Berlin Sonic Places: A Brief Guide
- Submitting institution
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University of the Arts, London
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 225
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Wolke Verlag
- ISBN
- 978-3-95593-083-7
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The book, Berlin Sonic Places: A Brief Guide, is an appreciation of, and an enquiry into, Berlin’s sounds and soundscapes. Funded by the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, it was published by Wolke Verlag GmbH (Hofheim am Taunus, Germany) in 2017 and contains 96 pages of articles, photos and observations on the soundscape at 30 Berlin locations. The detachable front cover opens into an annotated soundwalk map through the former prison/industrial district of Rummelsberg.
Written/edited by Cusack there are also contributions on specific places by eight other authors and contextualising articles by Max Dixon, former head of sound at the GLA environment department, and by architect/theoretician Pascal Amphoux. Audio from the locations can be heard online. http://favouritesound.org/bfs.html
Berlin Sonic Places asks why Berlin sounds the way it does and what makes one neighbourhood sonically different from another. It pays detailed attention to the aural character of particular buildings, streets, squares and green spaces, listens to the city’s public transport systems and comments on the role of nature in Berlin’s acoustic environment. Its context is the expanding interest in the audible environmental from acoustic ecology (R. Murray Schafer’s The Sound Environment) to government initiatives following the EU’s 2002/49/EC Noise Directive. The book offers a link between official policy and the everyday sonic experiences of city inhabitants.
Berlin Sonic Places resulted from Cusack’s DAAD Artists’ residency in Berlin, 2011/12, during which he pursued his long interest in urban soundscapes. Online sound mapping, recording, soundwalks, interviews, photography and questionnaires are methodologies used during the five-year research period. The research is continuing. During 2019, Cusack initiated a series of five public soundwalks in collaboration with four other artists in Berlin Pankow, funded by the Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin. <https://soundwalkingpankow.tumblr.com/>. More are planned for 2020/21 with the aim of a future book entitled Berlin Soundwalks.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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