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This paper seeks to better understand the lively city with reference to recent analysis of sonic affects, bodily sensations and emotions. The notion of 'hearing contacts', as it is usually deployed in discussion of the lively city, emphasises the social interactions with other people in a rather narrow anthropocentric way. Yet, it overlooks the diversity of felt and affective dimensions of city sounds. This paper takes up this challenge by bringing Deleuze and Guattari's notion of territory into conversation with Greimas's semiotic square. In doing so, this paper offers a compelling theoretical framework to better understand the sonic sensibilities of listening and hearing to provide a clearer sense of how people decide to attach specific meanings to sound, and which ones they do not. The paper first reviews various theoretical approaches to sound and the city. Next, the paper turns to an ethnographic account of sound and city-centre urban life recently conducted in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. This research seeks to better understand the ways bodily dispositions to sonic affects, materials and cultural norms helped participants territorialise the city centre, distinguishing 'energetic buzz', 'dead noise', 'dead quiet' and 'quiet calm'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the musical events and the soundscape of Italian cities during 16th and 19th century. Topics discussed here include, soundscapes of Italian cities between the 17th and 20th century, cultural practices and forms of representation of constructed space-concept, and music institutions in English and Italian in Italy.

Abstract Large urban areas are very prone to be contaminated by different pollutants beyond safe limits. In recent years, it is not only pursued that these environments comply with all the regulations in this regard, but also to make them as comfortable as possible for their inhabitants. Being noise one of the most harmful pollutants, researchers and administrations are focusing their efforts in understanding and improving the subjective perception of the urban sound. This understanding could allow to make better decisions in the planning of large urban areas or in the efficient management of the traffic flow. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate if urban places with similar geometrical features are acoustically perceived in a similar manner. The study was conducted in the city centre of Madrid (Spain), where the sound was recorded in 13 places, and their geometrical features studied. In some of these places the recordings were performed more than one time, in different recording sessions, to study the acoustic stability of the environments. Psychoacoustic indicators were extracted and statistical analysis as well as clustering analysis were performed. A listening test was conducted to evaluate the agreement between the quantitative results and the perception of a sample of 16 participants. Both the quantitative and the qualitative analysis reported that urban places with similar geometries are perceived in a similar way. Also, it was proven that a recording performed a particular day in one place is highly representative of that place for similar working conditions. These results point out the benefits of incorporating the psychoacoustic indicators in the planning of large urban areas in order improve the acoustic comfort besides reducing the noise pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Acoustic environment studies traditionally use monaural energetic parameters as the main acoustic descriptors, which are associated with acoustic comfort and/or noise annoyance. However, under the soundscapes paradigm, it is necessary to explore other acoustic parameters that characterize not only energy levels but also temporal and spatial aspects of the acoustic environments. This paper's goal is to deepen the study of urban soundscapes, considering the sound sources' variation in the horizontal plane and determining the relationship of this phenomenon with subjective and descriptive aspects. The objective and subjective aspects of 10 soundscapes in the cities of Brasília (Brazil) and Bogotá (Colombia) were evaluated using fragments of binaural sound recordings. For objective analysis related to spatial behavior of sound sources, Interaural Cross-correlation Functions (IACF) in running and long-term modalities were applied to obtain the Interaural Cross-Correlation (IACC), the Interaural Time Delay (τ IACC) and Width of IACC (w IACC). The subjective assessment laboratory tests involved a panel of 25 listeners to evaluate different perceptual attributes and descriptive aspects of the soundscapes. The results indicate that there is a correlation between some binaural parameters derived from the running IACF and different perceptual attributes. Thus, spatial aspects, such as the variation of the sound sources in the horizontal plane, may have implications on perceptual attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The sonic environment of the urban public space is often experienced while walking through it. Nevertheless, city dwellers are usually not actively listening to the environment when traversing the city. Therefore, sound events that are salient, i.e. stand out of the sonic environment, are the ones that trigger attention and contribute highly to the perception of the soundscape. In a previously reported audiovisual perception experiment, the pleasantness of a recorded urban sound walk was continuously evaluated by a group of participants. To detect salient events in the soundscape, a biologically-inspired computational model for auditory sensory saliency based on spectrotemporal modulations is proposed. Using the data from a sound walk, the present study validates the hypothesis that salient events detected by the model contribute to changes in soundscape rating and are therefore important when evaluating the urban soundscape. Finally, when using the data from an additional experiment without a strong visual component, the importance of auditory sensory saliency as a predictor for change in pleasantness assessment is found to be even more pronounced. Highlights • Pleasantness assessment from perceptual audiovisual experiment was discussed. • Biologically-inspired computational model for auditory saliency was presented. • Change in pleasantness was evaluated using computed saliency and sound amplitude. • It is shown that saliency predicts change in assessment better than amplitude. • Auditory saliency is an even better predictor for the data of audio-only experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a semiotic perspective of aspects of a soundscape evaluation of the city, Supino located in the Province of Frosinone in the Italian region of Lazio. The data and sound sample collection was accomplished through the soundwalk technique undertaken by students of Çankaya University, School of Architecture during the 'Third International Summer School in Supino' 17–24 August 2014. For the soundscape evaluation, three zones were identified in Supino as urban, suburban, and intersection. A total of nine samples across three zones were collected during three different times in a day by soundwalks from the areas located in the identified zones. A theoretical model of semiotic interpretations of soundscapes has been proposed and applied for the analysis of Supino's soundscape. The results showed that the soundscape of Supino differs according to its cultural, habitual, and anthropological tendencies. In addition, the semantic analysis shows that the soundscape composition of the sound sources in the three zones varies by the change of time, sound composition and sources, topography, and settlement of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between the senses and racism against Muslims in the Netherlands, including opposition to the amplified adhan, or the Islamic call to prayer, emitting from mosques in the country. It comments on the audio and visual perceptual differences in Islamophobia in the Netherlands.

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Context: Regulations for quiet urban areas are typically based on sound level limits alone. However, the nonacoustic context may be crucial for subjective soundscape quality.Aims: This study aimed at comparing the role of sound level and nonacoustic context for subjective urban soundscape assessment in the presence of the full on-site context, the visual context only, and without context.Materials and Methods: Soundscape quality was evaluated for three recreational urban spaces by using four subjective attributes: loudness, acceptance, stressfulness, and comfort. The sound level was measured at each site and simultaneous sound recordings were obtained. Participants answered questionnaires either on site or during laboratory listening tests, in which the sound recordings were presented with or without each site's visual context consisting of two pictures. They rated the four subjective attributes along with their preference toward eight sound sources.Results: The sound level was found to be a good predictor of all subjective parameters in the laboratory, but not on site. Although all attributes were significantly correlated in the laboratory setting, they did not necessarily covary on site. Moreover, the availability of the visual context in the listening experiment had no significant effect on the ratings. The participants were overall more positive toward natural sound sources on site.Conclusion: The full immersion in the on-site nonacoustic context may be important when evaluating overall soundscape quality in urban recreational areas. Laboratory evaluations may not fully reflect how subjective loudness, acceptance, stressfulness, and comfort are affected by sound level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the depiction of city sounds, such as mass political demonstrations, and its importance for British writers of the 1930s. Particular focus is given to red music in James Barke's novel "Major Operation," as well as the novel's didactic potential. Also discussed are discordant sounds in Barke's play "The Night of the Big Blitz" and John Sommerfeld's account of the Spanish Civil War in the novel "Volunteer in Spain."

The article critiques the novel "Loaded" by author Christos Tsiolkas, and it mentions writer Michael Bull's work on city sounds and the study of street and walking narratives which are sometimes categorized as flânerie. Tsiolkas' love of music and music technology are addressed, along with an analysis of the narrator and protagonist character named Ari in "Loaded." The Walkman cassette player device is examined, along with walking, running, and dancing in literature.

With the development of immersive virtual technology and GIS, the virtual perception for noise annoyance will lead into new research issues. The aim of this study is to construct a methodology to realize virtual noise perception. There are three aspects: calculating method for annoyance thresholds in different noise control zones, facial emotion expression generating method, and linking method between subjective response and emotion. A face-to-face social survey has been carried out among 7483 participants in three different noise control zones. The noise annoyance is assessed by five-graded scale. With stratified random sampling results of survey as input data, the analysis hierarchy process is adopted to calculate noise annoyance threshold. Then the emotion is determined by excessive level and linkage between five-graded semantic scale and emotion. Finally, the facial emotion expression is used to realize the visualized expression and virtual perception of noise annoyance. The key technologies are the emotion determination method and the facial expression generating with free-form deformation technique. To illustrate the application of the proposed methodology, the method has been applied to a local district in Qingdao, China. Comparing the regulatory standards, results of calculated threshold value for noise control zones are more closely aligned with the people’s real subjective responses. At the same time, the facial emotion expression provides a visualization display to achieve people’s emotional reactions under noise pollution. Consequently, the proposed method can provide a reference to the competent authorities to make better action plans to prevent or reduce annoyance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A specific smartphone application was developed to collect perceptive and acoustic data in Paris. About 3400 questionnaires were analyzed, regarding the global sound environment characterization, the perceived loudness of some emergent sources and the presence time ratio of sources that do not emerge from the background. Sound pressure level was recorded each second from the mobile phone's microphone during a 10-min period. The aim of this study is to propose indicators of urban sound quality based on linear regressions with perceptive variables. A cross validation of the quality models extracted from Paris data was carried out by conducting the same survey in Milan. The proposed sound quality general model is correlated with the real perceived sound quality (72%). Another model without visual amenity and familiarity is 58% correlated with perceived sound quality. In order to improve the sound quality indicator, a site classification was performed by Kohonen's Artificial Neural Network algorithm, and seven specific class models were developed. These specific models attribute more importance on source events and are slightly closer to the individual data than the global model. In general, the Parisian models underestimate the sound quality of Milan environments assessed by Italian people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the unrealized album project entitled “Rhythms of Harlem,” based on the 1956 script written by African American poet Langston Hughes for sound documentarian Tony Schwartz. The proposed sound recording intended for children featured poetry in vernacular speech which was to feature background noises taken from the environment of New York City to create an urban soundscape.

Religious precincts in urban spaces have their own religious spatiality formed by their sociocultural and historical background. It is necessary to identify the spatiality of urban religious precincts in their sociocultural contexts because soundscape perception is determined largely by context. In the present study, social surveys and soundwalks were performed in a Catholic cathedral and in Buddhist temple precincts in Seoul. In the surveys, important spatial functions, sound, and visual components of the Catholic cathedral and Buddhist temple precincts were investigated by principal component analysis. The results showed that the cathedral precincts play a more important role in social functions related to mainly visual components than the temple precincts do, whereas the functions for religious activities related to sound elements are more stressed in the temple precincts. In the soundwalk evaluation, contributions of soundscape and landscape components to tranquility in the two religious precincts were explored. It was found that pleasantness of soundscape and attractiveness of landscape significantly affected the perception of tranquility. In addition, it was revealed that a sense of enclosure could enhance tranquility in urban religious precincts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to characterize urban spaces, which combine landscape, acoustics, and lighting, and to investigate people's perceptions of urban soundscapes through quantitative and qualitative analyses. A general questionnaire survey and soundwalk were performed to investigate soundscape perception in urban spaces. Non-auditory factors (visual image, day lighting, and olfactory perceptions), as well as acoustic comfort, were selected as the main contexts that affect soundscape perception, and context preferences and overall impressions were evaluated using an 11-point numerical scale. For qualitative analysis, a semantic differential test was performed in the form of a social survey, and subjects were also asked to describe their impressions during a soundwalk. The results showed that urban soundscapes can be characterized by soundmarks, and soundscape perceptions are dominated by acoustic comfort, visual images, and day lighting, whereas reverberance in urban spaces does not yield consistent preference judgments. It is posited that the subjective evaluation of reverberance can be replaced by physical measurements. The categories extracted from the qualitative analysis revealed that spatial impressions such as openness and density emerged as some of the contexts of soundscape perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a conceptualization of city sounds within a cosmopolitan framework. It talks about the effect that World War II and postwar migration had on the cosmopolitan city with refugee migration becoming mass migration. It states that postwar cosmopolitan sociability began in Melbourne with the espresso coffee bar vogue which contrasts with Sydney's outdoor Mediterranean-style leisure. It comments on novelist Charmian Clift's perceptions of a changing Australia in her weekly column for the newspapers "Sydney Morning Herald" and Melbourne's "Herald" in which Clift was suspicious of European influence on cosmopolitanism in Australia.

The article discusses the broader significance and utilization of undertaking qualitative research in environmental quality, housing and urban subjects. It focuses on the principle for the methodology applied in the research instead of the research determinations. It states the importance of the ontological and epistemological assumptions in the interpretation of all the information in the research. It states that the development of sensory urbanism method and knowing the role of the senses in facilitating knowledge in the city living and the sensing of environmental character of occupants. An overview of the soundwalking practice which was contrived by R. Murray Schafer is presented.

Sound provides an often-ignored element of our conceptualisation of the urban fabric. The power of music, sound and noise to denote place and demarcate space is used here to develop the idea of a sonic ecology. The paper attempts to map the relative order of this unseen city and to theorise its spatial and temporal patterning. The sonic ecology, a relatively persistent and chronologically ordered quality to sound in urban space, is used as a means of examining the distribution of sound and to weigh the broader social impact of these qualities. The ambient soundscape of the street is made up of a shifting aural terrain, a resonant metropolitan fabric, which may exclude or subtly guide us in our experience of the city, thus highlighting an invisible yet highly affecting and socially relevant area of urban enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces regulatory components influencing city soundscapes in Europe and the UK, illustrating the abatement approach taken within noise policy, demonstrating the importance of individual experience in assessing the soundscapes of urban environments and identifying a terminology to facilitate an introduction of soundscapes into the planning process. Drawing on work from soundscape ecology, a way is demonstrated to coalesce these divergent positions. Reviewing interviews undertaken in Clerkenwell, the paper demonstrates that it is not simply noise levels that are important to people in an urban area. Context, source, distance, temporariness and control over noise, are all relevant to whether people would want to see a particular sound eliminated from their soundscape. Using Schafer's terminology 'keynote sounds', 'soundmarks' and 'sound signals', a rationale is proposed through which experienced soundscapes may be articulated, challenging the strategy of noise abatement which could produce a conformity of soundscape that homogenises place and dissolves local uniqueness. This paper arises from research undertaken as part of the EPSRC project 'Vivacity 2020: urban sustainability for the 24 hour city' GR/S18380/01(P). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of sounds forms an important, yet largely neglected part of our daily-life experience of a city. The soundscape of a modem city with its acoustic and social-cultural dimensions has its important specifics. This paper outlines the notion of soundscape as opposed to the traditional noise approach, introduces its basic concepts and evaluates its assets and limitations. From the viewpoint of this approach, it describes historical transformations of the sonic environment and the condition of the contemporaly urban sonic environment. It also summarizes research conclusions, concerning sound preferences in the urban environment and its emotional attributes. In the end, it connects the soundscape approach to some newer conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significance of intentional soundscape design in urban squares by investigating people's general perceptions of urban soundscape and sound preferences, and the effects of demographic factors. An intensive questionnaire survey was carried out in two urban squares in Sheffield. Sound identification and classification were both considered. The results show that natural sounds as a group were generally preferred to urban sounds; the preferences of soundscape elements influenced people's choice of using an urban square; and in terms of sound preference, the differences amongst age groups were rather significant, whereas between males and females only slight differences were found. Finally, some suggestions on soundscape design in urban squares are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the evolution of urban soundscape in Europe. Quality of the human voice; Characteristic of industrial noise; Meanings of urban sound; Importance of sound in structuring identities, hierarchies and power relationships; History of urban noise.

The article examines the key elements and features that need to be captured by a telling characterization of a city. It argues that these features are diverse because its plan, buildings, shapes, colors as well as its sounds, smells, the motion within it, its climate and industry, its social and psychological qualities of life might be considered in some contexts as constituents of its character. It states that the look of the city may be shown in a picture or described in words, and its sound may be conveyed in music or silent film. In addition, it discusses several means and modes for the representation of a city including the pictorial denotation and symbolization.