Athens sound environments

Recordings and Actions

Participation in our recordings, conversations and public space actions concerning the exploration of Athenian soundscapes (“t- ihos” project) is open to anyone who might wish to contribute with opinions and ideas.

You can find the latest information about the recordings and actions at the news page: news.

All the visual and sonic material gathered throughout the recordings and actions will be included in a digital interactive map of the city of Athens. This map will be presented in a special workshop entitled “T- ihopoiia”(2) that will take place at 9.9.2008 at the Byzantine and Christian museum as part of the “Un-built” project. All the webpage visitors and workshop participants will be able to enrich the digital map by sending any visual or sonic material that they themselves have recorded in Athens.

Actions

(1)
Awareness Graffiti
Sound itineraries throughout the city

W. Benjamin says that "not being able to orientate within a city does not mean much. But to get lost while wandering around in a city the same way one can get lost in a forest requires training". One does not move in a city only to move from one place to an other ( point of departure – destination) but also for the sheer joy of moving around, of touring ourselves through a random sightseeing. But why only sightseeing? Why not also “soundhearing”? Does wandering around – from a sensory point of view - reach mostly the eyes and then the hearing and after that the olfactory system? By which criteria does one follow a route? Because of something she saw? Something she heard? Something she smelled?

This action aims to the dissemination of awareness graffiti around the urban web. These graffiti will present the sound level - measured by a decibel meter at three different time zones (8:00-10:00, 14:00-16:00, 22:00-24:00) - of each specific spot in a codified manner. These recordings will take place in situ during systematic itineraries through areas chosen by our workgroups. The signalization of a neighborhood’s intersections, of Exarheia for example, by following the habitants’ and visitors’ daily routes, draws a sound-route through the city.

The purpose of these awareness signs is the course itself, the itinerary that one might seek towards nuisance or calmness.
Finally, all these itineraries will be printed in maps and will be placed at various spots in the city (they will be included in the digital map as well) and will hopefully encourage habitants to experience high or low sound level itineraries as well as gate-spots in their neighborhood in an altogether different way and also to discover the high complexity of their urban soundscape.

(2)
Sonic traffic signs

Throughout the recordings and measurements, the Reconstruction workgroups will encourage habitants to become involved in the designing of traffic signs concerning habitants’, drivers’ and passers-by behaviors that cause sonic imbalances.

By using questions and sample images of some sonic signs, the groups will speak to the habitants, workers and area’s visitors about the sonic environment in which they live as well as the ways in which it influences their daily cohabitation. Their ideas and opinions about the sonic traffic signs’ designing will be recorded and they will be invited to the “T- ihopoiia” workshop where they‘ll be able to discuss upon the results of the research and the recordings.

After this co-designing, the traffic signs will be placed at the proper places.

(3)
Rechurch. Sonic gathering

Several devotional sites in Athens will be used as exploration and sonic recording fields: Christian Orthodox (Greeks, Russians), Catholics (Chinese Neo- evangelists, Anglicans Evangelists, Africans, and Gospel Evangelists), Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Koptorthodox, Moroccans, Buddhists, etc.

Rechurch records the soundscapes of several devotional spaces in Athens, assembling the sounds and also the perception and cultural understanding of those sounds in a single context. By recording thick sonic textures (breaths, noises, conversations, hymns, chants, songs) during a series of visits at official or unofficial devotional spaces, a sonic net which connects different cultural backgrounds that cohabit the city will be created. The collected sounds are, in a way, the sonic signifiers of the Other’s identity. What is particularly interesting is the lift-up-over-sounding, the accumulation of cultural contexts, not on a cumulative base but in an effort to explore the contradictions and also the common basis of coexistence.

All this sonic material will be presented through a sonic installation entitled “Rechurch. Sonic gathering”. Within a sound-proof and sublit space, the visitors will be able to share the experience of familiar and unfamiliar sounds, which will multiply, partially or completely fade, depending on the human presence. We are especially concerned with emphasizing silence as a cultural practice of wide communicational, symbolical and political components, in states of danger, marginality, holiness and indefinable social relations.

(4)
elaionas.wav
Sonic Warehouse

Industrial sounds and relative environments of a high noise level from the area of Elaionas will also be explored, since Elaionas is a spatially central but socially marginal and separated zone of the city.

Elaionas is considered a zone of high level noise and gas fumes, yet it’s a place where 50.000 people work in 2.400 industries (handcraft establishments, enterprises and agencies) and has about 5.000 permanents habitants.

The sonic recordings will take place during in situ itinerancies that will last from a few hours to a whole day. Reconstruction workgroups will also write down the workers and habitants opinions about the sonic imbalances of their environment and their effects.

This material will be transferred and reproduced at great volume outside several mass consumption spaces (malls, etc.), aiming to the notification of the changes that take place at Elaionas, such as the appearance of a similar mall.

At the same time, it aims to the reconnection of the final product with the procedure through which it was produced, a reminder of what has been forgotten, the flow of “the making”, and its concomitant opposition to the fetishism of the object that leads to the fetish-ifying of human relations, and to the disintegration of “us”.

Reconstruction Community

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Photos
upper: Tuesday 22.04.08, recording the sound volume at Exarheia, (22:00- 24:00)

bottom: The first “wandering around” at Elaionas (25-3-2008) aiming mostly to our acquaintance with the area.