 The Installation
Having observed and defined the galleries three key contexts, the second half of
my residency was spent conceiving, designing and delivering a sound installation
that was influenced by, and a presentation of, the findings of my study. As is
probably already evident, for me the most appealing aspect of the gallery was its
relationship with the other spaces adjacent to it. Through its own emptiness, its
framing of the outside world and ability to collect and magnify sound, the gallery
appeared to me as the perfect instrument through which to study the other
spaces that impinged upon it. I decided that my installation would extenuate
these features and in doing so hopefully bring about, and support, the audience’s
own act of observation. There were three main aspects to my installation that
approached these aims: First, the documentation of my own investigation of the
space was mounted and presented within the gallery; second, the installation was
configured in reference to the cinema; and third, a composition of field recordings,
each made in the space, were played back into it.
The graphical annotations I made for each of the ten video recordings were
available within the gallery upon two clipboards, one holding the audio annotation
and the other holding the visual annotation. Additionally, in the final installation
a section of one of the audio transcriptions became a frieze upon the back wall of
the gallery (visible in figure 5.3). These materials served as advertisements for the
act of observation as well as demonstrated the kinds of activities and phenomena
the audience might look or listen out for.
Regarding the arrangement of the installation, I placed three long benches

in the centre of the gallery facing towards the front window. In each corner of
the room I positioned a speaker; the front two speakers were placed beneath the
gallery’s window and the rear two speakers were placed upon speaker brackets.
Hence, in cinematic terms, the benches formed an auditorium that faced a screen,
i.e. the front window, and the audience was enveloped by a surround speaker
setup. Through the ‘screen’ the audience could observe the street’s present events
131
whilst hear, and listen to, both the sounds of the present time as well as speaker-
projected sounds. I configured the installation in reference to the cinema because
I understood this type of place to be conducive to the act of watching and listen-
ing. Furthermore, I assumed that the majority of the audience, if not all, would
be familiar with the cinema and therefore readily comprehend how they should
engage with the installation. I also utilised the cinematic setup so as to guaran-
tee that my audience would position themselves at the centre of the gallery and
therefore be at the optimum distance from each of the four speakers (figure 5.3).
The composition played into the gallery was a fifty minute loop. The end of
this composition seamlessly blended back into the beginning. The composition
comprised primarily of samples taken from the aforementioned eight hours of
recordings made for my initial study. Each of these recordings comprised of four
channels: two channels fed by microphones that were positioned at the front of
the space, and two fed by a stereo microphone raised at the rear of the space. This
arrangement was comparable to the installation’s speaker arrangement. Hence,
recorded events could enter into and move across the gallery similar to how they
had done in actuality.
I anticipated that the audience would either regard the sounds of the com-
position as being distinct from the real sounds present in the gallery or as be-
ing indistinguishable from these sounds. If the sounds of the composition stood
distinct, then I anticipated that the audience would regard the composition as
being an additional material documenting my study of the space, containing each
of the noteworthy sound occurrences that I had observed over the course of my
residency.
5.4 The Role of the Composition
The composition provided a fifty-minute abridged version of the gallery’s sound

space over a three-week period. Sound events pertaining to each of the points
I raised in my definition of the gallery’s sound context were present within the
132
composition. For example, I included the gallery’s most frequent sound event, the
sound of traffic, which dominated the composition in much the same way as I had
observed it to do in reality. Additionally, obtruding sounds from the spaces above
and to the sides of the gallery were included as well as samples of events that I
deemed of interest or to be particular to the space (e.g. the rattling window as
large vehicles passed). Selections from recordings made at opposing times were
also included (e.g. mid-week rush hour, Saturday night and sunrise).
In the final composition accompanying the samples I took from the recordings
I made for my study were a number of new recordings of events that I had
staged in and around the space. For example, I performed and recorded some
very simple actions such as walking around the space, going in and out of the
space and dropping my keys. In addition, there was a stark, candid narrative
running through the composition that described how I envisaged the gallery could
have been or had been inhabited. The reason for including these elements was
that although I had ascertained a great deal of recordings that documented the
sounds that arrived into the space from outside of it, I wanted to include some
sounds that occurred inside and since I was the only occupant it fell to me to
create this sound. Each internal event was expected to draw the audience’s eye
across the gallery as well as highlight the sonic properties of the materials, objects
and enclosures on view.
As part of the audience’s act of observation, I believe the composition could

have raised one of two comparisons: (1) a comparison between two or more events
within the composition; and (2) a comparison between a sound event in the
composition and an event occurring in actuality in the space. Regarding the first
comparison, this could have occurred between two or more events juxtaposed
together in time (i.e. one followed the other) or together in space. There were
also events in the composition that were prominent and similar to each other
but not identical, certain aspects of them were deliberately different (e.g. their
location). These too could have been compared, calling memory into play, for
133
these events were spread out over the composition’s fifty minute duration13 .
If listeners compared the events of the composition with real events, then
they would in effect have compared the past to the present. Through this type
of comparison, questions could be posed such as what was here that is no longer
or how do past events differ to those of the present with which they share some
commonality? I note that the composition did not make explicit to the audience at
what time each sample was captured (e.g. a sample from last Tuesday). Instead,
all samples merged to form one continuous whole and therefore represented one
continuous unspecified time in the past. What marked the composition as being
from the past was simply that it was presented to the space through loudspeaker
and that it was clearly an impression ‘of’ the gallery space but one that did not
match the present. However, as I will now go on to show, this distinction between
past and present, recording and reality, was perhaps not clear to all individuals
all of the time.
5.4.1 The Composition’s Effect upon Observation
In this section I will discuss how I believe the content and structure of my com-
position may have impacted the audience’s act of observation. The majority of
the suggestions I make occurred to me at the time of designing the work and are
what drove this design. In the next section I will account some of the feedback
that I received from my audience, which validate a number of the claims that I
make here.
I have identified three key ways that the projected composition could have
impacted upon the audience’s act of observation: (1) The composition contained
13
For example, there are four instances of music within the composition that appear to be
played from a stereo located in four different places/spaces (i.e. a car stereo heard in the street,
a stereo in the corner of the gallery, a stereo above the space and a stereo whose speakers are
those of the installation). The music utilised was always of the same type (i.e. early eighties
punk music).
134
a number of dramatic, prominent and evocative sound events that were capable
of grabbing the audience’s attention and holding their interest; (2) For the com-
position, sounds were projected from four speakers that were positioned around
the audience. Hence, these sounds could appear to commence from many differ-
ent points inside and outside of the space, continually drawing the audience’s
attention over towards a different portion of the gallery; (3) The composition
comprised of many events that were recorded over many hours and condensed
down into a fifty minute duration. Hence, the composition was able to increase
the number of events in the space and decrease the period between these events,
thus speeding up the pace of observation.
In addition to the above, I believe that the act of observation may have been
intensified, or perhaps even subverted, by the composition because some of the
events of this composition either appeared to reinforce real, present events or were
falsely assumed to be real and present themselves. This was quite possible because
the sounds of the composition were all recordings of past events that actually
occurred in the space and were therefore of the same type. Furthermore, recorded
events were returned to a portion of the gallery comparable with where they had
originally been observed14 . Another reason that a recorded event may not have
been recognised to be so, is that the audience may not have scrutinised a sound
thoroughly enough. Alternatively the audience may not have been conversed at
recognising the aspects of the sound that would have revealed it to be false (e.g.
an imperfect spatial image). It may also be the case that the audience had no
reason to question a sound’s authenticity because there was nothing to contradict
14
The four microphones used at the time of recording and the four speakers used as part of the
installation made it possible to return recorded events to different portions of the space. I note
however that this would not have been the exact point from which events originally commenced.
This is because of discrepancies caused by firstly recording and then subsequently re-projecting
these events. That said, most of the recorded sounds, including those that I performed in the
space (e.g. dropping my keys), occurred at the extremities of the space and hence avoided areas
of the space (e.g. the centre within the auditorium I constructed) where they would have been
more obviously inaccurate.
135
this sound’s claims at being real. I note that film sound designers depend upon a
similar set of circumstances; Steven Connor has discussed these at length in his
article ‘Sounding Out Film’ (Connor, 2000), so too has Robert Altman (Altman,
1980).
As an example of the above, if the projected sound was a recording of someone

walking above the space and it appeared to the listener to be in a credible place
with the spatial dynamic anticipated15 then it is quite possible that the listener
would have assumed this sound to be the result of present events because these
events occur above the space, out of the listener’s view and therefore cannot
be contradicted by a visual image. As another example, a projected sound may
have been perceived as being real and was not proven to be otherwise because it
occurred behind the observer and this observer chose not to turn around to see
it. Conversely, if the observer did then turn around to gaze upon the projected
sounds source and consequently saw that it was not present when he or she had
expected it to be so then this could have resulted in a shock for the observer. This
kind of shock is a visceral reaction relating to primitive tendencies of survival.
Such a shock acts to mark the urgent requirement of the individual’s attention
so as to re-stabilise perception and reconfirm that there are no further threats
looming.
Rather than standing distinct, a projected sound event may have been per-
ceived in combination with a present sound event. Thus, the credibility of the
projected event may not have been questioned because the sound appeared to be
in keeping with real events. As a result of this merging, the real event may have
appeared more pronounced or contorted in some way. For example, it was possible
for the sound of a car passing to have commenced within the composition at the
same time as an actual car passed by the space. In this case, the audience may
not have heard the distinction between the real and recorded sound and instead
15
The samples of someone walking above the space were on the whole only played out through
the installation’s two rear speakers because these were raised to the ceiling and away from the
audience and hence best placed to provide an adequate illusion of this event.
136
may have perceived the sound of the real car to be louder than usual or longer
in duration.
5.4.2 Audience Responses to Present Place
Whilst in the midst of my study of the gallery space and whilst constructing my
installation, a number of people visited me. These included a number of my peers
at SARC, my PhD supervisors, two Belfast-based artists, the gallery’s owner and
a handful of individuals who, having seen me from outside, knocked upon the
door of the space because they were interested in learning more about what I
was doing. I played to a number of my visitors some of the recordings that I
had gathered over the course of my residency through the four speakers that
I had setup. Many of these individuals relayed to me how difficult they found
judging whether what they were hearing was a recording or not. In particular,
it was the sound of traffic that generated the most confusion, for the projected
sounds of cars got easily lost amongst those of real cars, which very regularly
passed by the space. Several observers commented upon the sense of surprise
they felt when the cars that they heard approaching the space did not come into
view when expected. This is because what they heard was part of my recordings
and was not occurring then and there like these listeners assumed. One listener
described the experience of listening to the recordings back within the space as
being ‘uncanny’, which I have found to be a rather befitting description16 . As a
further example of the uncanny nature of the composition, I recall that whilst I
16
In the essay ‘The Uncanny’ (Freud, 1919), Sigmund Freud analyses a number of types
of uncanny encounter that he observes to be common in literature as well as everyday life. I
believe that four of these types are evident in Present Place, namely the double, the ghost, the
suspicion that an inanimate being is actually alive and the converse, i.e. what appears animated
is actually not. The double is evident in the sense that the gallery’s soundscape is mimicked
by the composition and the same events are set to repeat again and again, every fifty minutes.
The disembodied sounds of someone walking around and acting in the space, serve as the ghost.
Finally, in Present Place the inanimate being that is believed to be alive is every sound that the
audience hears and assumes to be linked to present events. The animate being, that is found
to be otherwise, is every sound that is believed to be real but subsequently rejected because it
does do not comply with sight or otherwise.
137
was setting up the installation with the help of the gallery owner, on more than
one occasion he went to answer the galleries telephone having heard the sound
of the telephone ringing within my composition.
During the two weeks Present Place was exhibited, a comment book was
made available in the gallery, into which a number of visitors left feedback. The
majority of the responses in this book, rather than commenting on the uncanny
nature of the piece (although some did mention this), focused more upon the
novelty of the situation provided by Present Place. People found sitting in the
space to watch and listen to the events in the street and present in the gallery, a
rather curious act. One individual commented that he had never been quiet for
so long or felt the need to listen so intently. Another said that it was amazing
how vibrant the world appeared when attended to. A final individual commented
upon how she was unsure at first what was expected of her but slowly, without
questioning herself, became very involved in the activities that she could see
and hear from within the space. This individual concluded by saying that upon
realising that she was surveilling the actions of others she felt rather ‘weird’. Two
contributors remarked upon how subtle the work was, suggesting that it was only
after a period of engagement did they realise there was a composition of sounds
being played within the space.
138
Figure 5.3: View to and from the Present Place installation auditorium -
within the final exhibit a small auditorium was constructed, which consisted of three
long benches at the centre of the gallery that faced the gallery’s window.
139
5.5 Resounding Rivers
5.5.1 The Commission
Resounding Rivers was a public artwork comprising of six sound installations at

six different locations across Belfast city centre. The piece opened on the 6th May
and closed on the 5th June 2010. PLACE Built Environment Centre, Belfast and
Belfast City Council funded the work. The project was conceived in response to
an invitation from PLACE to devise a work that would satisfy two requisites:
firstly, PLACE requested that Ruairı́ Ó Baoill be an advisor to the proposed
project. Ruairı́ is a local archaeologist who at that time of my commission was
working towards the completion of a book upon the hidden history of Belfast for
Belfast City Council. Ruairı́ also delivers alternative history tours in association
with PLACE. Belfast City Council set the second requisite; they had given to
PLACE funding for an artwork that was to address the theme ‘Mapping the
City’. This work would be expected to provide an alternative map of Belfast or a
new annotation of the maps of present and in doing, provide a different reading
of the city, and initiate an interest in Belfast’s lesser explored quarters.
In addition to the above, at the time of my proposal PLACE was involved

in opposing the commissioning process of public art in the city of Belfast. In
particular, PLACE was seeking to prevent the construction of a planned public
sculpture work entitled The Magic Jug 17 . As a defence against this work, PLACE
had organised a number of public discussions upon the subject of public art
in the city. Through these meetings PLACE identified that people in Belfast
were unhappy with the quality of recently commissioned public artworks. The
17
Details of the jug and its subsequent withdrawal can be found on the BBC news
site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11158254). PLACE’s minutes from
the public discussion that they held entitled ‘Smash or Hug the Magic Jug’ can be
found on their website (http://www.place.uk.net/en/exhibitions-events/2009/03/07/
place-events/smash-or-hug-the-magic-jug/).
140
consensus was that these were sculpturally unimaginative, poorly placed and
related only superficially to Belfast’s history and culture.
PLACE’s suggestion to the council was for the involvement of local art insti-
tutes in the commissioning process and also suggested that future public works
should be temporary rather than permanent. In comparison to permanent works,
PLACE believed that temporary works could be more experimental and more
challenging because these works would be less of a political risk and thus require
less bureaucratic attention or control. PLACE hoped that the work I was to pro-
pose would serve as an example of the kind of temporary public artwork that
they envisaged.
5.5.2 Proposed Concept
Having conversed with Ruairı́ Ó Baoill, I proposed that the concept of Resounding
Rivers follow on from my previous work Blackstaff is Belfast 18 . In the latter work
I sought to bring attention to the Blackstaff River. This river once flowed above
ground through central Belfast but was in the late 1800s buried beneath the
city and constricted to piping. Ruairı́ relayed to me that there was a second
buried river, the Farset, which ran through the centre of the city, and that the
Lagan River, which is still prominent in the city, was once much wider. Ruairı́
also spoke of the importance of these three rivers to Belfast’s growth: they had
provided defence and means of transportation (aiding trade) as well as food and
power. Unfortunately, over time, the rivers became severely polluted and as the
city expanded, and attitudes changed, the rivers fell out of favour. The rivers were
deemed to be a hindrance to urban growth, preventing the systematic, grid-like
order that city officials desired. Hence, the rivers were increasingly compromised
and ultimately removed.
18
Blackstaff is Belfast was a mobile sound work. I will explore it in more detail in the next
chapter alongside my other mobile sound works.
141
Conceptually I found the rivers of interest because the issues surrounding

their demise correspond with those of present day Belfast. Resounding Rivers
highlights the rapid changes that occurred to the topology of Belfast over a two
hundred and fifty year period of growth and development, particularly over the
course of the industrial revolution. Belfast is presently under going a new spell of
development and redevelopment that is spurred on by record levels of investment,
which is in part due to the city no longer being a zone of contestation.
Through highlighting the history of Belfast’s lost waterways I sought to pose

a number of questions in relation to present day development - if the rivers, and
more broadly nature, needed to regress for our progress in those early periods of
urban development, what in this present period of progression is being debased?
Are those things that are to be reduced or eradicated important to us? Should
they be kept in place, rejuvenated or at least recognised and recorded? And, if
the present consensus is that those rivers of the past are of importance, might
there be things that we, in the present, have overlooked, marginalised or actively
eradicated that those in future will mourn for?
5.5.3 Installation Proposal
Through study of archaic maps of Belfast dating back to the first known map
of 1660, I was able to trace the past course of each of the three rivers as well
as understand how their course had altered over the last four hundred years due
to human intervention. Furthermore, through speaking with Ruairı́ and turning
to a number of books that he had recommended, I was able to unearth how the
rivers had been used in the past and where this use could be attributed (e.g. the
Blackstaff River used to power the paper mill that is near to Ormeau Avenue).
In reference to these findings, I then approached local shops, bars and recreation
centres with the prospect of hosting a sound installation. The venues that I had
selected were each situated upon, or very near to, the past course of one of the
three rivers and near to particular features and uses of these rivers that I had
142
identified. In total six venues across the city agreed to host an installation. The
relationship between the six venues and the three rivers is summarised in a table
(appendix A) and can also be seen upon the below map (figure 5.4).
I proposed that each installation comprise of a number of speakers that were

to be placed upon or attached to the faćade of each of the chosen venues. Through
this setup a sound composition was to be played into the street surrounding each
venue. The content for each composition was to make reference to the geography
of the missing river at that point. I chose to present my study of the rivers
through the medium of site-specific sound installation in public space because I
wanted my work to reach the maximum possible audience, and not just art goers.
Furthermore, I wanted to position my installations upon the real course of the
rivers so that the connection between the history of the rivers and the present city
could be more readily perceived. I also wanted to draw my audience into engaging
with the city more and incite their own critique of the urban environment then
and there, in situ.
Rather than appearing distinct from, and at odds with, the surrounding en-
vironment, I proposed to nestle the sound of each installation into the existing
soundscape and for this sound to adhere to and reflect some of the character of
the physicality of the site it is projected into. Furthermore, I intended to keep
the visual appearance of each installation to a minimum. This I hoped would
prevent the installations from being readily perceivable as art or as being artifi-
cial. I suggested that each installation be configured in this way for a number of
reasons: Firstly, I understood that each sound projection could not be too loud
or too assertive for this could possibly irritate those that had agreed to host a
work. Secondly, I intended for any intrigue sparked by my work to be handed
over to the environment hosting it. Thirdly, I wanted each installation to be a
discovery for those whom sought them out, rewarding their attentive listening
and exploration.
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Figure 5.4: Section of the print map produced for Resounding Rivers -
Belfast’s three rivers are shown, two of which no longer flow over ground. The dashed
lines show the previous width of the Lagan River. The six numbers indicate the site
of each of the six installations.
144
5.6 The Sound Content
Each installation presented a composition of sound that was created from record-
ings that were captured at various locations across Northern Ireland, where bodies
of water, most generally rivers, were located, and where a geography comparable
to that believed of Belfast’s negated rivers could be found. I chose to collect the re-
quired sound from sources within Northern Ireland not only because the selected
sites provided me with a real, authentic image of the types of environments that
I had envisaged for each installation but also because I wanted to demonstrate
to my audience that there were still areas near to Belfast that have maintained
a positive relationship with the rivers and waterways that flow through them.
All recordings, with the exception of the Waterfront installation19 , were made
through the use of a M-S microphone setup, which provided a two-channel stereo
recording. These recordings mainly focused upon a specific aspect of the scruti-
nised environment but some surrounding ambience was also admitted. The main
reason for choosing to centre my recordings upon one particular feature rather
than a whole soundscape was because I wanted my installations to add new event
to the existing sound field at each site rather than fully replace it.
In addition to the field recordings I also utilised a small amount of record-

ings that I had captured elsewhere. For example, the recordings used within the
PLACE installation were selections from an archive of recordings that I have been
gathering over the last five years. I turned to this catalogue because I could not
find a fountain in Northern Ireland that was either switched on or in a location
that was not seeped in traffic noise. For the Cloth Ear installation I produced a
small amount of the utilised sound within the studio. For example, the creaking
of large wooden ships heard within the final composition was produced from pro-
cessed samples of a creaking floorboard and door hinges. I chose to ascertain this
sound in that manner because the real sound that I had captured was neither of
19
For the Waterfront installation I utilised a hydrophone so as to capture underwater sound.
145
an adequate duration nor of the quality that I desired. Certain elements within
a number of the remaining five compositions were also produced in the studio.
The composition created for each installation was designed so as to seamlessly

loop, producing a continuous body of sound. Each of the loops was between ten
and fifteen minutes in length. Over the course of each loop the opening events
would either evolve or be superseded by new events before ultimately returning
back to the original conditions. All transitions were subtle and occurred over a
prolonged period of time. There were no sharp cuts, obvious fade-in or fade-outs,
or dramatic shifts in content or focus. As an example, the Waterfront Hall compo-
sition comprised of a number of recordings of underwater sound. The composition
begins with a very sparse array of pops and flurries, and then gradually rises in
intensity to culminate with a period of very fast river flow. This palette of sound
then recedes back down to the opening pops and flurries. In total there are about
six separate recordings fused together to create the described trajectory. I chose
to allow the sound of each installation to progress over time because I believed
that in doing so I could hold the audience’s attention for longer. Furthermore,
I believed that by constantly evolving over time the installations would resist
falling irretrievably into the background (like Barry Traux’s ‘flat line sounds’,
section 3.3.4).
5.6.1 Installation Configuration
Resounding Rivers’ six installations were positioned in public space where one
would not usually expect to find art. At the six venues, speakers were placed
upon walls, overhangs, windows and doors and the projected sound was heard
most predominately in the street, in front of the host venue. Furthermore, the
installations were not presented as art: there was no frame, pedestal or stage.
Indeed, every effort had been made to remove any visible traces of the installa-
tions: all equipment had been concealed, including all speakers and wires. Hence,
the projected sound was present in place, in the street, without trace of its true
146
physical source, the speaker, and with little indication of its art or artificial status
(figure 5.5).
The desire was for the projected sound to adhere to its location as though
part of it; to appear to be emitted by, or carried across, a body other than its
speaker. So as to achieve this adherence, each composition was projected at an
amplitude that was equal to that of the surrounding soundscape. Hence, the
projected sound shared the foreground with the sounds around it rather than
obscuring them or standing proud of them. The projected sound also echoed some
of the sonic qualities and rhythms of the hosting soundscape. For example, audible
within the Cloth Ear installation was the sound of sail rigging striking against a
number of boat masts. This complemented the sound of the building work that
was taking place next to the host venue. Both palettes of sound comprised of
discrete, percussive occurrence upon materials such as metal, often exhibiting a
comparable rhythm.
It was my intention to not only nestle the projected sound within the host
soundscape but also anchor the projected sound to the physical, visible environ-
ment in which it was heard. This was achieved by firstly eliminating from sight the
real origin of the simulated sound, the loudspeaker. Secondly, these speakers were
positioned and angled so that the projected sound would pass through, across or
impinge upon the materials and surfaces of the hosting site and in doing so reflect
some of their character and position. In addition, the content of each projected
composition reciprocated qualities of the physical environment and complemented
the geographical context. For example, at BBC Broadcasting House, the sounds
of a heavy-duty, mechanical waterwheel could be heard through the temporary
walling and scaffolding that covered the BBC at that time. This palette of sound
corresponded with the industrial nature of the building work.
The palette of sound utilised for each installation and brief statement regard-
ing the equipment used as well as the configuration of each installation can be
found in a table within the appendix (appendix A).
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Figure 5.5: Image of speakers positioned on rear of Bittles Bar’s cellar

door - transducer speakers were attached to the rear of the venue’s door, hence they
were not visible from the other side. Sound passed through and along the door into
the street.
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5.7 The Various Modes of Apprehension
Within the vicinity of each of the installations, upon the faćade of each of the
host venues, there was a small blue label. This label explained that what could
be heard was a sound installation that marks the past course of one of Belfast’s
rivers. The label also declared that there were five more installations in the city
and a print map available detailing the location of each of these works. The print
map could be collected from any of the six hosting venues and could also be
found within a number of art, tourist and leisure venues throughout Belfast. In
addition to the map and label, there were also three street advertisements in the
city centre that carried an enlarged version of the print map (figure 5.4) and a
video installation that was housed within PLACE. This installation comprised
of an interactive version of the map that was annotated with additional text,
images and sounds20 . The map was also available online and could be accessed
via PLACE’s own website or from the website of a number of news agencies who
had reported upon the work.
With the above supplements to the sound installations in mind, I believe that
there were a number of ways of approaching Resounding Rivers that would entail
a different degree of correspondence with each of the work’s various elements
(i.e. installation, map etc.) as well as a different level of awareness towards these
elements, and towards their being part of an artwork. In summary, I suggest that
a large majority of the audience to my installations would have only passively
engaged with them, which is to say that although this audience may have heard
the sounds of an installation they would not have attended to these sounds and
therefore could not have noticed them to be artificial or part of an artwork.
In contrast, a further portion of my audience may have actively acknowledged
the sound of an installation and perhaps then realised this sound to be part of
an artwork through finding the label at each site. This in turn may have led the
20
Ryan O’Reilly, a local graphic designer produced the map, street advertisements and video
installation under my direction.
149
individual into obtaining the print map and visiting further installations. Another
subset of my audience I suggest would have visited an installation having obtained
the map first, hence would have approached installations already knowing them
to be present.
As a means of exploring these differing approaches further I would like to

discuss my work in relation to Filipa Matos Wunderlich’s three types of pedes-
trian: the ‘purposive’, ‘discursive’ and ‘conceptual’ walker. By referencing these
three types, I can clearly demonstrate how I believe different types of person,
each with their own agenda, attitude and prior knowledge of the work, would
have engaged with Resounding Rivers. The ways of engaging with Resounding
Rivers that I am about to discuss are only possibilities. They are what I think
might have happened based upon how I designed the work and also based upon
how work’s such as those of Max Neuhaus, which have inspired me, are known to
have operated. In section 5.7.4, I will provide some of the feedback I received on
Resounding Rivers, which serves to validate a number of the claims that I shall
make.
In the article ‘Walking and Rhythmicity: Sensing Urban Space’, Filipa Matos
Wunderlich identifies three types of pedestrian: the ‘purposive’, ‘discursive’ and
‘conceptual’ walker. I have already introduced Wunderlich’s purposive walker
within my discussion of Present Place (section 5.2.4 ). To recap, purposive walk-
ing can be defined as a ‘necessary act’ such as going or returning to work or
school. This individual acts in a ‘rather anxious mode’ in which they ‘long for
arrival at a destination’ and thus tend to disengage from the wider environment,
in favour of focusing on their goal (Wunderlich, 2008). Wunderlich comments
that for the discursive walker ‘the journey is more important than the destina-
tion, as are the sites on route’ (ibid.). The discursive walker actively engages with
their environment, as Wunderlich describes: ‘discursive walking is a participatory
mode of walking, during which we half consciously explore the landscape while
sensorially experiencing it passing by’ (ibid.). Wunderlich suggests the flâneur to
be a type of discursive walker. The flâneur is a literary figure who finds delight
150
and pleasure in ambling contentedly and unhurriedly through the city, gazing
upon what they encounter along the way (Gilloch, 1996, p.152). Under the head-
ing of the discursive walker I would hold tourists and casual shoppers because
both groups travel without a specific destination in mind, seeking entertainment
and inspiration from their surroundings. The conceptual walker reflects upon
place, creatively ‘rethinking’ them (Wunderlich, 2008). Artists such as those of
the Surrealist and Situationist movements can be suggested to have partaken in
conceptual walking and to have also devised of methods for initiating this act.
5.7.1 Resounding Rivers as Background Sound
Relating Wunderlich’s three types of pedestrian to Resounding Rivers, of the three

types of walker, it is the purposive walker that would have been least likely to have
noticed and given their attention to the sound of an installation. This is because
the installations were calibrated so as to not stand proud of their environment
and to be only subtly present. This is the opposite to how these installations
would have needed to be if they were to penetrate the purposive walker’s closed
and distracted state. Hence, I expect that purposive walkers would have only
‘preconsciously’21 apprehended the sound of my installations, which is to say
that they would have perceived these sounds but would not have been attentive to
them. Despite being apprehended in this manner, I still believe that the sound of
my installations could have had an effect upon the walker’s experience but would
have done so without the individual knowing it. This is similar to how Max
Neuhaus’ installations operated, which he suggests ‘colour’ perception (section
3.3.2). This is also similar to the effect that music can have upon an audience’s
reception of a film scene22 as well as the effect that music can have in the everyday
when it is played in shops, restaurants and public houses. We call this type of
21
‘Preconscious’ is the term that Seamon uses (Seamon, 1979, p.115).
22
Adorno comments that music acts to ‘colour’ or ‘warm up’ the cinematic image that it
saturates (Adorno, 1990, p.311). This is similarly suggested by Chion in his text Audio-vision:
Sound on Screen (Chion, 1994, p.8).
151
music ‘background music’ (DeNora, 1999) or ‘ambient music’23 . Furthermore, I

believe each of my installations for Resounding Rivers functioned in a similar
manner to how the fountain is known to function.
The fountain adorns public space, brings the sounds of flowing water into this
space, is a sculptural form that can be listened to from multiple standpoints and
can sit at the fringes of awareness where it may colour an experience. Each of
the aspects I mention can also be said to have been aspects of my installations.
Furthermore, the fountain is an artefact with a thousand year history. Over this
period, the fountain has stood as a symbol of wealth, power, peace, vitality, good
health and purity24 , and this symbolism is upheld both visually and aurally.
Moreover, the sound of flowing water is regarded as being relaxing or able to
elicit a meditative state (Symmes and Breisch, 1998, p.102), guiding thinking and
the imagination. It is also capable of masking a lot of other sounds, particular
traffic noise, which is very often regarded as being unpleasant, disconcerting and
stressful. Thus, one can say that the fountain can be employed as a tool with which
to appease the pains of city living, providing an ‘oasis’ (Symmes and Breisch,
1998, p.168) of calm within the city. All of these things can be conveyed or
achieved without the individual actively acknowledging the fountain’s presence,
and are also things that I hope the installations of Resounding Rivers would have
entailed or embodied.
23
Ambient music is a term devised by Brian Eno to denote the music he produced for playback
within specific environments. His album Music for Airports (1978) was his first release of this
kind that, like the title suggests, was intended to be heard within airport terminals. Eno suggests
ambient music provides an ‘atmosphere’, ‘surrounding influence’ or ‘tint’. He also suggests that
this music should ‘accommodate many levels of listening attention’ and be ‘as ignorable as it is
interesting’ (see linear notes to Music for Airports).
24
Each of the symbolic references I suggest are mentioned within Splash and Spectacle
(Symmes and Breisch, 1998).
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5.7.2 The Discursive Reward
I wanted for the sound of each installation to slowly filter into the walker’s con-
sciousness, observed not for being overt and antagonistic but for being subtly dif-
ferent and unusual. By being so, by casually coming into consciousness, I hoped
that the work would incite curiosity rather than distress. This tact, I believe,
would have been too subtle to reach the purposive walker’s consciousness but
strong enough to have enticed Wunderlich’s discursive walker. The discursive
walker is open-minded, inquisitive and attentive to their environment. For these
reasons, these walkers are more likely to have noticed the sound of Resounding
Rivers.
If the sounds of an installation were acknowledged by a passer-by, this does

not then mean that this listener would have also acknowledged these sounds
to be part of an artwork or as being artificial occurrences, as steps had been
taken to minimise the works appearance as such. Instead, the listener may have
simply deemed these sounds to be intriguing, ‘extra-ordinary’ occurrences that
were different to the everyday sounds around them for reasons other than being
incongruous. However, although each installation’s sounds may have suited the
soundscapes they were projected into, in terms of level, patterning, spectrum
and referential content there was something purposely unusual about the sound
of each work, something subtly unbefitting, which I suggest would have been
noticeable only if this sound was adequately attended to and thought upon.
Those individuals who gave time to the sounds that they discovered, and
went on to vigorously survey the location of each work, so as to understand the
origins of these sounds, would have perhaps found the small blue label marking
the presence of each work, which also made clear that there were a further five
installations to visit (figure 5.6). My labelling of the work was deliberately un-
derstated and hidden, but also deliberately included because I wanted to reward
the most curious of individuals. I hoped that for the observer, there would be a
sense of satisfaction in realising that they had noticed something others had not
153
and that their suspicions regarding the plausibility of what they were listening
to were correct.
5.7.3 The Creative and Critical Engager
With reference to Wunderlich’s types, individuals who acquired the Resounding

Rivers map prior to visiting an installation were, in my view, conceptual walkers.
Wunderlich suggests that the conceptual walker initiates a walk with some prior
plan of action and with some prior reasoning for doing so (Wunderlich, 2008).
The plan may include the route the walk is to take and a final destination, but
may equally be a set of rules governing the walk that do not dictate its course or
destination (and indeed may actively go against the defining of either). Regarding
Resounding Rivers, it was the map that provided the prior plan; the walker would
have followed this map along the course of the old rivers, visiting one or all of
the six installations along the way.
As for the reasoning behind such walks, Wunderlich highlights three main
motivations: to inspire and influence ‘creative responses to places’; a means of
‘gathering information’; or to build a critical awareness of the environment (Wun-
derlich, 2008). It was my hope that Resounding Rivers inspired the audience to
both think creatively and critically about the portions of the city that they would
have entered into as they visited installations or followed the work’s map. More-
over, I would hope that their critical reflection would have covered some of the
issues I raised in my proposal (see section 5.5.2).
The principle opportunity for creative engagement that I believe Resound-

ing Rivers presented was the opportunity to re-imagine Belfast’s old rivers back
within the city, aided by the map and installations. Regarding the installations,
rather than putting before the observer a complete image of the respective river,
the observer was only provided with sonic indications and hence it was up to them
to reformulate these sounds into a visual image and to set this image within the
landscape that was visible to them. Furthermore, I believe that there were also
154
broader acts of imagining for the walker to engage in for which there was no
aural support. This imaging would have occurred between installations, as the
participant followed the old course of a river.
This invitation to imagine the rivers once more in the city I believe follows the
Surrealists’ expectations for the practice of ‘errance’. Emma Cocker describes the
goals of an errance as such: ‘to puncture the surface of what was consciously seen
to allow dreamlike revelations to emerge in the cracks and fissures between the
different layers of reality’ (Cocker, 2007). The example of an errance provided by
Cocker is that undertaken by Andre Breton (the most renowned of the Surrealists)
and three cohorts who spent several days wandering aimlessly through the French
town of Blios as a means to encourage ‘the eruption of unconscious images into
consciously perceived space’ (ibid.). Although Resounding Rivers did perhaps not
lead to aimless wandering, it is possible that the audience did engage in a situated
imagining similar to that of Breton and colleagues.
The Surrealist’s errance is similar to the Situationist practice of ‘dérive’, which

can be broadly defined as ‘a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances’
(Debord, 1958b). In a dérive, the participant is expected to walk through an
environment following an agenda that counters routine, which is to say that it
follows a new, unanticipated route that is lead by something other than habit. One
agenda for inciting a dérive was the following of alternative maps. For example,
Guy Debord, the leader of the Situationist movement, devised an alternative map
of Paris that he entitled The Naked City in which he had cut out the various
districts of Paris from another map, rearranged them and drew various arrows
between them to signify some sort of order of approach and also to suggest an
association between these regions25 . Debord’s map is somewhat illegible, leaving
25
David Pinder suggests that the regions and the adjoining arrows of Debord’s map ‘convey
a sense of unity and disunity at the same time: a feeling that the city is tied together, but is
also fractured and in pieces’ (Pinder, 1996). The arrows also represent ‘the inclines.. that link
different unities of atmosphere in Paris’ (Pinder, 1996) and ‘axes of passage’ (ibid).
155
it open to interpretation and in doing so leading those that try and follow it along
a path very different to Debord’s own and very different to anyone else’s.
Another example Debord suggests in order to insight a dérive is to follow

a map of another place. Debord gives the specific example of a friend whom
wandered through the Harz region of Germany whilst following a map of London
(Debord, 1955). I believe this to be similar to what Resounding Rivers may have
initiated, except my work provided a map not of another city but of the same
city from another time. Upon the map Belfast’s old rivers were shown to cut
across and weave around many of Belfast’s present streets. If an individual had
followed a river’s previous course, they would have followed a route that was very
different to that suggested by the street patterning of today and a route that I
imagine they would not ordinary take, which leads to places that they would not
ordinarily visit. The expectation for the Situationist’s derive was the ‘revealing
or unveiling [of] previously hidden aspects’ of the city (Pinder, 1996) bringing the
participant to a new appreciation of the city and a different way of being within
it. This was similarly my expectation for Resounding Rivers and the journey it
may have initiated.
5.7.4 Feedback Received for Resounding Rivers
I took an average of two days per site to install each installation. Much of this time
was spent tweaking the sound delivered into each site (e.g. setting equalisation
levels). To do this I set each of my compositions to play on loop and I would
go back and forth between the location of the works mechanics (from where I
could edit the composition) and the region upon each venue where I had placed
speakers. It is at this time that I observed how people reacted to my installations.
For the Waterfront Hall installation I was working from the venues second level
at a point directly above the work’s speakers that were stuck onto the venue’s
glass front. From this position I could clearly see people passing by the work. As
I had anticipated, the majority of people walking past the installation did not
156
acknowledge it’s presence. However, a good number of passers-by did appear to

notice the installation. Many of these individuals looked rather surprised by the
sounds they were hearing and turned quizzically towards the venue’s window.
Some of these individuals were then observed to comment to those they were
walking with about the work, often gesturing toward the window. Some also
stopped at the window to investigate, two of these investigators were observed
to find the installations label. One particular individual, who acknowledged the
projected sounds, starred up at me as I watched him from above, he then pointed
me out to his friend before promptly moving on.
Within the term of the work I received around half a dozen emails from people
wishing to congratulate me. All of these individuals commented upon how they
were pleased to see a project that championed Belfast’s forgotten rivers. Some
also said that they were enthused by the notion of the old sounds of Belfast
being reintroduced, if only for a short period. However, none of these individuals
commented upon having been to an installation or undertaken the walk. In the
comment book that was available at PLACE, a number of visitors had left notes
saying how much they had enjoyed walking around the city, along the old rivers.
Many visitors commented that they appreciated learning more about Belfast’s
history. Regarding the installations, the consensus was that these were relaxing
and soothing and made the urban sites they adorned more pleasurable.
To conclude, there is one particular anecdote that I would like to account, for
this incident demonstrates the extraordinary, offbeat potential of the work. With
map in hand, two friends of mine went to visit the Cloth Ear installation but could
not find it, for they incorrectly assumed that it would be on the front of the venue.
This installation comprised of four panel speakers that were attached to one of
the side windows of the venue. This window is rather large and ornate, in keeping
with the building’s Victorian architecture. The window is also frosted, hence the
work’s speakers could not be seen. So as to quickly locate the installation, my
two friends decided to ask the venue’s bouncer where it was. He showed them to
the piece and then proceeded to tell them how when he first heard the sounds of
157
the work, particularly the sounds of creaking ships, he thought these were coming
from the building, as though parts of the building were ready to fall down. The
bouncer then rushed over to speak to his colleague about his discovery. This
second bouncer had already been informed about the installation and hence was
able to put the startled bouncer’s mind at rest.
5.8 Conclusion
Present Place can be interpreted as being an informative yet also creative exposi-
tion of the research that is required of a sound practitioner prior to the production
of a site-specific work, which goes as far as to invite the audience to try this act
out for themselves. The study which I undertook as part of Present Place, i.e.
reflecting upon the sites various contexts through observation, I suggest is an
act that can precede any installation work or mobile walk. The list of questions
I posed regarding what sights, sounds and social activities are present and how
these relate with the location under investigation, I believe can be raised in rela-
tion to many other sites. Likewise, my method for analysing sound’s contribution
to the dynamic of a place, in comparison with that of vision can be carried out
elsewhere. Indeed, each of the works I describe in this thesis began with a similar
onsite study followed by a similar reflection upon recordings (video and audio),
both of which informed the final design of my work.
I suggest the six installations of Resounding Rivers were similar in content

and concept to the work of Bill Fontana, whilst similar in appearance and posi-
tioning to the installations of Max Neuhaus. In relation to Fontana, in Resounding
Rivers I utilised field recordings that were captured in differing places throughout
Northern Ireland. Each of these places contain a river and makes use of this river
in a manner comparable to how Belfast’s rivers were once utilised. These record-
ings were then overlaid onto sites in Belfast where the documented features and
uses once occurred. Hence, I made conceptual links between site and sound. I also
sought for the actions and events inferred by my sounds to be associated with
158
a site’s visual aspect and in doing appear to enliven these features in a manner
comparable to Fontana’s enlivening of the faćade of the Whitney Museum in his
work Vertical Water (section 3.1). However, unlike Fontana’s installations, which
generally adorn visually-striking, much admired landmarks and which are quite
clearly audible and quite clearly distinct from their surrounds, my installations
were arranged upon more ordinary, everyday premises and my sounds were set-
tled into the existing sound field, neither replacing it nor standing proud of it. My
intervention was far subtler than Fontana’s and because of this my installations
would have been far less noticeable as being art, which puts my work more in
keeping with that of Neuhaus, particularly his Times Square installation (section
3.3.2).
I have suggested in this chapter that I chose to structure my sound projec-

tions over time as well as space because I believe that in doing so I can hold
the audience’s attention for longer, for they remain intrigued, wishing to know
how the presented sounds will develop. This holding of attention was intrinsic
to Present Place because the intention for the work was to incite and support
an act of observation, which requires time and concentration. I suggest that be-
cause there is an evolution to the sounds of my installations, this work can be
said to have entailed an act of composition. In particular, there is a connection
that can be raised to soundscape composition because of the materials in use
and because these materials are brought together to form a synthetic sound en-
vironment. That said, my work does not follow all the same traits or thinking
as conventional soundscape compositions because I design sounds for playback in
specific everyday places and also because my compositions are delivered as loops
that have no observable start and end, and therefore cannot and are not delivered
as performances. This perpetuation is perhaps what most clearly marks my work,
and any work that does the same, as being installations. In the following chapter
I will speak more of the relation I perceive between my own site-specific work
and soundscape composition, through exploration of my mobile sound walks.
159
Figure 5.6: Resounding Rivers label to be found near each installation - for
many of the installations this label was the only visual indication of their presence.
160
Chapter 6
Three Mobile Sound Walks
In this chapter I will discuss the conception, creation and reception of three mo-
bile sound walks, each delivered through a personal mobile device and devised as
an accompaniment to, and an aural augmentation of, a walk through three par-
ticular sites. Each of the three pieces takes the location into which it is placed as
the subject, exploring the geographic, social and historic discourse affiliated with
each site. Blackstaff is Belfast (2009) was similar in aspirations to Resounding
Rivers; the work sought to re-imagine a walk along the Blackstaff River, which
was buried beneath Belfast, UK in the late nineteenth century during a period
of rapid urban growth. The work references this history as a means to ques-
tion present day development. In Hear, Out There: Madrid (2008) explores the
forgotten plans and expectations for the site of AZCA1 . AZCA is a skyscraper
district on the outskirts of central Madrid, Spain. Originally it was anticipated
that the site would serve both the multi-national businesses that it sought to
attract, and the local communities, which AZCA impinged upon. However, many
of the public services planned were never built, including an opera house, botanic
1
AZCA is an acronym for Asociación Mixta de Compensación de la Manzana A de la Zona
Comercial de la Avenida del Generalı́simo’ (Mixed Association for Compensation of the A Block
of the Commercial Area of the Avenue of Paseo de la Castellana).
161
6. Three Mobile Sound Walks
gardens and library. In Hear, Out There: Madrid sought to demonstrate what
AZCA could have been like had these plans been realised, by layering onto the
site the sounds of three of Spain’s most beloved institutions. For In Hear, Out
There: Yokohama (2008) field recordings captured in the recreation grounds that
surround the Yokohama Baseball stadium were layered back onto the site. These
recordings documented the various activities of the groups whom inhabit and use
the site, each of who conceive the site very differently.
The three audio walks I present here differ from Cardiff’s audio walks in that
I utilise locative-aware technologies, which enable me to link sounds to points
in geographic co-ordinate space. Hence, whereas Cardiff creates fixed temporal
works, my locative media work entails pinning sounds directly onto a site, which
a listener can access in their own time, through following their own path. To
produce these walks, I utilise the ‘mscape’ platform, which enables a user to
annotate a map with media and computation. The created mapping can then be
activated within the site it addresses through use of a mobile device with GPS
capability. Each of the three works I describe in this chapter were produced in
this way and my intention for each was to construct a seamless, evolving sound
environment by layering together, across my mapping, an extensive array of field
recordings.
To begin this chapter, I will briefly outline what kinds of location-aware tech-
nologies exist and also mention further technologies that are related to this, which
have similarly been employed by artists. Following this I will discuss locative me-
dia and locative art (which are one in the same) and suggest how my own work
sits within this framework. I will then explore my three mobile sound walks in
detail, fully reviewing the concept and methodology behind each of them. Fur-
ther to this, I will compare Blackstaff is Belfast to soundscape composition and
posit this work as an example of both ‘site-specific soundscape composition’ and
‘locative soundscape composition’. In my analysis of In Hear, Out there: Madrid I
will discuss how the psychogeographic techniques of the Situationists, namely the
dérive’ and détournement’, are applicable to this work. For In Hear, Out There:
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Yokohama I will introduce Jane Rendell’s notion of a ‘critical spatial practice’,

which she suggests may arise through an application of the montage principle
within site-specific work and architecture. I will also discuss Walter Benjamin’s
‘dialectical image’, which Rendell describes as being a specific type of montage.
To conclude I will relate Rendell’s critical spatial practice to my two In Hear,
Out There works.
6.1 Mobile Art and Technology
Each of my works that I will describe in this chapter utilise ‘location-aware’ tech-
nologies. Specifically, they utilise GPS (Global Positioning System). This system
enables a mobile device to know where the walker is in a geographic co-ordinate
space, conveyed in degrees of latitude and longitude. GPS is a prevalent, con-
sumer technology that is the basis of all in-car navigation and a service available
within many mobile phones such as Apple’s iPhone. When used creatively, this
system falls into what is known as ‘locative media’ or ‘locative art’2 . GPS is
not the only location-aware technology that has been appropriated by artists.
Some creative projects, such as Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke (2007), estimate a
participant’s location by recognising what wireless networks are in range. Other
projects monitor the GSM/GPRS3 signal of mobile phones, estimating how far a
user is from various transmission points. This method provides a far less accurate
reading than GPS but is accessible through all mobile phones and can oper-
ate indoors, whereas GPS cannot. Creatively, this method tends to have been
utilised within location-based mobile games such as Mobile Hunters by Lonthoff
and Ortner (Lonthoff and Ortner, 2007).
2
Contributors such as Tuters (Tuters and Varnelis, 2006) refer to artworks that utilise
location-aware technologies as being ‘locative media works’ whereas Hemment (Hemment, 2006)
calls them ‘locative artworks’.
3
GSM is an acronym of ‘Global System for Mobile Communications’ whilst GPRS is an
acronym of ‘General Packet Radio Service’.
163
Location-aware strategies form part of a wider collection of systems that are

termed ‘context-aware’4 . Included under this heading are numerous other tech-
nologies such as RFID5 . Most commonly, this technology is used to detect the
presence of particular objects or people who carry with them, or have been la-
belled with, a small metallic tag. Many keycard door locks and shop security
alarms make use of RFID technologies. RFID has been utilised in a number of
small-scale art projects such as Objects of Desire (2008) and Tagged City Play
(2007) by Ludic Society6 .
There are also systems that achieve a context-awareness through analysis of

the surrounding sound field, although the majority of these have not yet passed
the research stage and because of this have not yet fallen into the hands of
artists. For example, Smith, Ma and Ryan have designed a mobile system that
can recognise certain types of place (e.g. office, home, car etc.) by registering
what is aurally distinct about them. Smith et al. utilise this information so as to
automatically alter the parameters of a mobile device so that this device can act
appropriately for the setting (Smith et al., 2006). This system was an inspiration
for the Fountain Experiment, which I will describe in the conclusion of this thesis
(section 7.3) as well as in greater detail in the appendix (appendix C).
For the Fountain Experiment I designed a system that recognised the presence
of certain fountains within a mobile carriers’ aural field and attached onto these
new sound events. This method recalls two further genres of technology that the
creative arts have experimented with: image recognition and augmented reality.
I note that image recognition is a capability that is now commonplace in the
present generation of mobile phones, particularly those running the Google An-
4
Context-aware technologies are themselves contained within the broader categories of ubiq-
uitous computing and pervasive computing (Moran and Dourish, 2001).
5
RFID is an anagram of ‘Radio-Frequency Identification’.
6
http://www.ludic-society.net/
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droid software7 . Through this platform, mobile users can access more information
about the objects and signs that they encounter within their everyday environ-
ment by scanning photos of them. For example, the mobile user may photograph
a film advertisement then request that their mobile scan this image and retrieve
local cinema times for the film detected (this procedure may also entail the use of
a location-aware technology so as to identify the nearest cinema). Alternatively,
the mobile user may scan a leaf they find in the park so as to find out what type
of tree it is from.
Augmented reality is most generally conceived to be a visual process, in this

mode it entails the enhancement of a real environment through the overlaying
of digital imagery. One of the most famous creative projects that is firmly of
this type is Human Pacman (2004), which enrolled mobile users as Pacman and
placed onto their view of the real world (through use of a specifically devised
headset) the components of the game Pacman (e.g. the dots that Pacman col-
lects). Of inspiration to me is AntiVJ who produce large-scale data projections
that they cast onto buildings and architectural structures. Their past projections
have comprised of animated events that follow the contours of the buildings they
augment, dramatically distorting or amplifying these structures in the process.
For example, the glass in a building’s windows may appear to crack, brickwork fall
or shadows rapidly shift. An example of an aural equivalent of augmented reality,
given by Lev Manovich in his article ‘Augmented Space’, is Janet Cardiff’s au-
dio walks (Manovich, 2006). Cardiff has hinted at this connection herself, noting
that her audio walks establish a ‘third world’ (Traub, 2007) that is part real and
part sound projection. I suggest that all of my work, including the mobile pieces
I describe in this chapter, similarly toy with the notion of a sonic augmented
reality.
7
In particular I’m speaking of Google Goggles (http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/
#text)
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6.1.1 Annotative and Phenomenological Locative Media
According to Marc Tuters, locative art assumes one of two guises: ‘phenomeno-
logical’ or ‘annotative’ (Tuters and Varnelis, 2006). The latter is a ‘tagging’ of
the physical world with computation, text or digital media. The former entails
graphically representing an individual’s movement through geographic space, the
actual nature of this space being secondary to this.
Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern have created a number of locative artworks
that are phenomenological in type. For instance in Running Stitch (2004), gallery
visitors were invited to undertake an unplanned walk around the city, carrying
with them a GPS device. In real time, a trace of their path was projected onto a
canvas screen positioned in the gallery, and subsequently sewn onto this screen by
either Hamilton or Southern. In doing so, the visitor’s path was rendered fixed,
tangible and legible. Hamilton and Southern posit their installations in opposition
to traditional mappings, which they believe offer abstracted ‘totalising’, top-down
views of locations (Cohen, 2006). Instead, works such as Running Stitch provide
bottom-up ‘grassroot’ (Hemment, 2006), ‘ground level’ (Hamilton and Southern,
2004) mappings that demonstrate how geographical space is actually inhabited
and lived through; depicting the ‘idiosyncrasies of movement’ (Cohen, 2006) and
the subjective choices of the walker.
In his discussion of locative art, Hemment suggests that the annotative style
be considered a triad that comprises of three further subtypes: ‘realism and doc-
umentation’, ‘expression’ and ‘collaborative and social’ (Hemment, 2006). The
‘collaborative and social’ type entails the provision of tools that a public can
utilise to produce their own annotations for locations that others can then un-
dertake, view and add to. Urban Tapestries (2002) by Proboscis is the clearest
example of this type. Documental locative media works are pre-composed map-
pings that provide the bearer with detailed, fact-based information upon their
surroundings. Hemment’s example of this type is the mobile city guide (ibid.).
I note that since the time of Hemment’s writing these guides have become very
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popular on the iPhone with print travel journals, such as those published by the
Lonely Planet and Rough Guide, being appropriated for mobile devices8 .
I interpret expressive locative media works to be annotations that seek to

affect rather than inform the recipient. To do so they take their lead from familiar
genres of creative practice such as musical composition, poetry, theatre, film
and literature. These are mostly works of fiction rather than fact and comprise
of aurally acted out scenes, spoken narration and dialogue as well as elements
of music. One of most acclaimed works that can be said to be expressive is
34n 118w (2003) by Jeffrey Knowlton, Naomi Spellman and Jeremy Hight. The
narrative for this piece was distributed across a vacant lot in downtown Los
Angeles, USA, adjacent to an old railroad depot. Invented stories accounting past
events that were supposed to have occurred on site were vocalised, linking place to
personal memory, remembering and loss; in Hight’s own words, the piece ‘creates
a sense that every space is agitated (alive with unseen history, stories, layers)’
(Hight, 2003). Also, under the heading of expression, I would hold a good deal
of Teri Rueb’s mobile works such as her first contribution Trace (1999). Duncan
Speakman is another artist who creates works that are clearly expressive. I will
describe the work of these two artists in detail in the section that follows.
I suggest that my own locative media works are annotative in style and sit
in between Hemment’s headings, tending towards being works of expression, but
entailing aspects of documentation. For example, Blackstaff is Belfast (2009)
provided an imagined walk along the Blackstaff, a river which no longer flows
over ground. There are elements of realism to this work for the utilised field
recordings are of real environments; there is also an element of documentation
because the work explores a factual history and the route that the walk follows is
along the actual course of the old river. However, this history is not delivered in a
8
See http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mobile/apple/iphone.php or http://www.
roughguides.com/website/travel/Downloads/Podcasts/Default.aspx.
167
direct, journalistic fashion rather I have sought to re-imagine an experience of the

river through composing together field recordings into an imagined environment.
The three mobile works I will discuss in this chapter seek to bring the listener
into critically reflecting upon the environment inscribed, and more broadly upon
the city that hosts each work. This type of engagement is not clearly covered
by Hemment’s triad, hence it may be necessary to extend Hemment’s categori-
sation to include annotative works that are ‘critical’ in style. I will discuss this
recommendation in greater detail in my analysis of my two In Hear, Out There
pieces, in which I speak of Jane Rendell’s ‘critical spatial practices’ (section 6.7).
Furthermore, Hemment’s framework does not explicitly address the materials in
use within a mapping (e.g. text, image or sound). The type of material, I believe,
impacts the format of a work either because of the inherent qualities of these
materials or because of the familiar models to which these materials pertain (e.g.
reportage, film or music). As a partial correction of this, in section 6.1.3, I look
specifically at how sound features within locative media and ultimately I will
suggest a new approach to locative media that could develop in the future, which
applies solely to sound and follows a compositional approach.
6.1.2 Teri Rueb and Duncan Speakman
Teri Rueb’s and Duncan Speakman’s work is both similar in operation and in
design to my own, for all three of us create locative media artworks through use
of the mscape mapping tool as well as share a desire to create fluid compositions
that evolve over the course of a walk. In this section I will review Speakman’s My
World is Empty Without You and Rueb’s Core Sample. The first of these pieces
I chose because I have direct experience of it. The second I have not experienced
but have heard Rueb speak at length about this work as well as held conversations
with her about this piece and her other pieces.
Duncan Speakman’s My World is Empty Without You was produced for Bris-
tol’s Mayfest Theatre Festival programme in 2009. The tagline for the work was:
168
‘What happens when everyone in the city is listening to the same song?’. Whereas
Rueb’s mobile walks (and my own) are generally undertaken by sole individuals
at a time that suits them, Speakman generally delivers his mobile walks as perfor-
mances or events. For My World is Empty Without You, a large group of paying
participants were asked to assemble at a site in Bristols Clifton region at a set
time. Every participant was given a mobile device (with attached headphones)
and all participants were asked to press the ‘play’ button on this device at the
culmination of a countdown. Participants were then asked to open an envelope
they had been given and walk to the landmark shown upon the photograph that
was enclosed within. This landmark was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, which
is about one mile from the initial meeting point. To get there, the participants
would need to walk up hill, though Clifton’s narrow, cobbled streets before trav-
elling through a park, which surrounds the bridge. Although everybody started
the walk together, participants were allowed to walk at their own pace and take
their own route towards the bridge, within certain bounds. These bounds were
not made apparent to the audience. However, should a participant have strayed
off course they would have been stopped by one of a number of wardens that
Speakman had requested stand at certain points along the walk’s course.
As each participant made their way towards Clifton Suspension Bridge they
listened to a specifically devised musical score. Through use of mscape, the layers
of this composition were assigned to different regions of the Clifton area. By
doing so, Speakman was able to match certain sections of his composition with
particular places and also set his composition to build in intensity as the listener
drew closer and closer to the bridge. The composition comprised of orchestral
elements, synthesised tones, drum loops and singing. I would describe the piece as
being airy, meditative and ethereal, as well as being cinematic in nature, recalling
a number of film soundtracks.
In addition to the score responding to the listener’s location, there were several
layers to Speakman’s composition that were triggered by listeners who were in
range of one of a number of actors who were equipped with infrared beacons that
169
the listener’s mobile device could detect. These additional sounds were mono-
logues read aloud by the encountered actors. Hence, it was as though the listener
could hear what the actor was thinking. Actors were dispersed throughout the
walk’s course but were not easily distinguishable from the ordinary pedestrians
that the listener would have encountered in Clifton’s busy streets. Upon spotting
a participant, some of these actors were instructed to perform particular everyday
actions such as tying their shoe laces or answering their phone.
Speakman states in his online description of My World is Empty Without

You that his aspiration for the work was to ‘turn the world around [the listener]
into a personal cinema’. From this statement I infer that Speakman wanted the
mood and temperament of his composition to colour the listener’s experience of
the everyday locations they were to visit, as well as sensationalise the everyday
events they would witness, binding these together to form one dramatic whole.
For me, this was the effect of My World is Empty Without You. I recall walking
through the park beneath Clifton suspension bridge, with this bridge towering
above me, whilst listening to tribal drum patterns and ghostly singing. These
sounds both energised me and stirred in me the uncanny feeling that I was being
beaconed towards the bridge for some higher purpose, that something big was to
happen upon my arrival. This feeling was made all the more eerie and unsettling
once I caught sight of other participants, each wearing headphones and walking
slowly alongside me, starring up towards the bridge. This situation brought to
my mind the film The Time Machine (1960), particularly the scene in which an
entranced group of villagers (the Eloi) walk slowly in unison towards the caves
in which the Morlock live, who feed upon the villagers. Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (1977) is another film that I thought of as a walked up towards the
bridge.
A number of those who participated in My World is Empty Without You speak

of their impressions of the work in a short video that is upon Speakman’s website.
In keeping with my comments above, one interviewee recalls feeling rather anxious
as she walked up to the bridge alongside fellow listeners. She describes this scene
170
as being ‘like d-day’ as though she had ‘come to arrive at the world’s end’. Several
of the other interviewees speak of how the work made them more attentive to,
and suspicious of, the activities of the pedestrians that they encountered. This is
because they were unsure which of these individuals were actors and which were
not. I recall being similarly vigilant within my walk, I was definitely more mindful
of what was happening around me than I would have been on any ordinary walk
through Bristol; I imagine this is the result Speakman was trying to attain.
Core Sample was produced by Teri Rueb in 2007 and comprised of a locative
media sound walk that was mapped across Spectacle Island, Boston, USA, as well
as a sound sculpture that was installed within the ICA Founders Gallery, Boston.
The sculpture was a ninety-nine foot long metallic hand rail that ran the length
of the gallery’s glass veranda from which Boston Harbour and Spectacle Island
could be seen. Installed within the rail were a number of small speakers that
projected sounds into the immediate environment relating to the work’s themes.
Spectacle Island is presently a designated parkland but was previously, for

many centuries, a dump site. Dumping on the island was stopped in the 1950s,
at which point the island was severally polluted. In the 1990s the island’s waste
grounds were covered over with soil and an island-wide park was constructed.
Accompanying Rueb’s sound walk was a map on which Rueb had marked the
location of a number of the island’s landfill sites and labelled these in accordance
with how old they are, the first of these dating back to the 5th century. Many of
the dumps overlap, for example, Rueb’s map shows a Native American landfill
site beneath a 17th century site, which lies beneath a twentieth century dump.
Listeners equipped with a mobile device and headphones would, as they walked
around the island, hear sounds related to their immediate surroundings as well as
related to the layers of natural and discarded materials that lie beneath them, as
indicated on Rueb’s map (figure 6.1). These sounds changed in accordance with
the listener’s position so that when the listener crossed the threshold of a past
landfill site, sounds for this site would raise to the fore. Within particular regions
of the island, listeners would have also encountered spoken word accounts from
171
individuals who had formally worked upon the island. The headphones used for
the piece were open backed so as to allow the real sounds in the park to seep into
the composition.
Upon Rueb’s website is a video that documents the walk. The sounds a lis-
tener would have heard on site are layered onto this video. These sounds include
natural textures such as the sound of wind, insects, rocks and wood, which a
listener would encounter in the ‘geographic core’, ‘plantings’ or ‘atmosphere’ re-
gions of Rueb’s mapping. Within the ‘settlement and industry’ region, the sounds
presented are those of metal and mechanics, whilst in the ‘modern landfill’ re-
gion, plastic materials and powered engines can be heard. In summary, as Rueb
describes, the work ‘dissolv[ed] boundaries between surface and core, natural and
artificial, industrial and organic, past, present and future’.
The mobile element to Teri Rueb’s Core Sample is in many ways comparable
to my own mobile walks. Core Sample explores the lesser-known history of the
site it is positioned within, and makes apparent to the listener how this history is
embedded in the landscape. This is a very similar concept to that governing my
work Blackstaff is Belfast, which focused upon Belfast’s buried rivers. The form
and content of the Core Sample composition is also similar to that of Blackstaff is
Belfast. Whilst Speakman’s My World is Empty Without You and much of Rueb’s
other works call upon familiar models such as the musical score or movie script
for their structuring, the structuring of Core Sample is rather less conventional.
The work comprises mainly of environmental and industrial sounds and sound
textures, which are organised in accordance with the history and topography of
the site that the work addresses, resulting in a composition that suits the label
‘experimental’.
172
Figure 6.1: The Map of Core Sample - Map shows the different regions of Rueb’s
walk that correspond with different landfill sites that are located on Spectacle Island,
USA
173
6.1.3 Locative Media and Sound
A number of the annotative locative media works that I have already introduced
have involved the distribution of sound media across a locality. Particularly it
is those works deemed ‘expressive’ that have adopted sound as their primary
material; this is the case for 34n 118w as well as all the work of Teri Rueb, Duncan
Speakman and myself. Having considered why this may be, I have conceived of
the following five reasons for preferring aural media to that of video or image
within locative artworks of expression or otherwise.
• Production costs: It is perhaps more time and cost effective to use sound. In
Mobile Bristol’s Riot! (2004) actors were employed to provide the dialogue
for a historic re-portrayal of the Bristol Riots of 1831. If this portrayal had
been filmed for playback upon a mobile device, rather than recorded to
sound file, the length of production would have been far greater and so too
would the cost.
• Maintain contact with the real world: By requesting that the audience en-
gage purely with sound media, the audience can maintain visual contact
with the external environment. This can lead to a greater correspondence
between the real site and the designed overlay, as well as allow the listener
to remain alert to what is going on around them, improving the safety of
the walk.
• Higher quality mobile material: Sound issued by the mobile device can be
of the same quality, or near to the same quality, as it is through any other
sound protocol, whereas the mobile device’s display and processing capa-
bilities limits the size and quality of video and image. Furthermore, sound
materials are less likely to warp, slow down or stutter because they are not
as CPU intensive as video.
• Minimise technology’s presence: To engage with video requires staring at

the device screen and therefore actively and continually acknowledging the
174
presence of a technology within the experience. This is not the case with
sound media because sound is presented to the individual through head-
phones, which remain out of view, and the mobile device itself may also be
placed out of view within a pocket, bag or otherwise. With certain works
such as my own, one of the aspirations is for the delivered materials to aug-
ment the real environment, fusing with it. This is far more likely to occur
if the mobile device (the artifice) recedes into the background.
• Production of a duration: Through utilising sound materials, a more fluid

and cohesive organisational system can be produced that envelops an entire
path and evolves over the course of this path because sound materials can
be more readily layered together (across both time and space) to form a
credible whole. As a comparison, imagine an annotation that comprises of
photographs that are each assigned to a particular region along a path. Each
image would most likely be identified as being separate from the last, thus
the images form a series rather than an ensemble. This observation echoes
Henri Bergson’s notion of a ‘pure duration’ that he defines as a ‘succession of
qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another, without any
tendency to externalise themselves in relation to one another, without any
affiliation with number: it [is] pure heterogeneity’ (Bergson, 1910, p.104).
The expressive locative media works that I have described for which sound is
key, are very similar in content and delivery to Janet Cardiff’s The Missing Voice:
Case Study B. The difference between the two is how practically they adhere to
a location, which is afforded by the technology in use. Cardiff’s Missing Voice is
effectively a temporal piece that synchronises with a path through a given loca-
tion, i.e. compositional sections match with the visual phenomena encountered,
because Cardiff’s composition includes spoken directions that keep the listener
on a preordained route. Also, Cardiff sets the rhythm of the walk by asking that
the listener follow the sound of her footsteps. Thus, if the listener were to go
the wrong direction or slow their pace down, they would very quickly fall out of
175
synch with Cardiff’s piece. Locative media allow for sounds to be triggered upon
entry into certain coordinate regions and therefore the work can be structured
over space rather than time. Hence, there is no need to dictate the exact course
or pace of a walk on a moment-by-moment basis like Cardiff does, giving more
freedom to the walker to chose their own path and take their own time about it.
I suggest that my own locative media artworks (and indeed a number of those
produced by others) have a lot in common with soundscape composition, because
field recordings are in use and these are experienced by the listener/walker as
one ‘coherent soundscape’, which Barry Truax highlights as being imperative for
a soundscape composition (Truax, 2002). The difference between my work and
soundscape composition is first the site of emanation: soundscape composition
is most generally devised for the concert hall whilst my work is designed for a
specific everyday space. Second, the elements of my composition are of course
tied to space rather than hard set within a temporal span. The effect of this is
an opening up of the compositional process, giving listeners the final say in how
a piece is structured, which they exercise through their walking gesture. I will
explore the affiliation between my own work and soundscape composition in more
detail in my analysis of my piece Blackstaff is Belfast (2009), which I will now
discuss.
6.2 Blackstaff is Belfast
Blackstaff is Belfast was a mobile sound walk with an accompanying audiovisual

document that was part of the juried exhibit for ISEA 2009 (International Sym-
posium on Electronic Art) held at Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast. The piece was
undertaken in collaboration with Stuart Sloan, a filmmaker based in Belfast. Stu-
art produced a dual screen video installation that was housed within the gallery.
Further to this, Stuart and I conceived and researched the project together and
undertook the recording phase as a team. I edited all of the sound and con-
structed the mobile sound walk. The walk was advertised in the hosting gallery
176
along side the video installation and was accessed via a PDA device that could be
collected from the gallery’s reception. Both the video and the walk documented
the Blackstaff River, which used to flow over ground very near to Ormeau Baths
Gallery.
I approached Stuart and suggested that we collaborate having witnessed his

short film Counterweight(2008). The subject of this piece was the city of Belfast;
in particular the piece addressed the topic of development and re-development
in the city through a montage of interviews with a number of Belfast’s citizens.
Through Blackstaff is Belfast I wanted to tackle similar issues to those addressed
by Stuart’s film but through less traditional means, situating our discussion in
Belfast’s streets, i.e. in the location where development is actually, physically
underway.
6.2.1 In Response to ISEA 2009 and it’s Themes
The theme of ISEA 2009 was ‘Engaged Creativity in Mobile Environments’9 . The
symposium sought to underline how mobile technologies and mobile media have
produced, or could produce, new forms of creative expression and interaction,
and conversely how these technologies may influence, or be of service to, existing
art practices10 . In addition, the symposium tackled a number of sub-themes such
as ‘Positionings – local and global transactions’ that addressed the ‘relationship
between local(ised) and global(ised) transactions in the cultural sphere(s) and
the re/formation and re/presentation of identities and places connected to them’.
Also under this heading, a discussion of ‘new and convergent models of space and
spatial dynamics’ was to be initiated, focusing upon ‘reality construction whether
real, virtual or augmented’.
9
See the conference website for more details: http://www.isea2009.org/wordpress/?page_
id=36
10
See the ISEA 2009 themes (http://www.isea2009.org/wordpress/?page_id=6)
177
Blackstaff is Belfast was specifically devised for ISEA 2009 and for the specific
locality into which it was placed. The piece was one of very few works that was
site-specific, utilising mobile media to explore regional history and geography.
Blackstaff is Belfast demonstrated that global technologies, such as GPS and the
mobile device, can accommodate a local discussion and that through platforms
such as ISEA this discussion can reach, and be relevant to, both a local audience
and an international delegation. For the delegates, Blackstaff is Belfast was rel-
evant because it explored issues that affect Belfast, the city they chose to visit,
as well as tackled a subject, that of urban development, that affects all cities
throughout the world.
6.2.2 The Subject and Format of Blackstaff is Belfast
The subject of Blackstaff is Belfast was the Blackstaff River, which presently
flows underneath Belfast. The majority of the river was culverted (constricted to
artificial channels beneath the city) in the late 19th century. Prior to this, the
river had flown over ground coursing through woodland, parkland, meadows and
natural flood plains. It had also been a source of power for light industries such as
paper and linen manufacturing. The Blackstaff River plays a fairly understated
role within Belfast’s history, little is written about it and few are aware that it
either once flowed overland or that it now flows underground. Despite this, the
Blackstaff does still have a semblance within the Belfast’s cityscape, remnants of
it can still be found if looked for. Furthermore, the river still impacts upon the
lives of those that live upon it (e.g. through flooding) but does so anonymously,
its name long out of use.
A mobile sound walk was constructed and anchored to the path from the
Ormeau Baths Gallery (from which the GPS-enabled device needed to undertake
the walk could be collected) out to the Lagan River, following the course of the
old Blackstaff River. The objective was to provide a sonic portrait of the river that
would seamlessly evolve and react in accordance with the listener’s path. This
178
was achieved by spatialising an array of field recordings, layered onto one another,
across the selected site. Furthermore, it was hoped that the sound field generated
by the work would augment the environment visible to the listener: the delivered
sound was designed so to appear not on top of but within the annotated site,
demonstrating a comparable depth of field. Furthermore, the projected sound
field was to modify and transform in accordance with the topography of the
site, adjusting in response to architecture and between differing zones of use and
affection as well as with changes to inclination and direction.
The sound walk followed a narrative linked to the history of the river. This
narrative portrayed the return and renewal of the river, turning back time as the
listener walked towards the Lagan River. The piece began out in the street in
front of Ormeau Baths Gallery with a recording of this same street in a period of
heavy rainfall (scene 1). As the listener walked along the street, the rain sounds
would increase in intensity and water would be heard to accumulate beneath
the listener’s feet, surging forwards as it does so (scene 2). At the culmination
of the flood, the sound of steam would burst forth (scene 3) and slowly ease to
reveal the sound of a watermill upon a small river (scene 4). Upon entering the
Gasworks (a gated business district within the course of the walk), an imagined
quay complete with boats and their crews would be encountered, situated upon
a real water feature (figure 6.2, scene 5). Towards the end of the walk the listener
would appear to enter the river, going underwater as he or she walked beneath a
rail bridge (scene 6). The listener would then walk up onto an old bridge, which
faces the Lagan River. Upon doing so, he or she would appear to emerge from
the river and the sounds of this river coursing through woodland and flowing into
an estuary would be introduced (scene 7). This palette of sound relates to how
the Blackstaff river would have been in that location before urbanisation.
6.2.3 Recording and Editing
Similar to Resounding Rivers, in Blackstaff is Belfast the sound samples utilised

within the mapping were derived from field recordings made across Northern
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Ireland at rivers and waterways that contain features that are comparable to those
of the retired Blackstaff River. Unlike Resounding Rivers, most of the recordings
made were binaural, providing an image of an environment from a listener’s
perspective, captured through two microphones positioned within the ears of the
recordist. When these recordings are played back through headphones, as they
were within the designed walk, a faithful (though not error-free) reconstruction
of the recorded soundscape can be produced.
Each field recording was edited down into a series of shorter samples and
then all samples were collected together into groups in accordance with the scene
they were intended for (hence there were seven groups of samples). Each collec-
tion comprised of three distinct types of sample: ‘discrete samples’, ‘continuous
samples’ and ‘ambient samples’. I define discrete samples as short edits that
encapsulate whole events that occupy a foreground position with little to no ac-
companying ambience. This type is comparable to R. Murray Schafer’s ‘sound
events’ that he defines to be ‘the smallest self-contained particle of a soundscape’
(Schafer, 1994, p.274). When looped (i.e. played on repeat) continuous samples
produce seamless, rolling bodies of sound. Like discrete samples, they focus upon
one foreground sound but unlike discrete samples they do not wholly contain it.
An example of this type may be the sound of river flow or the continuous clunk
of a waterwheel, both of which we may describe as being perpetual. Ambient
samples account for the background portion of a soundscape and can comprise of
discrete events and continuous events so long as no one event dominates. These
samples include more spatial activity and a greater depth of field then the other
two types and can be looped like continuous samples.
The intention for the three types of samples was that they could be layered to-
gether within a locative media mapping so as to produce a seamless and sustained
sound environment when experienced in situ. These three types were devised in
response to the perceived limitations of the software that I utilised to produce my
annotation (i.e. mscape), which was not designed for the purposes I had in mind
(i.e. sounds structured across a temporal duration as well as across space). A
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more thorough description of my three types of samples is provided within figure

6.3, in this table the example sounds listed relate to the Blackstaff is Belfast.
6.2.4 Building with mscape
Blackstaff is Belfast was composed across real space through utilisation of mscape,
a software platform dedicated to the authoring of locative media artworks. Mscape
allows the designer to overlay digital media and computation onto a map by draw-
ing and placing circular or polygon shaped hotspots (see figure 6.4) onto this map.
A line of logic can then be attached to each of these shapes. A completed map-
ping can then be downloaded onto a Windows Mobile PDA device, with GPS
functionality, and then initiated in the geographic site it annotates. In real space,
when an individual armed with the PDA enters or exits one of the hotspot regions
the onboard software initiates the corresponding line of logic. This computation
usually takes the form of an ‘If’ statement, i.e. when the stipulated conditions
are met, an action is triggered such as the increasing of a counter, the beginning
of a timer or, speaking specifically of sound media, the playing, stopping, fading
or pausing of an mp3 file. The amplitude and stereo panning of these mp3 files
may also be affected. Hence, with mscape a complex system for sound dissemi-
nation and control can be achieved that goes beyond simply the attachment of a
single sound to a single coordinate point. However, some of the functionality that
a sound designer may expect or require is absent, for example, sounds cannot
be equalised and although amplitude/panning envelopes are possible these are
stepped rather than smooth. Thus, if certain effects are required they must be
hard set within each sample before this sample is imported into mscape.
For Blackstaff is Belfast, a map covering the intended walk was uploaded to,
and annotated within, mscape. Upon the map, the path from Ormeau Baths
Gallery to the Lagan River was separated into seven sections, one for each of
the aforementioned scenes. Between these sections were a number of zones of
transition, so that one scene could smoothly blend and transform into the next.
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The decision regarding the position of each scene was made in the field rather
than through scrutiny of the map alone: the spatial bounds of particular scenes
and events matched the visible, physical bounds of the real site. For instance, the
transition from the watermill to the imagined quay was initiated at the gateway
to the Gasworks site (see figure 6.2). A detailed, technical example of how I
produced one scene of Blackstaff is Belfast through use of the mscape platform
can be found within the appendix (appendix B.2).
As is outlined above, each section comprised of ambient, continuous and dis-

crete samples. The ambient samples populated the first of three layers upon the
mscape mapping, covering a wider area than the other two kinds. These loops
were set to play continually until the walker entered a new hotspot zone to which
a replacement loop had been assigned. At this point, the first sample would fade
out and the new sample would fades in, thus giving the appearance of one con-
tinuous, evolving environment.
On top of the ambient layer continuous samples were added. Most generally
these were grouped together to form a short series. Each sample within the series
framed the same source as all others but did so from a differing distance, the first
in the series being the farthest away from the source and the last, the closest.
This sense of distance was either produced at the time of recording, simply by
standing at different distances from a source, or produced within the studio using
filters and reverberation effects. By separating continuous samples into a series
the sensation of approaching a source could be achieved.
The discrete samples were placed upon the continuous samples within a third
and final layer. A good number of hotspots laid upon the map in mscape, to which
discrete samples were assigned, would trigger more than one sample; a different
sample would be initiated each time the listener walked into the same hotspot
region. This strategy was devised so as to increase variation in the produced
environment and thus avoid any sense of repetition.
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Figure 6.2: Three locations in the Blackstaff is Belfast river walk - top:
entrance to the Gasworks site; middle: Gaswork’s water feature; bottom: the old
Blackstaff Bridge.
183
Figure 6.3: Table of the three sample types - Information relates to the three
types of samples that were devised for use within the mscape mapping tool.
184
Figure 6.4: Screen grab of the mscape software - Onto an uploaded map
polygon shapes can be added that can have coding ascribed to them
185
6.2.5 Getting Away from the Map
The mscape platform is a desktop tool and therefore any locative artwork that
is designed upon it is designed in abstraction. The designer can only ever work
upon a top-down representation of the site, never the site itself. Hence, they
work upon a reduction of the real site omitting a great deal of content, including
all human activity. A failure to address and act upon these discrepancies can
result in a locative media experience that does not resonate with its site, offering
poor, delayed or incomplete connections. In doing so, the work may even abstract
the listener from the real site, drawing their attention inwards, solely onto the
projected materials.
This warning echoes Michel de Certeau’s attack upon the city planner’s concept-
city (De Certeau and Rendall, 1988, p.94). In his text The Practice of Everyday
Life, de Certeau comments that all ‘panoptic’ (De Certeau and Rendall, 1988,
p.93), ‘totalising’ views of the city, which are provided either by the map or
through looking down from on high, do not offer the unprecedented understand-
ing of the city that they may advertise but rather provide only a superficial,
fictitious view of the city that omits the essential practices of everyday life. In
de Certeau’s own words: ‘the panorama-city is a ‘theoretical’ (that is, visual)
simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion and
a misunderstanding of practices’ (ibid.). Through his text, de Certeau calls for
cities to be studied at ground level, suggesting that it is only by taking to the
streets that the dynamic of practice can be observed (De Certeau and Rendall,
1988, p.96).
Applying de Certeau’s thought to the creation of locative works, the best

way to approach the inherent separation between map and reality is to spend as
much time as possible in the field documenting (e.g. recordings, photos etc.) and
annotating a map with notes upon the site’s various contexts, namely the aural,
visual, social, cultural and historic contexts. This would include giving attention
186
to the topography, geography and architecture of the site as well as the manner
in which the site is inhabited, what it is used for and how it is used.
What I describe here can perhaps be made clearer through use of an example:
in my first mapping of Blackstaff is Belfast I had initially selected a longer route,
however, after walking and studying this path I realised that it was far too long,
lacked fluidity and potentially unsafe. The latter two remarks I make having
noticed that there were a number of busy roads along my original path that
would need to be crossed and also a number of disorientating twists and turns
that would need to be negotiated. Hence, I reorganised my route so that it was
more direct and stuck to pedestrian precincts as much as possible. The original
route also passed between a number of tall buildings, which are known to obscure
or distort the GPS signal. If I had stuck to my original path it was very likely
that the mapping would not have functioned correctly and hence the listener’s
experience would have been degraded. I speak more of the problems of GPS drift
in the appendix (appendix B.2).
6.3 Blackstaff is Belfast and Soundscape Composi-

tion
For Blackstaff is Belfast (and indeed all my mobile sound walks), I suggest that
each participants walk through the annotated site (i.e. from Ormeau Baths to
the Lagan River) generated a unique soundscape composition, which was an
aggregate of all the different samples he or she encountered and engaged with
along his or her own particular path. As a means to strengthen my claim of
a strong correspondence with soundscape composition, I shall briefly highlight
some aspects of soundscape composition raised by Barry Truax in his article
‘Genres and Techniques of Soundscape Composition as Developed at Simon Fraser
University’ (Truax, 2002). Each of these aspects can similarly be said to have been
aspects of Blackstaff is Belfast. Following this discussion, I will address the main
distinctions that I perceive between Blackstaff is Belfast and recorded soundscape
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compositions (i.e. fixed compositions delivered upon LP, radio or in the concert
hall). These distinctions are first, the work’s correspondence with the site of
emanation and second, the responsiveness of the work to a listener’s own activity.
Ultimately, I shall posit these two distinctions as being the particularities of what
I am choosing to call ‘site-specific soundscape composition’ and, as a further
derivative of this, ‘locative soundscape composition’. Through introducing these
two new divisions, I hope to demonstrate that soundscape composition can have
a new presence and relevance outside of the concert hall, within the everyday and
also give to locative media art a new category for exploration that specifically
relates to sound and sound organisation, which none of the types proposed by
authors such as Tuters and Hemment do (e.g. annotative or explorative etc.).
6.3.1 A Comparison
Regarding what constitutes a soundscape composition, Truax comments that

whether environmental recordings or abstract materials are in use the outcome
must be the creation of a ‘coherent soundscape’ (Truax, 2002). This is to say that
the composition must include a body of sounds that are organised in accordance
with a real-world ‘syntax’ (ibid.) and by being so, produce a system that is com-
parable to that of a real sound environment as it is observed from a particular
perspective. Truax goes on to outline three common, everyday perspectives that a
soundscape composition may adopt: the ‘fixed spatial perspective’, ‘moving spa-
tial perspective’ and ‘variable spatial perspective’ (ibid.). Concentrating solely on
Truax’s ‘moving spatial perspective’, he suggests that these works account ‘jour-
neys’ and exhibit a ‘smoothly connected space/time flow’ (ibid.). His example of
this type is Entry to the Harbour from the Vancouver Soundscape LP (section
2.3.3), which guides the listener from the sea, through Vancouver harbour, into
the city docks and onto land. The content, motion and resulting journey evident
in this work is very similar to that of Blackstaff is Belfast. In my mobile walk,
the journey was along the Blackstaff River, and a sense of travelling along this
river was achieved by combining together edited field recordings to produce a
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smooth trajectory that encompassed a series of overlapping and linked scenes.

Of course, Entry to the Harbour is not the only composition of spatial moving
perspective, indeed there are many soundscape compositions such as the sound-
walks of Hildegard Westerkamp (section 2.4.1) that are structured in accordance
with the pace of walking. The sounds of Blackstaff is Belfast were triggered by a
mobile individual and hence the ensuing composition could also be said to have
followed a walking pace.
Truax notes that there was a conceptual reasoning behind Entry to Harbour.
The work can be interpreted either as ‘the evolution of the city over time (from
mill town to metropolis)’ or ‘the geographic tension between urban growth and
forested wilderness’ (Truax, 2002). Both of these interpretations of Entry to Har-
bour are very similar to those I outlined above for Blackstaff is Belfast. Hence,
Blackstaff is Belfast can be said to not only agree with soundscape composition’s
use of ‘found sound’ (ibid.) and field recordings, but also how they are struc-
tured and the kind of narratives they follow. One may also add that ultimately
I expected my work to bring the listener into attending to everyday sounds, and
to take an interest in these sounds, which is likewise what is expected of sound-
scape composition (Westerkamp, 1999). However, in my work the listener did not
only attend to the presented sounds but also attended to the real environment in
which they encountered these sounds.
6.3.2 Site-specific Soundscape Composition
I propose Blackstaff is Belfast to be an example of a new kind of soundscape

composition that I chose to call ‘site-specific soundscape composition’. I define
site-specific soundscape composition to be a composition that has been devised
for a specific space, in response to a specific social and environmental context, and
takes into account the cultural, historical and political significance of the hosting
site. When initiated on site, I suggest the sounds of a site-specific soundscape
composition can either stand distinct from the real environment (which the com-
poser probably does not want to occur) or assimilate with the real environment.
189
If they assimilate (as was my hope for the sounds of Blackstaff is Belfast) then
I suggest these sounds can either act to augment the sounds and sound field al-
ready present on site or replace the present sound field and thus form an alliance
with the ‘non-sounding’ (Young, 2007) aspects of the environment, such as the
visible landscape. This latter relation is that which is in operation in the ma-
jority of Bill Fontana’s installations (section 3.4) and also Janet Cardiff’s audio
walks (section 4.2). Regarding my own work, the real sound field was replaced in
Blackstaff is Belfast whilst in the Fountain Experiment (appendix C) I present a
mobile system that augmented the existing sound field.
Once associated, I suggest the sounds of a site-specific soundscape composition

can either serve to frame an aspect of the real environment, magnify it, obscure
it, colour it or appear to add new objects and events to it. In some cases, the
sound may serve all five functions. In all cases, I anticipate the motives for doing
so would be either to draw the listener’s attention towards certain features of
an environment, to bring the listener into making certain connections (physical
and conceptual) between these features and the presented sounds, or as perhaps
believe or imagine that certain events within the composition are actually taking
place. As an example of this process, in the final scene of Blackstaff is Belfast
the sounds of a flowing river and of a woodland, teeming with birds and insect
life, would have been encountered upon an old bridge under which the Blackstaff
River used to pass. Some elements of the composition would have matched the
landscape (e.g. the sounds of a river would be audible whilst a river and a bridge
would be visible) and these elements would have exhibited a dimensionality and
depth of field that was in keeping with the given context. Hence, the listener
may have believed or imagined these sounds to be real and present. If not, it
is likely they would have at least understood how the presented sounds relate
to the landscape. Regarding the woodland ambience, the real environment was
most definitely not a woodland, rather it comprised of factories, warehouses,
roads and a train line. Aided by the connections already made between river and
river sound, one can expect that the woodland sound would not have appeared
190
as an arbitrary, abstract inclusion rather it would have served as an image of an

alternative reality that was comparable with the present.
6.3.3 Locative Soundscape Composition
I suggest Blackstaff is Belfast to be both a locative media artwork and a work of

soundscape composition. In keeping with locative media, the elements of Black-
staff is Belfast were not set out over time, as with conventional, taped soundscape
compositions but laid out across space. For these elements to come together to
form a temporal trajectory required the listener’s activity, as it was his or her
walking gesture that triggered and sustained these elements. Listeners controlled
(consciously or not) what sounds were part of the composition by controlling
where they went within the inscribed site, they also controlled the duration over
which these elements remained through the pace of their walk. With this in mind,
the locative composer’s concerns can be said to differ to those of the conventional
soundscape composer in that the former does not work towards a complete, fixed
work but rather they design an open system that both allows for a listener’s in-
put as well as sets the bounds necessary for this input so as to aid the listener’s
interaction.
These concerns are similar to those of the soundwalk composer (section 2.4.1)
and are also, as John Levack Drever’s soundwalking article makes clear (Drever,
2009), concerns that musicians such as John Cage and artists such as those of
the Fluxus movement have tackled. Regarding soundwalks, so as to make them
as coherent and engaging as possible, the soundwalk composer will often issue
maps (as with Westerkamp’s Soundwalk in Queen Elizabeth Park ) or provide
instructions (as with Westerkamp’s first soundwalk). The locative soundscape
composer may also chose to issue maps and instructions to participants. For Core
Sample, Teri Rueb (who’s work I suggest may be thought of as being locative
soundscape composition) provided a paper map whilst for both my In Hear, Out
There works there was a live map available upon the mobile device that was issued
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to the listener. Upon the live map there was an icon that showed the listener’s
present position and coloured overlays that showed where particular sets of sounds
had been placed. These maps could be easily accessed via the menu for each work,
which was the device’s default screen11 . I also provided instructions with all three
of my mobile walks. These could be accessed by pressing the ‘instruction’ tab on
the work’s menu screen. For Blackstaff is Belfast, these instructions informed the
listeners of where they were to walk to, what they would pass along the way,
what kinds of sounds to expect and how their walk would effect the sounds they
were to hear.
Although maps can be utilised so as to make the bounds of interaction clear

to the audience, I have also found it useful to set the bounds of my walk to be
those of the physical site. By doing so the audience are less likely to need to refer
to the map and can thus continue to engage with their external environment. For
the majority of Blackstaff is Belfast, only the paved paths through the Gasworks
were annotated. These paths were both clearly marked and enclosed by either
buildings or fencing, hence they could not be easily strayed from. Another tactic
utilised for Blackstaff is Belfast was the request to walk towards a particular
landmark, i.e. the Lagan River. Both of these tactics I believe suit compositions
that have a narrative flow, i.e. for walks in which the listener progresses through
a series of scenes that build towards a climax. This was the case for Blackstaff
is Belfast and also for Speakman’s My World is Empty Without You for which
he requested listener’s walk towards the Clifton Suspension Bridge. My two In
Hear, Out There pieces did not follow a linear, progressive structure. For these
two pieces I wanted to support a more casual exploration of the annotated site
and hence why in those two instances a wider area (i.e. a rectangular or oval
park land) was inscribed and why no end point was specified. These two works
11
I suggested to the listener that they only access this map if lost or if they were looking for a
specific region of my composition. Furthermore, I deliberately did not make the map the default
screen upon the device. I did both these things because I wanted to discourage listeners from
looking down at the device screen and thus looking away from their external surroundings.
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still hold up as soundscape compositions however, because they would have been
experienced as coherent soundscapes. This is likewise the case for Rueb’s Core
Sample.
6.4 In Hear, Out There: Madrid
The first of the two In Hear, Out There projects was created and exhibited as
part of the second Inclusiva.net workshop held at MediaLab-Prado, Madrid in
March of 2008. My proposal was one of ten selected to be produced over the
course of the workshop. One of the stipulations of the commission was that I
would collaborate with a team of individuals so as to realise the proposal. These
collaborators had applied to a separate call to participate and had highlighted my
proposal as their key interest. The primary team which helped create In Hear,
Out There: Madrid were Andrew Henley, a sound designer living in Barcelona
and Maria Prieto, a PhD Student studying architecture in Madrid. In addition to
those two individuals there were a number of ‘floating’ contributors who worked
between projects, providing assistance when required or when available.
The theme of the 2008 Inclusiva.net workshop was ‘digital networks and phys-
ical space’. One principle topic that was to be addressed by the workshop was
‘geo-tagging’. Geo-tagging incorporates both the act of annotating maps through
the use of online services such as Google maps, Mappr and Flickr, as well as the
annotating of real locations through the use of mobile technologies. Each of the
ten projects selected for the 2008 workshop were to serve as ‘the first glimpse
of what we might call a new participatory digital type of urban development’12
through alternative applications of the geo-tagging methodology. Included in the
ten projects were a number of online, collaborative and politically charged map-
pings using the Google map API such as A Better City (2008), which provided
12
Quoted from the introduction of the Inclusiva.net call for projects (http:
//medialab-prado.es/article/2_encuentro_inclusiva-net_redes_digitales_y_espacio_
fisico).
193
a platform through which local communities could keep a record of any adverse
events (e.g. crimes and accidents) that have occurred in their neighbourhoods.
Also produced within the workshop was a similar mapping service, entitled Wik-
ibivouac (2008) that collated together a series of maps that had been annotated
by individuals who had attended one of a number of organised field days in which
participants were asked to go out into a selected city and find specific things such
as free water points or quiet spots.
In addition to In Hear, Out There: Madrid, there were two more GPS works
undertaken within the workshop: one which allowed walkers to control the param-
eters of a musical sequencer via their walk and another that presented various
walk traces as celestial constellations. Onto each ‘star’ of these constellations,
field recordings were placed that were captured at numerous points along the
depicted walks.
6.4.1 The Initial Proposal
The original proposal for In Hear, Out There: Madrid laid bare plans for an online
user-generated database of media (e.g. photographs, video and sound recordings)
that are mapped across the geographic regions that they document. Following on
from this, I envisaged that this map could then become the resource for a further
set of users who would be able to overlay the location-specific, spatialised media
uploaded by the first group onto a different site, path, territory or municipality
and then initiate and explore this mapping in this new location by way of a mobile
device.
The aspirations for the system I describe above was to generate an interest
in place and in documenting place, and also to provide a common platform and
methodology with which to do this. Moreover, the invitation to transpose an
image of one place onto another was intended as an invitation to transform the
experience of the destination locality, supplementing it with the sights and sounds
of another place. This act I envisaged could either be performed as a means to
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challenge the nature of a place through contrasting it with another or as a means

to experiment with an alternative design for a location through the overlaying of
elements from elsewhere that exhibit the qualities desired for the receiving place.
I approached the residency within Inclusiva.net knowing that my expectation

for user tools and a collaborative platform were wildly unfeasible in the allotted
time. The work created in Madrid was to provide only the first step towards the
full proposal, acting as an example of the potential of this system for exploring
place. The preliminary test would demonstrate how bringing an impression of
one place into another, mediated by mobile technologies, could transform the
destination, augmenting it with the character of the donor locality, and in doing
highlight any areas of dissatisfaction within the host site and demonstrate what
improvements could be made.
In my proposal I did not name a specific place or type of place in which

I wanted to situate my intended experiment. I wanted this to be decided by
the group I was to work with, as well as to be informed by a discussion with
individuals local to Madrid. The chosen site was AZCA, which Maria suggested
having studied the site as part of her PhD programme. The following summary is
my own understanding of the AZCA’s history, which was relayed to me by Maria
as well as my own reflection upon the site in response to time spent there.
6.4.2 The Park of AZCA
AZCA is primarily a commercial district that is a short distance from the centre
of Madrid. It is home to a number of skyscrapers including Picasso Tower that at
the time of its inauguration in 1988 was the tallest building in Spain. Occupying
this building, and the buildings that surround, are some of Spain’s most powerful
and successful financial institutions such as Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria
(BBVA).
At the centre of AZCA is a large rectangular, labyrinthian park comprising of

a number of interconnecting pathways separated by small channels of greenery.
195
At the perimeter of the park, amongst the skyscrapers, are a number of small
retail businesses. Beneath the park is a series of underground corridors occupied
by nightclubs, bars, cafes and local stores.
AZCA was built on the cusp of a large residential district and was expected
to serve this community as well as accommodate large-scale financial/commercial
business. As a business centre, AZCA has prospered; the enterprises that first
moved into the site have remained and grown. However, AZCA has been rather
less effective as a community hub: outside of the commuter hours the site is
desolate, the park is under used and the enclosed retail services are poorly stocked
and poorly attended. Furthermore, the underground premises are mostly derelict
and those that are not have become notorious crime hotspots, frequented at night
by local gangs.
6.4.3 Re-invigorating AZCA
In Hear, Out There: Madrid provided an image of what could have been an
altogether different AZCA, one in which both commuters and local residents
would have been accommodated more equally within a welcoming, lively and
safe environment. To do so the original plans for AZCA were referenced. In these
space and funds had been allotted for an opera house, library and botanic gardens.
These three amenities although commissioned were never built as the money to
do so was later revoked, their designs replaced with what is in situ today.
In Hear, Out There: Madrid instilled a sense of the three missing amenities
into AZCA by situating within AZCA the soundscape of three of Madrid’s most
emblematic facilities: the Teatro Real, the Real Jardı́n Botánico and the Bib-
lioteca Nacional, each of which are thriving, well attended centres of recreation.
In doing so, In Hear, Out There: Madrid brought to AZCA not only an image of
three successful spaces but also an image of the public who frequent them, giving
to AZCA an exuberance that was absent prior to this act.
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6.4.4 Methodology
The Teatro Real, the Real Jardı́n Botánico and the Biblioteca Nacional were each
recorded by both Andrew Henley and myself using binaural microphones. For
the Teatro Real, we were fortunate enough to be granted permission to record
a rehearsal from within the auditorium and then stand along the aisles of the
theatre as guests took their seats. Additionally we recorded visitors entering
the building and congregated in the lobby and bar during the intermission. For
the Real Jardı́n Botánico we recorded at a number of points along the various
pathways, capturing the native wildlife as well as the activities of the general
public, tourists and school groups enjoying the park. We also recorded our entry,
exit and walk within a number of the garden’s glass houses. Biblioteca Nacional
presented a challenge in that libraries are synonymous with an absence of sound.
However, the building is incredibly reverberant, even the slightest sound echo
throughout producing rich timbres and tones.
Andrew and I then edited the collected recordings. A procedure similar to

that of Blackstaff is Belfast was carried out, producing the aforementioned three
types of samples: the discrete, continuous and ambient (section 6.2.3). Upon
the mscape software, these samples were then mapped across three regions of
AZCA, one for each of the three venues. Each venue’s region was separated into
a number of sub regions. For example, in my mapping, the opera house comprised
of an entrance hall, lobby/bar, auditorium and stage. In each of these sub-regions
sounds grouped under these headings were presented. The decision as to where
each venue was to be positioned was based upon its correspondence with aspects
of AZCA’s topography as well as where in AZCA the GPS signal was at its
strongest.
In a similar vain to Blackstaff is Belfast, aspects of the three transposed

venues were paired with particular aspects of AZCA’s landscape with which they
share some commonality. By doing so, it was hoped that these features would
appear to be enlivened by the overlaid sounds. For example there is a fountain
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at the centre of AZCA’s park that is scarcely turned on. Over the surrounding
region the botanic garden was overlaid. Within Real Jardı́n Botánico there is a
series of large ornate fountains. The sound of one of these fountains was placed
upon AZCA’s fountain, thus giving the impression that this fountain was once
again functioning healthily (figure 6.6). For the opera house, the sounds of the
auditorium recorded in the Teatro Real were spread across the steps of a large
tiered bowl in one corner of AZCA’s park. At the centre of this bowl was a sand
pit onto which the sounds of the stage were placed. This structure was reminiscent
of an amphitheatre, hence its suitability for the opera house (see figure 6.5).
6.5 Psychogeography, Locative Media and In Hear,

Out There
There are a good number of articles that have compared locative media art with
the Situationist practice of Psychogeography (Dekker, 2009; Holmes, 2003; Mc-
Garrigle, 2010; Tuters and Varnelis, 2006). Psychogeography is, as the name sug-
gests, the convergence of psychology and geography; Guy Debord, the figurehead
of the Situationist movement, defines it as: ‘the study of the precise laws and
specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on
the emotions and behaviour of individuals’ (Debord, 1955). Psychogeography is
a science that seeks to understand how place can impact upon the psychic life of
the inhabitants. The findings of psychogeography, for Debord, were to be used
to promote and inform the construction of a new urban environment that was to
reflect and facilitate the hopes and passions of its public (Coverley, 2006, p.89).
Mark Tuters’ ‘Beyond Locative Media’ (Tuters and Varnelis, 2006) is the
origin of many of the connections made between locative media and psychogeog-
raphy. In his article, Tuters suggests that the two forms of locative media that he
identifies (i.e. the phenomenological and annotative types) are comparable to psy-
chogeography’s two main means of investigation: the ‘dérive’ and ‘détournement’
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respectively. I have already introduced Debord’s dérive in my discussion of Re-

sounding Rivers (section 5.7.3). As a reminder, in a dérive the participant is
expected to suspend all habitual activity and to allow themselves to be led by
their terrain, walking with no destination or route in mind. To satisfy psychogeog-
raphy, the participant is expected to note down the various moods and ambiences
they encountered within their walk.
Works such as those of Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern (for instance the
aforementioned Running Stitch) are the clearest examples of the dérive in locative
media: In Running Stitch participants were asked to walk around the city without
aim, for the sheer enjoyment of wandering and experiencing their city. A trace of
their path was then visualized alongside that of others, providing a mapping of
the city as it is lived and in doing so demonstrating the common areas to which
individuals are drawn and those from which they are repelled. This notion of the
instinctual push and pull of cityscape is a key idea for Debord’s psychogeography
as writers such as Pinder have commented (Pinder, 1996).
Debord defines détournement as: ‘The integration of present or past artistic

production into a superior construction of a milieu’ (Debord, 1958a) and suggests
that in doing so ‘the mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the bringing
together of two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and
produces a synthetic organisation of greater efficacy’ (Debord, 1956). In sup-
port of this notion, Debord separates the act of détournement into two types:
minor and deceptive. The former being ‘the détournement of an element which
has no importance in itself and which thus draws all its meaning from the new
context in which it is placed’ (ibid.). The latter being: ‘the détournement of an
intrinsically significant element, which derives a different scope from the new con-
text. A slogan of Saint-Just, for example, or a sequence from Eisenstein’. Debord
posits détournement as a successor of the surrealist’s juxtaposition and collage,
suggesting the results of this methodology should be more critical, political and
transformative and not merely sensational (ibid.).
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The role of détournement in locative media is only briefly addressed by Tuters,

his only comment being that ‘annotative projects... generally seek to change the
world by adding data to it, much as the practice of détournement did’ (Tuters
and Varnelis, 2006). No article since has expanded upon this claim, the discussion
that follows will hopefully do so using In Hear, Out There: Madrid as an example.
6.5.1 In Hear, Out There as Dérive and Détournement
Although the dérive may more clearly suit Tuters’ phenomenological locative
media and allow for him to set up a dichotomy between his two types, I believe
that in varying degrees the dérive is also evident in annotative locative media.
This has been noted elsewhere, with annotative works such as Teri Rueb’s Drift
and the aforementioned 34n 118w by Knowlton, Spellman and Hight having
been singled out for their facilitating of a dérive (McGarrigle, 2010). In addition
to these works, I suggest that both of my In Hear, Out There projects invoke
aspects of the dérive: Both works ask that the listener walk around an annotated
site, following no particular path and with no destination in mind. This is different
from Blackstaff is Belfast in which the listener was asked to walk towards the
Lagan River where the work culminated and requested that a linear path be
followed to reach it.
Furthermore, In Hear, Out There takes as its ethos one of Debord’s proposed
means for inciting a dérive: that of ‘transposing maps of two different regions’
(Debord, 1955). For In Hear, Out There: Madrid the listener navigated around
the image of three virtual constructions (the opera house, library and botanic
garden) whilst actually navigating around the park of AZCA. By doing so, these
listeners would have been drawn into inhabiting the site in a manner very different
to that expected. Rather than hurrying through the location like the commuter,
these listeners would have explored the site more slowly and thoroughly. More-
over, in both In Hear, Out There works the expectation was that the individual
would think critically about the location they explored, questioning in Madrid
200
what the site could have been should the original plans have been met and what
as a result of these failed plans the site has become. For Debord, a dérive must
entail critical thinking (Pinder, 1996).
Détournement is also, in a renegotiated form, a key principle within In Hear,

Out There. The Juxtaposition of a sound image from one place onto the physical
body of another, which is particularly evident in In Hear, Out There: Madrid,
I believe is in keeping with détournement. Indeed one of Debord’s examples of
détournement is the placement of a new soundtrack onto a pre-existing cinematic
montage so as to challenge the content of the moving image (Debord, 1956). This
is a comparable act to that undertaken as part of In Hear, Out There: Madrid :
a new soundtrack was placed onto a pre-existing cityscape.
In the Madrid work, the reasoning behind bringing sound materials from an
opposing place into AZCA was to resurrect the terminated plans for the site and
in doing so both highlight AZCA’s failings as a site of recreation and community,
and demonstrate a more successful, animated AZCA. This expectation resonates
with Debord’s expectation for détournement: a positive change to the ambience
of a place is anticipated through the overlaying of external materials. What’s
more, I suggest that because the amenities brought into AZCA were recognisable
and much loved emblems of Madrid, In Hear, Out there: Madrid was an act of
deceptive détournement.
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Figure 6.5: Portion of AZCA upon which the ‘opera house’ was set - The
steps down from the main path were assigned as the opera house’s auditorium, whilst
the bowl in the centre was assigned as the stage
202
Figure 6.6: Functioning fountain overlaid onto AZCA’s disused fountain -

visual representation of the conjoining of the sound’s of one place with the physical
body of another
203
6.6 In Hear, Out There: Yokohama
In Hear, Out There: Yokohama was created and presented as part of the Dis-
locate 2008 festival that was held between 30th August and the 21st of September
2008. The festival, held in Japan each year since 2006, celebrates the convergence
of art, technology and locality through month long exhibitions, workshops and a
closing symposium13 . In the year of my contribution, the theme of the festival was
‘Constructing Place’; under discussion was how pervasive and mobile technologies
may support, transform or redefine the places that they are housed or initiated in,
as well as our experience of these places. A number of key locative art thinkers and
practitioners either exhibited work or presented talks within the festival including
Proboscis, Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern, and Drew Hemment, all of whom I
have already discussed in this thesis (section 6.1.1).
Similar to In Hear, Out There: Madrid, I proposed to deliver a site-specific

locative media project but did not specify any particular site prior to beginning
my residency; that decision was to be made once I had studied and experienced
the city, and had the opportunity to consult with those who lived there. The sug-
gested course of action, as the title of the work might suggest, was the same as in
Madrid: I wanted to take an aural image of one place and overlay it upon another
through the use of locative media methods and in doing so make comment upon
the recipient place, contrasting it with another by using this other to illuminate,
enhance or distort aspects of the host locality.
6.6.1 Selecting a Site
I conceived and constructed In Hear, Out There: Yokohama from a workspace

within a gallery and community centre named ZAIM (which is in Yokohama).
This venue was also where the mobile device required to participate in the con-
structed mobile sound walk could be collected.
13
http://www.dis-locate.net/about3.htm
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In my first week within Yokohama I did a great deal of travelling around both
this city and Tokyo (which is a short tube ride away) becoming accustomed to
the culture, making a great deal of field recordings and searching for a suitable
place to situate a study. Despite covering such a large area in this preliminary
investigation, I ultimately selected the Yokohama Baseball Stadium and its sur-
rounding grounds as the host for my work. This site was only a short walk from
my base at ZAIM and a site which I had to pass through everyday so as to
reach my accommodation and access the public transport. As a twist to the In
Hear, Out There premise, the stadium complex was to be both the subject of my
transposition and the donating locality. I was to overlay field recordings captured
within the site back on to it.
6.6.2 The Yokohama Baseball Stadium
Yokohama Baseball Stadium is a thirty thousand seat stadium that sits in the
heart of the Naka-ward region of the city facing a prosperous commercial and
leisure district, housing a number of expensive shops and restaurants (figure 6.7).
In the south of the region, at the back of stadium, is a far less prosperous res-
idential district. The grounds surrounding the stadium are primarily there to
accommodate queuing spectators entering the stadium through one of a number
of gates. As well as Baseball games, which happen on average once every two
weeks; the stadium also hosts music concerts perhaps once or twice a month.
The grounds serve a number of sub-functions outside of accommodating spec-

tators: the grounds are lined with a good number of tress and green belts, includ-
ing a small pond and garden, and therefore attract, and appeal to, local walkers
and leisure-seekers. There is also a children’s play area. Further to this, com-
muters use the grounds as a short cut, avoiding the busy roads that surround the
site. In addition, the site is home to a number of unanticipated groups such as
bands of taipo drum players who congregate in the evenings to play and practice
drums together and, less positively, homeless people who find board in the se-
cluded recesses of the park. Hence, the stadium complex can be seen to be of use
205
to a good number of differing social groups, each of who inhabit different regions
of the site at different times. It was the myriad of divergent uses of the site, and
the many possible ways of conceiving the site, dependent upon the outlook of the
user, that attracted me to it.
6.6.3 The Intervention
In a two week long study of the stadium site, I gathered together a number of bin-
aural recordings. This catalogue included recordings of a baseball match, focusing
upon the crowds inside and outside the stadium; a pop concert by a band called
Porno Graffiti, who I am told are very popular with teenage girls in Japan; school
groups who gathered in the grounds; pedestrians walking through the grounds; a
large group of hungry pigeons being fed; taipo drummers playing together; groups
huddled beneath the tress in a heavy thunder storm; children playing in the park;
and finally the various sounds of wildlife, in particular Cicadas14 .
These recordings were then edited and layered upon an mscape mapping in
the same fashion as for Blackstaff is Belfast and In Hear, Out There: Madrid. The
resulting composition bore resemblance to that of Present Place in that images of
the real space from times previous were overlaid onto the present. Unlike Present
Place, the past images of the site were not composed over time but over space. On
the whole, the region of the stadium site where a recording had been made was
then the same point onto which that recording was positioned. I had programmed
the walk so that every sample, each of which documented a different activity that
was recorded at a different time, fused with, and drifted into, the next producing
one seamless environment, and one aggregated image of the past. As an example
of this technique, at one of the gates to the stadium the listener would hear
the sounds of crowds gathered for a baseball game, as the listener moved further
around the stadium the sound of rain would begin. At this point the crowds would
14
Cicadas are small insects that only live above ground for a few weeks each year and that
make a very loud and high pitched tweeting noise.
206
subside and a few remaining individuals would be heard by the listener, darting
past to quickly exit out of the rain. As the listener progressed towards a canopy
of trees, the rain would get heavier and be heard to fall upon the foliage above,
by now the baseball crowds would no longer be audible. This scene is constructed
out of two recordings separated by days; it never rained when the baseball game
was on. However, through the overlaying of rain, and the overlaying of pedestrians
caught in this rain, onto the edges of the baseball crowds the two scenes appear
as one. This strategy was exercised throughout the site.
6.7 In Hear, Out There, Montage and the Past within

the Present
In her text Art and Architecture: A Place Between Jane Rendell explores what
she terms ‘critical spatial practice’ (Rendell, 2006, p.16). She defines this to be the
application of critical theory15 within everyday spaces by way of creative inter-
vention. Rendell suggests that the notion of a critical spatial practice is familiar
to site-specific art but not to architecture. Rendell explores a number of art’s
critical methods and either makes connections to this and existing architectural
practices or suggests how these methods may in the future apply to architecture.
One art technique that Rendell discusses is that of montage, which has its
roots within Dadaist and Surrealist practice. With relation to critical theory, Ren-
dell approaches montage as Walter Benjamin articulates it (Rendell, 2006, p.75).
In her discussion Rendell references a number of site-specific artworks that she
believes adhere to the principles of montage, she also references a small number
of architectural strategies. Leading on from this, Rendell narrows her exploration
down to works of montage that bring the past into contact with the present
that she suggests are in keeping with Benjamin’s ‘dialectical image’. I reference
15
An account of which particular critical theories are of interest to Rendell can be found
within her book (Rendell, 2006, p.8).
207
Rendell’s discussion of site-specific montage because I believe that both my In

Hear, Out There works serve as examples of this. Furthermore, both these works
involved layering the past upon the present.
6.7.1 Montage, Site-specific Art and Architecture
Montage16 entails juxtaposing elements in a way that makes them question one
another (Rendell, 2006, p.103). Rendell suggests that montage has classically
involved the insertion of everyday objects into an artwork or into the gallery
in order to ‘provoke a redefinition of what art might be’ (ibid.). The earliest
example of montage that Rendell cites is Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), in which a
urinal was placed within the context of the gallery, giving rise to a ‘critique of the
aesthetic criteria used to categorise objects as art’ (ibid.). Rendell then moves on
to discuss how she believes the montage principle has been applied within site-
specific art and also within architectural practice. This examination is presented
through an analysis of a number of existing artworks and architectural strategies;
three of those I wish to reference here:
In Photopath(1967) Victor Burgin pinned to the flooring of the hosting gallery

a number of photographs that were duplicate images of the flooring to the same
scale. In Rendell’s words, this allowed for ‘the floor of the gallery, or the ‘outside’
of the art, to be produced as the content of the artwork itself’ (Rendell, 2006,
p.104). Of the work, Burgin comments ‘I am looking at the real through the
virtual, at the present through the presence of the past, looking at one thing
while thinking of something else’ (Burgin and Streitberger, 2010, p.268).
New Holland (1997) by Cornford and Cross is a large shed that has been
erected within the site of the Sainsbury Centre of Visual Arts in Norwich, UK.
This shed is the same as that used by the farming industry to hold turkeys.
16
Rendell uses montage as a catch all term for many of art’s contrastive methods including
the readymade, the Surrealist’s collage and assemblage, and the Situationist’s détournement.
208
Rendell suggests that the initial response to this juxtaposition is one of shock
and outrage at the ‘transgressive nature of the gesture’, which appears to attack
the ‘high-brow values ingrained in [it’s] cultural context’ (Rendell, 2006, p.107).
However, for Rendell this response subsides to reveal a more intricate set of
tensions that pertain to the question of what makes praiseworthy architecture
(ibid.).
In Bernard Tschumi’s architectural designs it is not materials that are juxta-

posed, but real social actions. Tschumi seeks to challenge the ‘historical layers’
(Rendell, 2006, p.106) of the sites he is commissioned to reinvigorate through the
introduction of facilities that support an array of new and contrasting activities
that are foreign to the site. Tschumi suggests that by bringing into contact multi-
ple uses and ‘functions’, each practice is given the power to ‘disrupt’ or ‘subvert’
all others (Rendell, 2006, p.116).
6.7.2 The Dialectical Image
For Benjamin, the dialectical image is the instant in which the past is recognised
within the present as a ruin that was once desired (Rendell, 2006, p.77). Susan
Buck-Morss, a scholar of Benjamin’s work, relays that this recognition is for
Benjamin one of shock and has the potential to ‘jolt the dreaming collective into
a political awakening’ (Buck-Morss, 1991, p.219). Benjamin defines the dialectical
image as such:
It’s not that what is past that casts its light on what is present, or
what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein
what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a
constellation. In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill. For
while the relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal,
continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical:
is not progression but image, suddenly emergent (Benjamin, 1999,
p.462).
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One of many examples Benjamin raises in reference to the dialectical image is

the Parisian Arcades (Gilloch, 1996, p.109). In the early nineteenth century the
arcades were filled with the most costly and desired ‘commodities’ and frequented
by Paris’ richest and most well respected people. However, by the early twentieth-
century the arcades and the things they sold had fallen out of favour. Due to this,
the arcades became barren and ruinous. Rendell suggests that the much-loved ar-
cades of the nineteenth century are the thesis that is contradicted by the unvalued
arcades of the twentieth century, what may be termed the antithesis. The syn-
thesis is the dialectical image, in which the dreams of the past are recognised
in the present (as a perceivable entity) and recognised as being defunct (i.e. as
being merely a ruin). Benjamin’s hope for such an image is that it would call into
question the nature of what is desired in the present (Rendell, 2006, p.107).
Benjamin saw both film and photography as the art practices through which
a dialectical image could most readily surface17 . Rendell traces the dialectical
images presence in site-specific art and architecture, focusing upon works that
‘position what-has-been in relation to what is now in a way that is not sequential
but that operates through simultaneity and juxtaposition’ (Rendell, 2006, p.121).
Each of these works Rendell suggests draws attention to repressed aspects of
history (ibid.) and by doing so place the present in a ‘critical position’ (Gilloch,
1996, p.114). As a revision of Benjamin’s thought, Rendell notes that many of the
artworks she views do the work of the dialectical image but do so over a prolonged
period of time rather than in an instant because the works she references are not
only perceived visually but also entail ‘listening, reading and walking’ (Rendell,
2006, p.143), which are not quite as rapid in operation.
An example of a work that resonates with Benjamin’s dialectical image that

Rendell raises is Sarah Whiteread’s House (1993) (Rendell, 2006, p.129). In this
work Whiteread made a cast of a real Victorian terrace house situated in an
17
See Benajmin’s texts ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (Benjamin,
1936) for more information.
210
estate in London’s East End that had been marked for demolition. The house
and the street on which it stood were then torn down as planned, leaving just
the cast18 . The cast can be interpreted as not just marking the past presence of a
home or a street but also stand as a monument/ruin to outmoded beliefs of what
a good home should be and what family and community life should be like.
6.7.3 In Hear, Out There as Montage and a Critical Practice
Both In Hear, Out There works can be interpreted as acts of montage and both
can be said to have brought the past to bear upon the present. In Madrid, images
of three of Madrid’s most emblematic institutions were situated in AZCA so
as to foreground the original plans for the site, which were never satisfied. In
Yokohama, I positioned the past within the present through the overlaying of
sound recordings captured in the same site that they were subsequently projected
into. In this work I also brought recordings that documented the site’s many uses
into contact with one another. In the discussion that follows I shall demonstrate
that both my In Hear, Out There works satisfy Rendell’s notion of a critical
spatial practice and do so through montage or by the raising of a dialectical image.
So as to validate my claims I will compare my work to some of the examples that
Rendell raises.
In Hear, Out There: Madrid : Compositionally In Hear, Out There: Madrid

can be likened to Conford and Cross’s New Holland because structures foreign to
AZCA were brought into it and contrast with it. In the case of my Madrid work
these structures were not physical but purely aural. Whereas Conford and Cross
placed a turkey shed next to an award winning building so as to question what
makes praiseworthy architecture, I on the other hand brought to AZCA the image
of an opera house, library and botanic garden so as to draw attention to a little
known aspect of the sites history, namely its abandoned plans. Furthermore, my
18
I note that the work was intended to remain on site as a permanent piece but in actuality
only stood for three months due to public contestation.
211
Madrid work suggested what AZCA could have been if the abandoned plans had
come to fruition. Conceptually In Hear, Out There: Madrid is in keeping with
Benjamin’s dialectical image: through sound, the piece placed onto the present
the forgotten desires and thwarted expectations of the past, and the site in which
this occurred was, and still is, somewhat ruinous like Benjamin’s arcades19 .
In her application of Benjamin’s thought to site-specific art and architecture,

Rendell raises the example of the regeneration of the Palais de Toyko, Paris in the
early 2000s (Rendell, 2006, p.91). In particular, Rendell speaks of a garden that
was erected upon an old ‘fatigued concrete structure’ (ibid.). Of this intervention
Rendell comments: ‘by adding life and vitality to the ruined building and spatial
luxury through material efficiency, fragments are combined in a manner that
might be considered allegorical in focus on disintegration, yet also montage in
the juxtaposition of decay with vitality’ (Rendell, 2006, p.94). Rendell uses the
word ‘allegorical’ in reference to another of Benjamin’s concepts, which is closely
linked to the dialectical image (Rendell, 2006, p.75). I believe the effect of In
Hear, Out There: Madrid would have been similar to that of the garden at Palais
de Tokyo. In my work, the vibrant sounds of three much loved and well-attended
institutes (e.g. the Teatro Real) were layered onto AZCA, a site that I have
suggested to be in a state of decay.
In Hear, Out There: Yokohama; Through layering back upon the sta-
dium site recordings captured in this site, In Hear, Out There: Yokohama did
with sound what Burgin’s Photoplay did with visual image: Burgin brought his
audience into considering the flooring of the host gallery through having them in-
spect photographic images of it, which were positioned upon it. In my Yokohama
work, I sought to direct the listener’s attention onto the stadium site through
having them attend to recordings of this site, which, in being presented as art
19
I note that the architecture of AZCA is somewhat worn and dated, and many of the shops
and services underneath or at the fringes of the site have closed; the site is also fairly underused.
212
and presented through a sound/music technology, were able to engage the listener
more readily than the site and it’s real sound could do alone.
In Hear, Out There: Yokohama also recalls Tschumi’s notion of an architec-

ture that accommodates a diverse array of activities and events. In his discussion,
Tschumi outlines three different strategies for the conjoining of practices: trans-
, cross-, and dis-programming (Rendell, 2006, p.116). The first strategy entails
the bringing of two functions together that are not usually associated with one
another. Cross-programming involves the bringing of a new functionality to an
existing site, which it is not designed for, whilst dis-programming entails the
bringing together of two ‘functions’ with the expectation that one will ‘undo’
(ibid.) the other. I suggest that, whilst not being an act of architecture, my
Yokohama work clearly resonates with Tschumi’s trans-programming strategy
because as part of my work I layered together the sounds of various activities and
events witnessed in the stadium site, which do not ordinarily occur together and
which are quite different from one another. For example, my composition placed
the taipo drummers, who frequent the site at night, next to the activities of
early morning commuters. By being layered together in time and space, I suggest
that each use of the site I referenced was able to interrogate all others, as with
Tschumi’s functions. This interrogation may have entailed simply a comparison
of content (i.e. what events are in one but not the other) or provoked a more
critical questioning relating to the site as a whole, asking, for example, what kind
of place is this?
Although Tschumi’s trans-programming is clearly the most closely linked to In

Hear, Out There: Yokohama, it could also be argued that both cross-programming
and dis-programming are also evident processes. For example, my work brought
into the site that it explores an art audience who would have engaged with the
site as though it were an art installation. Hence, I gave to the site a new function-
ality, or at the very least a new significance. Furthermore, through their critical
investigation of the site, the audience may have come to think of this site differ-
213
ently from there on in. Hence, whilst the work may not have ‘undone’ an existing
practice, it may have ‘undone’ existing attitudes.
6.8 Conclusion
In my analysis of Blackstaff is Belfast I suggested this work to be an exam-

ple of what I have chosen to call locative soundscape composition because the
body of sound experienced by listeners, which these listeners bring into being
through their walk, is suitably similar in both content and structuring to that of
soundscape composition, as well as in agreement with the concepts and attitudes
that underpin these works. Through making this connection between Blackstaff
is Belfast and soundscape composition I have also made a broader connection be-
tween soundscape composition and locative art. This firstly serves to promote the
notion of a locative sound art, which could inspire alternative ways of approaching
the creation of locative artwork. Furthermore, it suggests to those whom make
soundscape composition, or indeed any style of composition, that there are new
avenues to explore that entail the use of spatial technologies and entail bringing
compositions into contact with real environments, opening up a whole new realm
of exploration and association.
I note that a great number of the locative media artworks that I highlighted
as being ‘expressive’ in section 6.1.1, such as those of Teri Rueb and Duncan
Speakman, can either be said to be locative soundscape composition or can at
least be described as ‘coherent compositions’ because all sound materials within
these works flow smoothly into one another, producing a unified whole. I have
also suggested that my two In Hear, Out There works can be said to be locative
soundscape compositions, however these do not follow the clear narrative arc
that Blackstaff is Belfast does. Hence, I suggest these two walks to be a little
different in kind, the difference being the mode of walking they support: the two
In Hear, Out There works support a ‘drifting’ (in reference to Debord’s dérive)
rather than an ‘advancing’, which is to say that they do not annotate a clear, set
214
path through a location, leading to some sort of culmination point, but rather
they annotate an area that the walker can explore as they please, moving back
and forth between the sounds and situations that appeal to them.
I have also designated my three mobile works as examples of what I am calling

‘site-specific soundscape composition’, because of their compositional structure
and because this composition is devised in accordance with, and as an accom-
paniment to, a real, physical landscape, which it is then heard within. My two
installation works from the previous chapter may similarly be thought of as site-
specific soundscape compositions for both entailed the projection of sound mate-
rials that were structured over time as well as space. I will pick up on this idea
in the conclusion to this thesis, which follows this chapter.
In my analysis of In Hear, Out There: Madrid I demonstrated that this work

echoes the principles of the Situationist practices of the dérive and détournement.
As I note in that section, the dérive has been applied to locative art by numerous
researchers and practitioners yet détournement has only been raised in passing,
the link to locative media never properly explained. Hence, through my discussion
I have sought to correct this oversight. Furthermore, within the context of sound
art neither the Situationists nor the Surrealists have been explored with any kind
of vigour, hence once more I believe this is a contribution that I am making.
My analysis of In Hear, Out There: Yokohama explored how this work and
the preceding Madrid piece adhered to the principles of montage as Rendell de-
scribes them, in light of Walter Benjamin’s own definition. Détournement can be
interpreted as being a specific type of montage that is, as Debord attests (De-
bord, 1956), intended as being more critical and political than the Surrealist’s
equivalent. It is montage’s critical capacities that interest Rendell; she explores
how site-specific art (which are all visual/physical in kind) and architecture can
produce ‘critical spatial practices’ through layering onto their site materials and
forms that challenge it. I have extended Rendell’s discussion by suggesting more
explicitly that sound can be the lead material within site-specific montage and
that locative media may also be called into play. On that note, I have also hinted
215
at there being a new arm to locative media art, in addition to those Hemment
suggests, for works that are more critical than they are expressive or documental.
Indeed, there may already be a series of locative works that satisfy this heading.
I note that there are a number of locative media works that criticise the medium
itself, through criticism of the technology in use (i.e. GPS)20 .
20
See for example the Transborder Immigrant Tool (2007), which clearly subverts GPS tech-
nology, utilising it as a means to guide immigrants wishing to cross the Mexico-USA boarder
along the safest, most direct route (http://post.thing.net/node/1642). Also see Can you see
me now? (2001) by Blast Theory. See the article (Holmes, 2003) for more on this subject.
216
Figure 6.7: Overhead shot of Yokohama Baseball Stadium - The mobile

walk was layered onto the grounds that encircle the stadium.
217
Figure 6.8: Listener walking around the stadium site - listeners were advised
to put the device into a pocket so as to engage more freely with the site.
218
Chapter 7
Conclusion
This thesis has aimed to shed light upon the different creative practices with which
I engage, and the historical, theoretical, and methodological perspectives from
which these practices emerge. I situate my own work generally within the field of
‘sound art’, an interdisciplinary tradition that I have shown to have roots in both
music and the visual arts. In addition to defining my own practice, this thesis
also contributes more broadly to the understanding of how new technologies,
specifically mobile technologies, can have a bearing on sound art, and how sound
art can help reveal uses and understandings of these technologies that have not
previously been explored. Moreover, through a discussion of my own work and
the work of the six main artists I have addressed, this thesis has introduced to
sound art theories from other faculties of thought as a means to strengthen our
understanding of sound as it relates to: the city, the politics of everyday life, the
production of space and place, and the relationships between site-specific art,
urban environments, and social actors.
What follows is an overview of the main points of this thesis. To begin I will
provide a brief summary of each of the five works I have discussed in this thesis.
Within this discussion I will make some final remarks upon the relation between
my own work and the work of the six artists I have addressed. These artists are
219
7. Conclusion
Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, R. Murray Schafer, Max Neuhaus, Bill Fontana and
Janet Cardiff. I will also relate some of the ideas and concepts that I have raised
within my analysis of particular works, to the other works.
In section 7.2 I will speak more broadly of my work with mobile technologies,
suggesting six key contributions I believe I have made with regard to the establish-
ment of a mobile sound practice that addresses both sound art and context-aware,
mobile technologies. To end, I will briefly outline three avenues of investigation
that I believe I could follow in the future. Each of these would extend a partic-
ular aspect of my PhD research. Included in this section is an introduction to
the Fountain Experiment (2009) that I conducted alongside HP Labs and which
demonstrates how mobile sound walks may evolve in the future through contem-
plated use of technologies and through focusing upon what makes places aurally
distinct.
7.1 The Five Works and a Few Further Ties
7.1.1 Present Place
Present Place can be interpreted as having been an exercise in understanding the

nature of a place through an analysis of its various contexts, which i subsequently
made public through exhibition. My method of studying a site’s various contexts
took its lead from Max Neuhaus’ suggestion that, prior to creating site-specific
sound installations, he would conduct a thorough investigation of the site, ad-
dressing its aural, visual, and social contexts. In Present Place, I took Neuhaus’
suggestion a little further by developing an observational strategy that included
a graphical analysis that both benefitted my own study and functioned as a refer-
ence tool for my audience. The procedures that I developed were informed by R.
Murray Schafer’s soundscape classification scheme, which he outlines in The Tun-
ing of the World (Schafer, 1994), and Michel Chion’s ‘masking method’ (Chion,
1994). Chion devised the masking method as a means to make apparent sound’s
220
7. Conclusion
contribution within film, comparing it to the visual image. In my analysis, I com-

pared what can be heard on site with what can be seen so as to arrive at an
understanding of sound’s contribution to one’s sense and appreciation of place.
My study of sound in relation to sight extends Schafer’s analysis, for Schafer only
outlined procedures that apply to sound and the soundscape in isolation of each
of the other senses.
Present Place also serves as an example of what I have termed ‘site-specific

soundscape composition’. As part of the Present Place exhibition, a fifty-minute
composition was played in the gallery space. The composition collated together
a number of recordings captured in the gallery at various times over the course
of my artist residency. This composition can be shown to conform to Truax’s
soundscape compositions of a fixed spatial perspective, which provide images of
sound environments from the perspective of an immobile listener (Truax, 2002).
It has been said that site-specific art works lose the majority of their meaning
when they are relocated to sites other than the ones for which they were intended
(Tittel, 2009). This can also be said of the Present Place composition: a great
deal of the aesthetic effect and value of this work arose through the relationship
between the content of the composition, the gallery’s real sound and non-sounding
events, as well as the audience’s perception of these events.
7.1.2 Resounding Rivers
The concept and content of Resounding Rivers is comparable to Bill Fontana’s

sound sculptures: each of the work’s six installations entailed the projection of
field recordings into a site, giving rise to a spatially dynamic sound field that
aligned with and enlivened the site’s physical and visual aspect. However, counter
to Fontana’s methods, each of my installations were positioned within sites where
art would not usually be found, and the sound of each installation was nestled
amongst the real sound already present on site. By working in this manner I
hoped to reach a broader public (not just art audiences) and have an affect upon
221
7. Conclusion
this public without necessarily requiring their attention, yet rewarding this atten-
tion if given. These aspirations I suggest are closer in kind to the aspirations of
Neuhaus rather than those of Fontana. Neuhaus designed many of his installation
works, particularly those he termed ‘discoverables’ (section 3.3.2), to be similarly
inconspicuous.
Resounding Rivers, and indeed much of Fontana’s work, can be said to con-
form to Jane Rendell’s notion of ‘critical spatial practice’, which I raised in my
discussion of the two In Hear, Out There mobile walks (section 6.7.1). Rendell
cites site-specific art as being the art genre that is most akin to her proposed
critical spatial practice. One critical method that Rendell suggests site-specific
art often makes use of is that of montage (i.e. the juxtaposing of two images
so as to bring about a comparison). I suggest that Resounding Rivers can be
interpreted as an example of site-specific montage. In Resounding Rivers, the
sound of one place (i.e. a location where a river still flows) was layered onto the
body of another (i.e. a site in Belfast where a river once flowed) so as to raise
a comparison between the two and, in turn, a critical discussion. I anticipated
that this discussion would address the subject of urban development in the host
city. Additionally, in chapter five, I suggested that Resounding Rivers may have
initiated an act of ‘errance’ or ‘dérive’, both of which are walking practices that
Rendell highlights as being applicable to her critical spatial practice (Rendell,
2006, p.188).
I have related Schafer’s and Westerkamp’s soundwalk practices to my mobile

sound walks in my proposal for a locative soundscape composition (section 2.4.1).
The soundwalk has also influenced Resounding Rivers. Like in Westerkamp’s
Soundwalk in Queen Elizabeth Park, a map was made available to the Resound-
ing Rivers audience. This map outlined where the work’s six installations were
(thus, where the audience should walk to) and provided notes upon what types
of sounds the audience would encounter, which Westerkamp’s map also provided.
Furthermore, in Resounding Rivers, like Westerkamp’s soundwalks, listeners can
be said to have acted as ‘composer/performers’ because listeners chose how long
222
7. Conclusion
to spend exploring the bodies of sound that they were directed to by the map, as
well as the nature of this exploration (e.g. whether to stand still or move around).
Additionally, both Resounding Rivers and Westerkamp’s soundwalks tried to get
the audience to engage in acts of focused listening in places where one would
not usually attempt such, and both requested that the listener reflects upon the
content of the environments that they inhabit. In the case of Resounding Rivers,
this reflection may have included a comparison between the past and the present,
for each installation’s sound made reference to what Belfast used to be like.
7.1.3 Blackstaff is Belfast
The Surrealist’s errance entails an onsite imagining that is informed by and pro-
jected onto the landscape encountered by the walker. Both Resounding Rivers
and Blackstaff is Belfast encouraged listeners to imagine Belfast’s missing rivers
back within the city, as though they were still coursing through the city’s streets
as they had done in the past. Whereas Resounding Rivers projected sound related
to Belfast’s buried rivers directly into the street, Blackstaff is Belfast delivered
its sounds through headphones. For Blackstaff is Belfast, in order to give listen-
ers the sense that the river sounds they heard were happening away from their
own bodies and out within the external environment, binaural recordings were
utilised, which provide this perspective.
Blackstaff is Belfast is comparable to Cardiff’s audio walks because both entail

the use of binaural recordings and through this, seek to give rise to what Cardiff
refers to as a ‘third world’ that is part imaginary (in what is heard) and part real
(in what is seen). This notion of a sound-induced, reality-inspired imagining I
suggest also recalls Katherine Norman’s ‘reflective listening’, which I discussed in
relation to Westerkamp’s Kits Sound Beach (section 2.4.2). The difference being
that in a state of reflective listening, the ensuing imagining remains in the mind
of the listener as opposed to taking up occupancy in the real world.
223
7. Conclusion
Both Blackstaff is Belfast and Resounding Rivers shared the same underlying
concept and reasoning. Both works provide an image of Belfast’s buried rivers as
they may once have been, as a means to challenge the present period of develop-
ment affecting the host city. This resonates with Walter Benjamin’s ‘dialectical
image’ in which the past and present appear together in time, side by side. I
spoke of the dialectical image in my discussion of In Hear, Out There: Madrid
(section 6.7.1). Related to the dialectical image, one distinction between In Hear,
Out There: Madrid and Blackstaff is Belfast is that the former brought the past
to bear upon the present through the introduction of sound materials that refer-
enced this past, whereas in Blackstaff is Belfast, the past was shown to already
bear upon the present, for the annotated landscape contains many features that
relate to the missing Blackstaff River (e.g. the sealed bridge under which the
Blackstaff once flowed or the gates to Gasworks through which the Blackstaff
once passed). Part of the role of Blackstaff is Belfast was to bring the listener’s
attention to these features, for their significance is very often overlooked yet, I
believe, also very interesting and revealing.
7.1.4 In Hear, Out There: Madrid
In my original proposal for In Hear, Out There: Madrid, I stated my desire

to provide a platform through which an online community could upload and
download soundscape materials that document particular places from multiple
points across their area (section 6.4.1). One suggestion I made for the use of
downloaded materials was that they could be mapped onto new places so as to
demonstrate, by way of the features present in those materials, how the receiving
location could perhaps be improved. This suggestion resonates with Schafer’s
suggestion as to the role soundscape composition plays within acoustic design
(section 2.3.3). Schafer recommended that soundscape composition be employed
as a platform through which to experiment with a location’s sound field in search
of more positive alternatives, and also as a platform through which to demonstrate
and test improvements upon an audience. Unlike soundscape composition, the
224
7. Conclusion
method of experimentation that I proposed with In Hear, Out There: Madrid

was to take place on site, in the location under scrutiny, which would enable a
design to be assessed against the non-sounding attributes of a place (e.g. its visual
aspect) as well as allow this design to be mapped out over the area that it would
ultimately effect.
7.1.5 In Hear, Out There: Yokohama
As I have suggested in the introduction to this thesis, within my outline of how

certain phenomenological concepts relate to my own practice (section 1.4), I be-
lieve that each of my works impacts upon the listener’s sense of a place by either
appearing to alter some aspect of a place or by changing the listener’s orientation
and/or ‘intention’ towards this place and the things it contains. In Hear, Out
There: Yokohoma changed the audience’s intention by way of having this audi-
ence engage with an artwork that consisted of recordings that were captured in
the place that this artwork is then delivered in. In In Hear, Out There: Yokohama
that place was the grounds that encircle the Yokohama Baseball Stadium.
The stadium grounds are utilised by many different social groups, the most
frequent of whom is the commuter who passes through the site on his or her way
to and from work. In my discussion of Present Place, I referred to commuters
as ‘purposive walkers’ (section 5.2.4) and suggested that these walkers abide by
the phemenonlogist’s ‘natural attitude’, which is to say that they are mostly
ignorant of the things and events that surround them, for these walkers direct
their attentions towards their final destination (or elsewhere) rather than onto
their present locale. Like Present Place, In Hear, Out There: Yokohama entailed
a countering of the audience’s natural attitude and a turning of their attention
on to the external environment, engaging with it as they would an artwork.
In Hear, Out There: Yokohama also sought to change the listener’s sense
and understanding of the place annotated (i.e. the stadium grounds) by making
225
7. Conclusion
observable within one time frame the many faces of this place, which do not ordi-
narily coexist. By doing so, In Hear, Out There: Yokohama was able to provide
a perspective on this place that is not otherwise obtainable.
7.2 Towards a Mobile Sound Practice
In the context of sound art, most of the discussion upon mobile technologies has
tended to focus upon the design and construction of new hardware and software
systems1 . I have been fortunate enough to have worked with the mscape team at
HP Labs over the course of my PhD, and have therefore been able to concentrate
my research upon the creative use of an already established piece of software
that operates on commercially available mobile devices. Hence, I have been able
to devote far more time to investigating how to construct mobile enhanced sound
walks and how to best utilise sound media within such walks as well as exploring
what the aesthetic, conceptual and critical implications of placing this media upon
a site may be. These are all areas of investigation that other research programmes
have not addressed in much depth.
Locative media and locative art have, over the last ten years, developed into
lively fields of practice and debate. Furthermore, sound has prospered within this
medium, becoming a material that is favoured by many practitioners2 . However,
prior to this thesis, there have been very few written discussions on locative media
and locative art that have specifically addressed sound and sound’s role within
these two fields3 . Indeed, most of the prominent written contributions regarding
1
See for example the aforementioned Sonic City (Gaye et al., 2003) and Ambient Addition
(Vawter, 2006) or Atau Tanaka’s ‘Malleable Mobile Music’ (Tanaka, 2004).
2
I have discussed the possible reasons for sound being the material of choice for many locative
media practitioners (in comparison to video and image) within section 6.1.3.
3
I have encountered only one article that specifically addresses sound art and locative media,
namely ‘Davos Soundscape: A location Based Interactive Composition’ (Schacher, 2008), and
this article is only four pages long.
226
7. Conclusion
locative media, such as those of Tuters and Hemment, have tended to treat sound
as being like all other media (e.g. as being the same as a photograph or as video).
Through this thesis I have sought to correct this misapprehension.
What follows are six points which outline my contributions towards mobile
sound art, the broader field of sound art and, in most respects, to locative media’s
discourse:
(1) A relating of the production and structuring of mobile sound walks with
those of musical composition. I have suggested that in many cases the mobile
sound walk can be interpreted as an act of musical composition, specifically an
act of soundscape composition. By approaching the genre in this way, I believe
mobile sound art can benefit because it can absorb some of soundscape com-
position’s discourse, method and rationale. However, soundscape composition
may also benefit because mobile technologies can provide a new direction for the
medium, bringing it into direct contact with the everyday spaces and attitudes
that this compositional strategy has hoped to impact upon.
(2) The aligning of mobile sound art with site-specific sound installation. This
thesis has explored both site-specific sound installation and mobile sound art
together, suggesting one to be akin to the other. I have related both Max Neuhaus’
and Bill Fontana’s practices and methodologies to my own mobile works. For
example, I have suggested that Neuhaus’ defining of a site’s various contexts,
prior to the design of an installation, to be an applicable and worthwhile exercise
for all works of mobile sound art.
(3) Highlighting of the conceptual and practical significance of the personal

perspective. I have provided a detailed analysis of Janet Cardiff’s audio walks as
well as a summary of Michael Bull’s discussion of the personal stereo. In this
discussion, I have demonstrated that mobile sound technologies may initiate a
private zone of listening within public space, which practitioners such as Cardiff
have explored to dramatic effect. Regarding the practical implications of the
private listening experience, both Cardiff and I have utilised binaural recordings
227
7. Conclusion
within our walks because they provide an image of an environment from the
perspective of a listener. Furthermore, I have designed, through locative media,
imaginary environments that are responsive to a listener’s own particular walking
trajectory, thus accommodating a degree of personal choice.
(4) Demonstrating the critical potential of mobile sound art. I have demon-
strated that site-specific mobile sound art can elicit both a creative and critical
response. Through the content of my walks, I have sought to raise awareness
towards particular urban issues and invite my audience to reflect upon the con-
stitution of their local environments. In support of these aims, I have referenced
theories and concepts from outside of sound art, such as those of Jane Rendell.
Rendell suggested site-specific art to be a ‘critical spatial practice’, which my
mobile works have been shown to be in keeping with.
(5) Developing a method for creating fluid and coherent mobile sound walks. I
have developed a strategy for creating mobile sound walks, specifically what I call
locative soundscape compositions, through the use of location-aware technologies
and the mscape mapping tool. At the heart of this strategy are three types of
samples: the discrete, continuous and ambient that, when layered together, can
produce sustained bodies of sound that evolve in accordance with a listener’s
walking gesture and the landscape encountered.
(6) The proposing of new functionality for mobile sound platforms. I have
suggested, and provided the first example of, a mobile system that intelligently
delivers sound content in accordance with, and on to, the listener’s surrounding
sound field. This system would also make more of sound’s parameters accessible
to the designer/composer than are available within software such as mscape and
could be easily developed to be provide a context-awareness. The framework I
devised will be described in more detail in the section that follows.
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7. Conclusion
7.3 Future Work
There are several avenues of research and practice that I could follow in the
future. Each of which builds upon a particular aspect of my PhD research.
Further research into and application of critical theory and practice

within the context of sound art. I would like to continue to advance the
conceptual aspect of my work, seeking to establish a ‘critical spatial practice’
(or even a critical space-time practice?) that is site-specific and sound based by
continuing my research into fields such as philosophy, urban theory and avant-
garde art. This may entail further study of the written work of Walter Benjamin or
approaching theorists not yet explored, such as Henri Lefebvre. This new period
of research may also look in greater detail at the work of the Surrealists or reflect
upon the creative exploits of the present generation of psychogeographers.
Pursue the notion of an acoustic design profession. I am interested in

directing my practice towards the construction and delivery of site-specific sound
works that permanently improve the aesthetics and functioning of the environ-
ments they address. This practice would be in keeping with Schafer’s acoustic
design and would take its lead from the work of artists such as Max Neuhaus,
Robin Minard and Bernard Leitner. This practice may also entail collaborating
with architects or other urban design professionals and may necessitate research
into fields such as acoustic engineering. Furthermore, mobile sound technologies
could be enlisted as means to experiment with and test designs on site, as I have
suggested in this conclusion (section 7.1.4).
Improvement of the sonic capabilities of mobile technologies. Within

the term of my PhD, through a residency at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol,
and in association with HP Labs, I proposed to the mscape team a new func-
tionality that their hardware and software systems could incorporate that would
first allow for greater control over more of sound’s parameters within a mapping
(e.g. a sound’s spectral dynamic), and second, would achieve a context/location
awareness through listening to the mobile carrier’s surrounding sound field. In
229
7. Conclusion
addition, the proposed system would allow for a site’s existing sound field to be
augmented. Furthermore, each element of this augmentation would be able to at-
tach onto a recognised and tracked feature within the external sound field. In the
example I demonstrated to HP Labs, which I called The Fountain Experiment,
the tracked sound was that of a fountain; the sound of bubbles bursting against
the materials of this fountain was then added onto this sound. A more detailed
overview of the Fountain Experiment can be found in appendix section C.
The proposal I made to HP Labs stands as something that can be worked

upon in the future. This may entail further collaboration with the mscape team.
I note that the team are presently working towards a new version of their software
that incorporates more context-aware technologies and techniques, and operates
on the present generation of mobile phones (e.g. Apple’s iPhone)4 .
As the new generation of mobile technologies grow in functionality and become

more ubiquitous, I believe these technologies will increase their presence within
site-specific art, both as the medium through which this work is presented and as
the subject that this work addresses. In addition, I believe these technologies will
bear further upon music and creative sound practice, and take on more complex
and sophisticated aural features. It is also my belief that through further work in
mobile sound art, attitudes towards our everyday sound spaces can be improved
and new and provocative means of engaging with the sounds of an environment,
and the environment itself, can be generated. These are the reasons why I believe
mobile sound art is a practice worth continuing.
4
I note that the mscape team withdrew from HP Labs in November of 2009 and began a new
company called Calvium (http://www.calvium.com/). This new team are working towards the
production of locative media and context-aware tools for the new generation of mobile phones
with a release expected for the iPhone at the end of 2011.
230
Appendix A
Extra Materials for Present

Place and Resounding Rivers
Item 1: Present Place audiovisual analysis (6pages).
Item 2: Resounding Rivers table accounting the six installations (1page).
231
Audio Analysis: 11/06/08
Approx. 1840
00:00
0:05
0:10
Hazy chatter male 0:15
0:20
0:25 Hazy female chatter
0:30
0:35
0:40
0:45
0:50 Clearer female speech
0:55 Metal clatter
Metal clatter 1:00
1:05
1:10
1:15 Distant male voice
1:20 Clear female voice
1:25
1:30
1:35 Large vehicle passes
1:40
1:45
Vehicle hiss 1:50 Female voice
1:55
Hazy female voice 2:00 Hazy male voice
2:05
2:10 Car door
2:15 Female voice
Female replies 2:20
2:25
2:30
2:35
2:40
2:45
2:50
2:55 Seagulls
3:00
3:05
3:10 Lock release
Seagulls 3:15
3:20
Hazy male voice 3:25
Dusty footsteps 3:30
3:35
3:40
3:45
Vehicle crescendo 3:50
3:55
4:00
4:05
4:10 Distant Siren
4:15
4:20
4:25
Light Clunk 4:30 Freight clunk
Freight clunk 4:35
Light Siren Chain links? 4:40
Series of bangs 4:45
4:50
Footsteps, back and forth 4:55
5:00
5:05
5:10
5:15
2 x clunks 5:20
Seagulls Car door 5:25
5:30
Approx. 1840
5:35
Chain links? Shuffling 5:40
Chain links? 5:45
Box movement 5:50
5:55
Plastic bag 6:00
6:05
Car door 6:10
6:15
6:20
6:25
6:30
6:35
6:40
Engine starts 6:45
6:50 Large vehicle roar
6:55
7:00
7:05
7:10
7:15
7:20 Freight vehicle
7:25
7:30
7:35
7:40
7:45 2 x female voices
7:50
7:55
Braking 8:00
8:05
8:10 Metal clink
8:15
8:20
Metal clink Heels 8:25
8:30 Male cough
Male cough 8:35
Car door 8:40
Seagull 8:45
8:50
Car door, keys rattle 8:55
Girls voice 9:00
Two loud car doors closed 9:05
Close keys 9:10
9:15
9:20
9:25
9:30 Glass vibrates low
9:35
9:40
9:45
9:50
9:55 Seagull Distant male chatter
Seagulls 10:00
10:05
Distant car horn 10:10
10:15
10:20
10:25
10:30
10:35
10:40
10:45
10:50 Car door
10:55 Engine starts
Glass vibrates low 11:00
11:05
Approx. 1840
11:10
Car door 11:15
Light footsteps 11:20
Clink 11:25
11:30 Bassy clunk
11:35
11:40
Hazy male voice 11:45
11:50
11:55
12:00
Visual Analysis: 11/06/08
Approx. 1840
00:00
0:05
0:10
0:15
0:20
0:25
0:30
0:35
0:40
0:45
0:50
0:55
1:00 Woman 20s
1:05
1:10
1:15
1:20 Two men, 20 & 40
1:25
1:30
1:35
Bus 1:40
1:45 Man 40s
1:50 2 woman, 1 man
1:55
2:00
2:05
2:10
2:15
2:20
2:25 2 x women, 30s
2:30
Far man on phone 2:35
2:40
2:45
2:50
2:55
3:00 Cyclist
3:05
3:10
3:15
3:20
3:25
3:30
3:35
3:40
3:45
3:50
3:55
4:00
4:05
4:10
4:15
Leaves through alley 4:20
4:25
4:30 Man, woman pushing pram
4:35 Car boot opened
4:40 Woman raises umbrella
Man open rear door 4:45
4:50 Woman's movements obscured
4:55 Man obscured Woman waits
5:00
5:05
Man places detached pram 5:10
into rear 5:15
5:20
Rear door closed 5:25
5:30
Approx. 1840
5:35
5:40
Man lifts pram frame 5:45
Into boot 5:50 Woman gets into car
5:55
6:00
6:05 Boot closed
6:10
Man enters car 6:15
6:20
6:25
6:30
6:35
6:40
Car reverses, then leaves 6:45
6:50
6:55
7:00
7:05
7:10
7:15
Rubbish truck 7:20
7:25
7:30
7:35
7:40
7:45
7:50 Two women pass slowly
7:55
Black car enters 8:00
8:05 Reverses
8:10
8:15
8:20
8:25
Parks 8:30 Man stares in
Man gets out of car 8:35
Man, woman confused by alley 8:40
8:45
8:50
Man opens front car door 8:55
9:00
Man close door 9:05
9:10
9:15
9:20
9:25
9:30
Two people cross street 9:35
into alley 9:40
9:45
9:50
9:55
10:00
10:05
10:10
10:15
10:20
10:25
10:30
10:35
10:40
10:45
10:50
10:55
11:00
Man smoking 11:05
Approx. 1840
11:10
11:15
Man stares in 11:20
11:25
11:30
11:35
Three men appear through alley 11:40
11:45
11:50
11:55
12:00
Venue Street Map Key Relation to Rivers Sound content Installation particulars
BBC Ormeau Avenue 6 Positioned upon the past course of the Mill Race, Waterwheel and wooden Two 6" Outdoor speakers attached to
Broadcasting Blackstaff River (post diversion in the mechanics of the Wellbrook Beetling rear of slatted door that opened into the
House 1600s). Near to the venue, in the 1700s, Mill, Co. Tyrone street
the river had been dammed so as to
power a paper mill.
Bittles Bar Victoria Street 3 Positioned near to the mouth of the The lapping of water against riverbanks Two transducer speakers attached to
Blackstaff River (pre diversion in the and the passage of small boats. the rear of the cellar door of the bar.
1600s) and upon the river's Plood plain. Recordings of bird Plocks around Door opened out into street.
A small dock was also situated here in Strangford Lough, Co. Down are also
the 1800s. presented.
Cloth Ear Waring Street 4 Positioned close to Belfast's main dock The sound of ships and boats. In Four Transducer speakers attached to a
of the 1600 and 1700s, which was particular, recordings of vessels on a large frosted window at the side of the
formed by gating the Farset River so as number of marinas along Lough Neagh bar, along Skippers Street.
to raise water levels. and also Bangor Marina.
Kelly's Cellar Bank Street 2 Positioned upon the banks of the River The Plow of various small rivers and Two 5" Outdoor speakers placed 2.5
Farset. Prior to the bar opening its streams. In particular, recordings of meters apart upon a shelf that was 3
doors in the 1720s, the site was home to rivers coursing through numerous meters high and that stretched across
farmland and an Orchard. locations in the Mourne Mountains, Co. the side of the venue
Down.
PLACE Fountain Street 1 In the late 1600s, fresh water was Fountains recorded in various cities and Two 6" Outdoor speakers placed upon a
brought into the city through wooden the sound of water Plowing along and large overhang above the entrance to
piping from sources upon the Farset but onto wood. the gallery. The speakers faced away
out of the city. The water was from each other.
distributed through a number of
fountains along Fountain Street.
Waterfront Hall Lanyon Place 5 Positioned upon the past course of the River Plow recorded underwater, Four transducer speakers attached to
Lagan River, which has been deepened including that of the Lagan as it Plows one panel of the large glass façade of
over the years so as to reduce its width through the city of Lisburn, Co. Antrim. the hall, towards the rear of the
and subsequently so as to reclaim land. property.
Appendix B
Mscape Production Notes for

Blackstaff is Belfast, Scene 5:
The Quay
B.1 On Site Listening Notes
Notes upon site’s geography: The listener enters the Gasworks (which is a pedes-
trianised business park) through a set of wide gates; facing them in the distance
is a large bone-shaped pond (figure B.1), which stands beneath a hotel. To reach
this pond the listener must follow a clearly marked, straight and direct path.
This path continues around the pond, leading out across the Gasworks site and
culminates at the old Blackstaff Bridge, which stands above the Lagan River.
This path is one of only a few paths within the site and is the widest and most
prevalent. Large office buildings, verges and green belts stand either side of the
path. Once the listener passes the central pond they should begin to see before
them the Lagan River, which they would have been instructed to walk towards
by the gallery’s support staff.
Description of the Scene 5 Overlay: Upon entering the Gasworks site, the par-
239
B. Mscape Production Notes for Blackstaff is Belfast, Scene 5: The Quay
ticipant listens to the sounds of a watermill (i.e. the sounds of scene 4). As the
listener moves towards the Gaswork’s pond, the mill sound fades out and the dis-
tant sounds of a large ship slowly raises to the fore. As the listener continues their
walk towards the pond, the ship appears to move closer, increasing in amplitude,
and becoming more pronounced, as it does so. This is until the listener reaches
the head of the pond where the ship is at its loudest. As the listener make there
way around the pond, the ship recedes into the background and the sound of
boat rigging swaying in the wind, striking a boat mast, begins to dominate. This
sound is in turn superseded by the sounds of people moving around upon number
of small wooden boats. Finally, at the far end of the pond the listener hears the
sound of someone rowing upon a river. This sound fades out as the listen moves
away from the pond.
B.2 Mscape Mapping Notes
Following a linear path: Blackstaff is Belfast was unlike the two walks that I con-
structed prior to it, i.e. the two In Hear, Out There pieces, because the inscribed
zone was not a rectangular or circular area. Rather, Blackstaff is Belfast entailed
the annotation of a linear path through a site, which is bounded either side. Lin-
ear paths I suggest are more suited to narrative trajectories than two-dimensional
areas (section 6.3.3).
The scene’s seven regions: Figure B.1 shows the position of seven different ‘hotspot’
zones that, when entered into, trigger the content necessary for Scene 5 of my
walk (entitled ‘the Quay’). The actual mscape file for this mapping (figure B.2)
consisted of long rectangular hotspots whose width is as shown on my figure but
whose length covered the entire Gasworks site, beyond the the region depicted.
My hotspots were this length as a safety precaution, by being so they were able
to accommodate fluctuations in the GPS signal as well as a listener’s drifting.
A clearer mapping: The key to figure B.1 shows what actions were triggered
upon entry into each of the seven hotspot regions. I note that with the two In
240
Hear, Out There walks I created far wider hotspots, some of which covered the
entire mapping. Onto each of these larger hotspots, I assigned one or two ambient
loops, which were set to commence upon entry into the relavent hotspot region
and fade out upon exit. Hence, I was able to get some loops to remain on for
great portions of the walk. In Blackstaff is Belfast my mapping was far simpler
and cleaner, ambient samples commence upon entry into one of many adjacent
regions and are set to fade out upon entry into another. For example the lapping
sound that is begun upon entry into region 1 in scene 5 (figure B.1) fades out
upon entry into region 6. By setting the fade out of samples to the entry of
differing hotspots, I was able to prevent having to create lots of large overlapping
polygons, which would have otherwise cluttered the mapping.
The sense of drawing closer; In region 2 (figure B.1) the sample ‘distant ship’ is
introduced. This sample is the same as the sample ‘ship’, which is triggered by
the following hotspot, except it is quieter, small amount of reverb has been added
to it and some of the sample’s higher frequencies have been reduced. Through
doing so, the content of this sample appears further away then the content of
the ‘ship’ sample. When the listener walks from region 2 into region 3 ‘distant
ship’ is set to fade out over 13 seconds whilst ‘ship’ fades in over 13 seconds. The
result of cross fading ‘distant ship’ into ‘ship’ is a sense of drawing closer to the
imagined ship. This method is utilised within Blackstaff is Belfast on a number
of occasions and requires what I have termed ‘continuous samples’. Regarding
this transition, I note that region 13 is positioned slightly before the head of the
Gaswork’s pond where the ship is set to be at its loudest. This is so that the
‘ship’ sample has time to fade in.
Two methods for discrete samples; What I have termed ‘discrete samples’ do
not play a part within scene 5. They are, however present within the preceding
scene where they provide squeaks and clunks, which were layered onto the looped
sound of a waterwheel. In this instance, each discrete sound is initiated upon the
culmination of a short repeated timer. Discrete samples are also utilised in scene
6 to introduce the sound of trudging through mud and through water, which
241
occurs as the listener descends down a series of long steps, under the rail bridge.
These samples are triggered upon entry into dedicated hotspots that are set to
trigger a new sample with every re-entry. I note that I utilise this tactic in my
two In hear, Out there walks more often than I do in Blackstaff is Belfast.
Back and forth between regions; Once the listener reaches the Lagan River, over
which the final scene of the walk is placed, he or she is expected to go back to
the gallery (at his or her own pace) to return the borrowed mobile device. At this
time, the listener is invited to keep the headphones on and undertake the walk
in reverse. In addition, at any time in the walk the listener is free to go back and
forth between regions and he or she can remain in any region as long as they
please. All of the loops presented are set to keep playing indefinitely and in doing
the sense of a permanent, continuous environment can be maintained, regardless
of the listener’s pace and action.
Avoiding an mp3’s inherent silence; The inherent moment of silence at the end of
each mp3, which would be audible at the end point of every loop if not combated
within a mapping, was avoided within my design by using two identical versions
of the same sample. Each of these two versions had hard set within it a short
two second long fade in and fade out. When the sample to be looped is triggered,
so too is a timer, which is two seconds shorter than the sample. When the timer
ends it triggers the second version of the sample. Hence, as the first fades out,
the second fades in, giving the impression of one continuous loop. This is a very
elaborate method for something so trivial but was the best way that I found to
achieve the seamlessness that I desired. In the two In Hear, Out There pieces, to
avoid the this silence, I made sure that two different loops of two different lengths
were playing at the same time, hence as one fell silent the other would still be
sounding.
What follows is a small sample of code that describes what actions would be
triggered upon movement from region 1 into region 2 of scene 5 of Blackstaff is
Belfast (figure B.1):
242
In region 2’s ‘On Entry’ tab:
In the below code, stage.Value (which holds a single number) is set to the value
of 16, which is the number of the stage that the listener would have entered into
(stage 16 corresponds with ‘region 2’ in my figure B.1). For change.Value, if the
walker was previously in stage 15 then this variable would be set to the value of
1 and if the walker was in stage 17 (i.e. walking back) then ‘change.Value’ would
be set to a value of 2.
if (stage.Value ==15) {
stage.Value = 16;
change.Value = 1;
else if (stage.Value ==17) {
stage.Value = 16;
change.Value = 2;
The following section of code is a safety mechanism. Should the system for any
reason (e.g. failure of the GPS connection) have failed to detected some of the
last few transitions, i.e. the system believes it is at stage 13 when it should be at
stage 15, then this statement makes sure that the right zone is now set and that
whatever sounds are playing that shouldn’t be are exited as well as commencing
any samples that are missing. This is instigated by the logic that is written onto
‘Alarm03’ and ‘Alarm 04’.
if (stage.Value < 15) {
stage.Value = 16;
243
change.Value = 1;
Alarm03.Start();
if (stage.Value > 17) {
stage.Value = 16;
change.Value = 2;
Alarm04.Start();
In Alarm01’s ‘On Ring’ Tab:
Alarm01 is begun as soon as the listener presses play upon the device screen,
which commences the walk. Alarm01 rings every second and performs all the
logic placed upon it as it does so. What follows is a small section of the logic
placed upon Alarm01 that changes the sounds playing as the listener moves from
stage 15 into 16 (region 1 into 2).
if (stage.Value == 16) {
distship loop count.Stop();
distship loop.FadeOutAndStop();
ship loop.FadeIn();
ship loop count.Start();
On entering stage 16, already playing will be the lapping loop, which the above
code does not stop. This code stops the ‘distant ship’ sample and begins the ‘ship’
sample. Ship loop count is a timer, which rings two seconds before the end of the
244
ship sample so as to bring version two of this sample forwards (see above for
reasons for doing so).
B.3 A Remark upon GPS Inaccuracies
When working with GPS technologies the first thing you learn very quickly is
that the position data supplied by a GPS is not accurate, it is prone to drifting
and the signal can often fall in and out of range. These problems are due to a
number of factors, the most sever for urban projects is the presence of tall and
reflective buildings that can both block and distort the signal. All of my own
locative media works have been in urban areas and near to tall and reflective
buildings, hence GPS inaccuracies have been a problem.
If GPS drift is not addressed within the design and is then encountered in the
field, it is possible that the devised work will miss integral events or even whole
scenes, it may even crash or behave erratically. These types of errors can ruin
the quality of the composition received by the listener as well as disappoint and
irritate this listener. They may also prompt the listener into starring down at the
mobile device screen rather than engaging with the wider environment.
The first step in neutralising GPS inaccuracies is to walk the intended path
a number of times, at different times of day, logging the GPS trace so that it
can be studied back at the computer screen. Through doing this hopefully any
troublesome regions can be identified. In the most sever of circumstances the
only solution is to cut out any sections of the walk within which the signal is too
erratic. Less worrying regions of inaccuracy can be designed for: hotspots should
be wide enough to support a small amount of drift and hotspots integral to
the progression of the designed composition should not be placed over troubled
regions. Some blocks should also be put in place to prevent triggering sounds
should a hotspot appear to have been entered into because of a jump in the GPS
signal. If a necessary hotspot has been missed, the system should be programmed
so that a hotspot further along can pick up the omitted trigger and advance the
sound accordingly.
245
Figure B.1: Region of Gasworks site onto which Scene 5 (The Quay) was
placed. - The seven sections depicted correspond with seven of the hotspot zones
from my mscape mapping. The provided key lists the samples that are introduced
or removed upon entry into one of these zones.
246
Figure B.2: Screen grab of the Blackstaff is Belfast mapping in mscape

- The coloured blocks indicate where the walk’s many hotspot zones were located.
247
Appendix C
The Fountain Experiment
I was invited by HP Labs to spend one month working alongside the mscape team
from both their offices and their second base at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bris-
tol. The studio is part funded by HP Labs and is home to a number of freelance
artists and designers whose practice entails the use of pervasive technologies.
Within the term of my residency, there was no stipulation as to what I would
spend my time on and I was not expected to work with anyone in particular, just
react to the work that was going on around me.
Within the Pervasive Media Studio, there was one particular group of artists,
named AntiVJ, who caught my attention. This group deliver performances in
which digital animations are projected onto the faćade of select buildings or ar-
chitectural structures1 . These animations either appear to change the appearance
of the receiving structure or serve to highlight some aspect of it. For example, in
past performances the group’s animations have illuminated different regions of
a structure, drawn across it’s contours, played with where shadows fall and sug-
gested that a structure’s windows are breaking or that bricks are falling from it
(figure C.1). For each work a detailed map of the selected faćade is produced and
animations are subsequently layered onto this map via a computer. Ultimately
1
See http://www.antivj.com/index2.htm for examples of Anti Vj’s work.
248
C. The Fountain Experiment
the designed overlay is projected, with some precision, at the scale required so as
to fit neatly upon the required faćade.
Within my residency at the Pervasive Media Studios, I produced a prototype

mobile system that I entitled the Fountain Experiment. I designed my system
to be both an aural equivalent to the work of AntiVJ as well as an alternative
framework to that provide by mscape for mapping sounds onto an environment.
Rather than attaching sounds to coordinate points, the system I proposed would
be able to augment the sounds present in an environment by recognising and
tracking these sounds in real-time, and would use this information to control the
parameters of new events.
My inspiration for the recognition aspect of my system came from study of

a number of prototype software platforms that claim to be able to identify the
type of place a mobile carrier is present within (e.g. office, car or café) through
identifying what is distinct about the pattern of sound within this place and
comparing the result to a database of labelled profiles. In particular it was the
software devised by Smith et al (Smith et al., 2006) that inspired me.
Within the framework that I proposed, I also suggested that parameters such
as the EQ of a sound file be controllable within mappings, which I and other
sound practitioners had indicated to HP Labs as being improvements to the
mscape platform that would greatly benefit the quality of our work.
What follows is an account of the specific functioning of the sound recogni-

tion and augmentation model that I produced within my time with HP Labs. I
demonstrated this system both to the mscape team and a wider audience at an
artist’s talk that I gave at the end of my residency in the Pervasive Media Studio.
249
Figure C.1: Image of AntiVj’s Nuit Blanche Bruxelles (2008) - Architec-

tural augmentation of the Mont des Arts, Brussels, Belguim.
250
C.1 Recognising and Augmenting the Sound of Foun-

tains
The prototype system that I presented to HP was produced upon the software
Max/MSP and was able to recognise and track the sound of a specific foun-
tain, which is permanently situated within a pedestrian area in central Bristol.
Through use of binaural microphones, the system was able to detect the presence
of this fountain and deduce whether it was to the right of the listener or to the
left. The system was also able to follow the position of this fountain, relative to
the listener, should the listener reorientate him or herself.
I selected the sound of the fountain as the target of my tracking because

I had observed that Bristol had a large number of fountains (more than I can
recall there being in any other city I have visited) and the sound of each of these
fountains differed in spectral quality and percussive patterning. Furthermore, the
fountain sound is a wide-ranging, pervasive sound that cannot be easily masked
(indeed it is frequently employed to mask other sounds) and fountains generally
generate sound continually, often without pause, which makes continued tracking
of them far easier. A fountain is also a figure that has a definite place within an
environment.
The selected fountain was of an unconventional design, it comprised of two

vertical, concave sheets of metal separated by a small cut through (figure C.2).
Water flowed quickly down both planes, running into a grating beneath. The
fountain’s sound was a sustained band of white noise that was accompanied by
a slight yet persistent resonance, which was due to water continually striking the
metal of the fountain. My tracking of the fountain focused upon the particular
bands of frequency that the fountain sound occupied that no other sounds in the
immediate environment did.
When the software recognised the sound of the fountain, i.e. when a certain
level of energy was detected within one of the scanned frequency bands, sound
251
files would begin to be triggered. These sounds were that of bubbles bursting
played at various speeds (hence at various pitches) as well as the sound of metal
being lightly struck. I chose the two sounds I describe so as to infer that bubbles
were popping against the two metal surfaces of the tracked fountain. Through
headphones, the listener would hear both the sound augmentation and the real,
external sound field together as one.
The energy level within the watched frequency bands also controlled the equal-
isation of the overlaid sound. Hence, if a listener stood at a distance from the
fountain then both the fountain’s sound and the overlay would appear duller and
fainter than if this listener were stood right in front of it. The bubbles were also
set to pan in accordance with what ear the fountain was observed to be domi-
nant in. For example, if the listener faced the fountain, so that the fountain sound
was dominant in both ears and then turned to the left so that the fountain was
dominant only in the right ear, the bubbles would, in real-time, glide over to the
right.
C.2 The Presentation and Remark about Future Po-

tential
Unfortunately in my time at the Pervasive Media Studio I was not able to get
my max/msp patch working upon a portable computer or mobile device that
could be safely and sensibly taken outside. Instead, I demonstrated to HP Labs
a working patch in to which I fed a binaural field recording that documented
an approach towards the studied fountain; this was synchronised with a video
documenting this same approach. The programming for this work is included
upon the portfolio DVD and functions as it did within my presentation. Each
initiation of the patch produces a new aural augmentation that is different every
time.
252
Although the system I produced could only recognise and track the sound
of one fountain, I believe there are many more sounds that my system could be
tailored to accommodate. For example, soundmarks such as church bells could be
tracked or more ordinary and commonplace sounds such as that of passing cars,
ventilation systems or crowds could be recognised. These sounds could then be
augmented with anything that a designer desires.
As a final remark, I believe there is an added bonus to be had in tracking

fountains within a city such as Bristol where there are so many of these. Because
each of these fountains has a definite place within an environment and is per-
manently present, if a system were able to recognise the sound of a particular
fountain then in turn the system can be said to recognise the place where this
fountain is known to be, thus providing a primitive kind of location-awareness.
253
Figure C.2: Image of the fountain that the Fountain Experiment software
recognised, tracked and augmented - Fountain is situated in Millennium Square,
Bristol, UK
254
Appendix D
Content of Portfolio DVD
Upon the attached DVD-ROM, media is available for each of the five works that
I have discussed in this thesis, as well as for The Fountain Experiment. I note
that the best way to navigate around the media on this disc is via the included
flash presentation, which is entitled ‘PhD Portfolio MGreen’. However, all of the
videos and many of the images that can be found in this presentation can also be
found in folders upon the disc. The following is a list of what media is included
in the portfolio:
Present Place (2008)

Video (6min): View to the gallery window over which past and present sounds
have been overlaid.
Images (various): Documenting both the study and installation.
Sound (4 × 50mins): Each of the four channels of the composition that I played
into gallery is presented as a single track.
Resounding Rivers (2010)

Video (6 × various length): Six videos, one for each installation. Each video doc-
uments an approach and exploration of the respective installation. The overlaid
sound is an actual, unedited onsite recording made binaurally.
255
D. Content of Portfolio DVD
Images(various): Documenting the creation of the installations and the subse-

quent exhibition.
Sound (6 × various): Each of the stereo compositions played out through each
of the six installations is presented as a single track.
Blackstaff is Belfast (2009)

Video (6min): Video documents one portion of the create mobile walk, from
the Gasworks entrance to the old Blackstaff Bridge. Layered onto the video is a
sound composition that demonstrates what the listener would hear as they walked
around the site. The sound is binaural and hence best heard through headphones.
Images (various): Documenting the creation of the mobile sound walk and the
subsequent exhibition.
mscape mapping: This can be tested/demo’d through use of the mscape library
tester. See the ‘read me’ file on the disc for instructions as to how to do this.
In Hear, Out There: Madrid (2008)

Video (3 × various length): Three videos documenting a section of each of the
three overlaid structures (i.e. opera house, botanic gardens and library). Layered
onto the video is a sound composition that demonstrates what the listener would
hear as they walked around the site. The sound is binaural and hence best heard
through headphones.
In Hear, Out There: Yokohama (2008)

Video (18min): Documents the full walk around the stadium grounds. Overlaid
sound on each video is a composition, which demonstrates what the listener would
hear as they walked around the site. The sound is binaural and hence best heard
through headphones.
256
D. Content of Portfolio DVD
The Fountain Experiment (2009)

Video (2mins): Documents an approach and exploration of the tracked fountain.
The sound presented is both the actual sound of the fountain and the overlay
produced by the augmentation software in response to this sound. The sound is
binaural and hence best heard through headphones.
Max/msp patch: The software produced is available for trial. To do so the reader
will need max/msp. Instruction on how to get the software up and running is
available in the ‘read me’ file on the disc.
257
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In and Out of Context:

Field Recording, Sound Installation and the

Mobile Sound Walk

Matthew Kane Green (BSc, MSc)

School of Music and Sonic Arts

Queen’s University, Belfast

A thesis submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

23rd May 2011

List of Figures viii

1.1 Utilising Field Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.1.1 An Introduction to Field Recording in Composition . . . . 5

1.2 An Introduction to Sound Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.3 An Introduction to the Mobile Sound Walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.4 Theoretical and Methodological Underpinning . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.4.1 Phenomenology and Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.4.2 Critical Urban Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1.4.3 Avant-garde Art Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

1.5 A Note Regarding Hewlett-Packard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2 Everyday Sound, Field Recording and Composition 23

2.1 Schaeffer and Musique Concrète . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.1.1 Schaeffer’s Listening Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2.1.2 Reduced Listening and the Production of Suitable Objects 28

2.1.3 Schaeffer’s Faults and Fortes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

2.2 Introduction to Luc Ferrari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2.2.1 Exploring the Wider Arts and Real life . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.2.2 The Simplicity of Presque Rien No.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.2.3 Mimicking Real Structures through Composition . . . . . . 40

2.3 An Introduction to Schafer, Acoustic Ecology and the WSP . . . . 42

2.3.1 Field Recordings as Analytical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . 45

2.3.2 Making Use of Music’s Channels of Reception . . . . . . . . 47

2.3.3 Acoustic Design, the Musician and Soundscape Composition 48

2.4 From Schafer to Westerkamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

2.4.1 The Practice of Soundwalking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

2.4.2 Kits Beach Soundwalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

3 The Sound Installations of Max Neuhaus and Bill Fontana 61

3.1 Introduction to the Work of Neuhaus and Fontana . . . . . . . . . 62

3.1.1 From Music to the Visual Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

3.1.2 Sound Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

3.1.3 Course of Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3.2 Neuhaus, the Real Acoustic Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

3.3 Neuhaus’ Three Types of Sound Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.3.1 Times Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3.3.2 Experiencing Times Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.3.3 Time Piece: A Moment Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

3.3.4 How Time Piece is Perceived . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

3.3.5 A Passage Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

3.4 Bill Fontana’s Sound Sculptures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

3.4.1 The Early Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

3.4.3 Conceptual Significance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

3.5 Fontana’s Advanced Fieldwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

3.5.1 Spatial Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

3.5.2 Fontana and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

4 Janet Cardiff ’s Audio Walks 92

4.1 Introduction to Missing Voice: Case Study B . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

4.2 Content of Missing Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

4.3 Cardiff, the Urban Dweller and the Personal Stereo . . . . . . . . . 99

4.3.1 Simmel’s Urban Dweller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

4.3.2 Bull’s Personal Stereo User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

4.3.3 Cardiff’s revision of the Personal Stereo Manifesto . . . . . 105

4.3.4 Intimacy and Insecurity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

4.3.5 Memory and Missing Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

4.4 Bull’s Auditory Gaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

4.4.1 The Auditory Gaze, Cinema and Missing Voice . . . . . . . 111