Workshopping the Derry Soundscape: Mobile technologies as Creative Tools for Third Age Adults
This April forum, Acts of Sonic Intervention, explores what we over here at Sounding Out! are calling “Sound Studies 2.0”–the movement of the field beyond the initial excitement for and indexing of sound toward new applications and challenges to the status quo.
Two years ago at the first meeting of the European Sound Studies Association, I was inspired by the work of scholar and sound artist Linda O’Keeffe and her compelling application of the theories and methodologies of sound studies to immediate community issues. In what would later become a post for SO!, “(Sound)Walking Through Smithfield Square in Dublin,” O’Keeffe discussed her Smithfield Square project and how she taught local Dublin high school students field recording methodologies and then tasked them with documenting how they heard the space of the recently “refurbished” square and the displacement of their lives within it. For me, O’Keeffe’s ideas were electrifying, and I worked to enact a public praxis of my own via ReSounding Binghamton and the Binghamton Historical Soundwalk Project. Both are still in their initial stages; the work has been fascinating and rewarding, but arduous, slow, and uncharted. Acts of Sonic Intervention stems from my own hunger to hear more from scholars, artists, theorists, and/or practicioners to guide my efforts and to inspire others to take up this challenge. Given the exciting knowledge that the field has produced regarding sound and power (a good amount of it published here), can sound studies actually be a site for civic intervention, disruption, and resistance?
Acts of Sonic Intervention began with “Listening to and Through Need” by Assistant Director at Binghamton University’s Center for Civic Engagement, Christie Zwahlen, who argues that any act of intervention must necessarily begin with self-reflexivity and examination of how one listens. Last week, artist/scholar Luz María Sánchez gives us the privilege of a behind-the-scenes discussion of her latest work, detritus.2/ V.F(i)n_1–1st prize winner at the 2015 Biennial of the Frontiers in Matamoros, Mexico —which uses found recordings and images to break the deleterious silence created by narco violence in Mexico. Next week, we will close with from artist, theorist, and writer Salomé Voegelin, who will treat us to a multimedia re-sonification of the keynote she gave at 2014’s Invisible Places, Sounding Cities conference in Viseu, Portugal, “Sound Art as Public Art,” which revivified the idea of the “civic” as a social responsibility enacted through sound and listening. Today, Linda O’Keeffe catches us up with her newest public project, a pilot workshop with older people at the U3A (University of the Third Age) centre in Foyle, Derry, “grounded in an examination of the digital divide, social inclusion and the formation of artists collectives.”
–JS, Editor-in-Chief
—
In 2014, the Irish Research Council funded a project that looked to increase the access of older people to creative opportunities while at the same time generating interest in research examining the social implications of sound, music, and performance produced by older people. The project ran over a 9-month period and included a two-week workshop with a group of third age adults based in Derry, Northern Ireland. This fulltime workshop consisted of training three people aged between 65-70 in the area of gesture based audio technologies on iOS devices.
My initial impetus behind the project was to find different ways to engage older adults with technologies outside of the typical education programs which focus on internet training and learning how to use communication applications like email and VOIP software. I designed the workshop to introduce the participants to a range of audio-based applications designed specifically for an iPad. They learned how to use digital audio recorders, including the different file types associated with sound quality, such as compressed audio mp3 and mostly uncompressed audio WAV (windows audio video format). For clarity, I organized the audio applications into three distinct types: audio editing apps, gesture based performance apps and sound synthesis apps.
Participants working with Auria and Dropbox // Photo by author
Learning sound production, I felt, would offer elder people a different kind of value than basic workplace digital skills, something perhaps even more important for third age adults, what Fisher and Specht describe as a “positive sense of future” in “Successful Aging And Creativity In Later Life” (459). Training in digital activities such as multi-track editing, performance and synthesis applications, the use of digital audio recorders, soundscape recording, using cloud based applications for sound sharing, and mastering finished works of sound offered more than just a “skill” for workshop participants, it also held out a new sense of purpose, a means to continue engaging with community, continued intellectual stimulation, and the possibility of a new period of productivity in their lives.
Work Shopping Sound
One of the key components to the workshop involved talking about sound and sound art, and discussing the kinds of art made from sound, including work made for radio. Such conversation presented difficulties for people who were largely unfamiliar with fine art, a problem compounded by the fact that, as an emerging art form, sound is not always visible in mainstream cultural spaces.
To ease the transition, I centered our early discussions on important sounds in the participants’ lives: sounds remembered and now lost, the difference between rural and urban soundscapes, and unique perhaps for this particular group, the sounds of civil war. All of the participants had lived in Derry most of their lives and experienced some aspect of the violence within Northern Ireland; through our conversations, sound became an interesting way to memorialize and process this event. We then discussed how these soundscapes could be documented, changed and presented as works of art. Later, workshop conversation consisted of listening to sound art pieces. This helped the group get a sense of the potential of sound as an expressive art form.
Sound as Process
During the workshop, I emphasized the process and practice of sound making over the technology required to undertake the production of their art works. In this way, by focusing on an artistic concept, the technology just became the means in which they could be creative. Each participant was given a digital audio recorder (Zoom), which they brought home to record sounds they found interesting. Every meeting, the group discussed how–through the act of recording and listening–their perception of familiar sounds was being altered. They began also to experiment when recording, using their voices – singing – reading poetry etc. in different spaces, getting close up to sounds – exhaust pipes in cars, for example—and placing the microphone in unusual places such as a neighbours pig shed. Gradually, participants began to think of the sounds they collected as being part of a larger project and they became much more selective about what they would record. In addition, the group began to critique the sounds they recorded as well as sharing their sounds using Dropbox folders. These recordings became the basis for their final works; even if their sounds were eventually altered beyond recognition, the sounds inspired their artistic concepts.
The first Saturday of the two-week workshop included a soundscape recording day in Derry city. Each participant was asked to walk the city, recording sounds they found interesting. What emerged during the sound walks was unexpected. Members of the group began to engage with spaces and people, interviewing some, asking others to make sounds. For example, two participants went into a music store and asked the staff to sing or play an instrument so that they could record these sounds. They also went to the main cathedral in Derry and had the bells rung especially for them and a trainee organist play some traditional organ music. One participant, a poet, had different people read lines from a selection of his poems. He stated later that he was hoping to collect the sounds of women, children and men, as well as the multiple accents of Derry people, because his poetry was about Derry and therefore Derry should be its voice. I had not anticipated this engagement with community and space when I designed the workshop.
Participants recording water feature, Photo by author
During the focus group discussion after the sound walk, each participant talked primarily about how the recorder allowed them access to sounds and people. The technology acted as an interface between them and a sound that they wanted; it gave them the confidence to approach strangers, because they felt they were working on something important.
Gesture Based Performance Applications
Still from Auria, a gesture based performance app
In addition to conversation and artistic process, the first week of the workshop introduced participants to three applications: Auria audio editor, TC11 gesture based performance app and Animoog (a music synth app designed for iPad). A number of papers argue that it is the complexity of software applications, including the internet, which proves difficult to older users. Overlapping and contrasting colours are defined as difficult to engage with and can be distracting to users whose vision is in any way impaired through ageing. The Auria editor is as complex visually as most computer DAW’s, with one key difference: all interactions are gestural. This simple difference meant that each of the users found engaging with the application less difficult than if they had to deal with a mouse, keyboard, shortcuts and OS’s (see figure). 
None of the participants felt that the screen and its multiple windows were so difficult that they could not engage. In fact, we had initially worked with a much simpler audio editing app, Hokusai, which they felt was too simple in its design and usability. By the end of the two-week workshop, the participants had produced at least one complete work of sound, with some creating up to 4. Selected works were compiled in a CD that was launched in November 2014 at the U3A in Derry. Listen to a sampling below.
.
Track Two: “Made in Belfast” by Sam Burnside, read by John Dunlop
Track Four: “The Haunted Valley,” by Florence Forbes
.
In a final focus group discussion, the participants all responded very positively to the experience while offering suggestions about future workshops. Most agreed that the digital audio recorders allowed them to open their ears to the possibility of working with sound, but from an ethnographic perspective. The recorders allowed the participants engage actively with people and spaces in a way that had not been anticipated, empowering them with a sense of purpose, and allowed them give voice to both their creative ideas and the voices and soundscapes of Derry. In addition, the iPADs and audio recorders allowed them a sense of technological and creative mobility; they could access sounds on the move, place and share them in the cloud, perform/compose and edit in different spaces.
Participants working with their iPads, Photo by the author
Working on this project altered a number of preconceptions I had inadvertently brought with me about older peoples’ capabilities, even though my proposed project challenged other assumptions about aging. For example, I chose some of the audio applications for their simple design, mostly because previous research had highlighted older adults’ limitations in regards to the digital, based on principles of design, where technology is often shaped for a younger, often male, user. The participants in this workshop proved they could learn and even be creative with complicated applications such for synthesis and sophisticated editing. Even though I have written about older peoples use of audio technologies dating back to the 1940s–and how they developed sophisticated hacked mechanisms in order to broaden their sound/media sphere (O’Keeffe 2015)–I failed to consider that my participants would also have a contemporary relationship to mobile technologies. Yet all three participants, in varying degrees, used some form of mobile technology, from tablets to android phones. But what was evidenced through our conversations was the limited way in which they used their tech. After the workshop, most talked about buying and using audio applications or recording technology for creative or documentary use.
The author, recording sounds in the workshop
Prior to the workshop, I myself rarely used iPad audio apps; for me, it required thinking differently about mobility and sound design, and it was only on seeing the very creative ways in which the participants used the iPad that I started to rethink how IOS apps could support my sound practice. Following from this project, I am now in the process of developing a performance collective with third age adults. We will examine ways in which sounds can be assigned meaning and then used in a performance setting. The project will take about a year to complete and the hope is that, when finished, the performance collective will continue, with a tool kit to sustain their practice.
—
Featured Image: “Workshop participant interviewing poetry readers,” photo by Author
—
Linda O Keeffe isis a lecturer in sound at Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Art. She is also secretary to the Irish Sound Science and Technology Association and editor of the Interference Journal. She has several papers and book chapters published and due for release in the fields of sound studies. Her practice is concerned with an exploration, both academic and creative, of the ways in which sound alters our experience of different spaces. Her art training was within the sculpture department of IADT under the tutelage of Finola Jones. She completed a Masters in Virtual Reality in NCAD with Kevin Atherton, and just finished a PhD in sociology in NUIM. Her research examined the urban of Dublin city soundscape as socially and technologically co-constructed. She has composed for dance, theatre, quartets, and new instrument performers, installed sound installations for commissions in Ireland, China and Holland, and has had radio works performed both nationally and internationally. In 2008 she was mentored under Eric Leonardson in Chicago, a sound artist and performer. More recently, she was commissioned by Resonance FM to create a work for radio for the 2013 Derry city of culture event. In November 2014 Linda had a solo exhibition called “Spaces of Sound and Radio Spaces” for the Limerick Sculpture Centre, a creative realization of her PhD research.She will be releasing an album next year with the composer Tony Doyle on spatialisation and sonified memories with Farpoint Recordings, her third album. You can find her at www.lindaokeeffe.com.
—
REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
Of Sound Machines and Recording, Sharing that Transcends Time and Space–Maile Colbert
Audio Culture Studies: Scaffolding a Sequence of Assignments–Jentery Seyers
“We wanted to tell stories about sound”: Opening Ears Through the “Everything Sounds” Podcast–Craig Shank and George Drake Jr.
Share this:
(Sound)Walking Through Smithfield Square in Dublin
Editor’s Note: This month Sounding Out! is thrilled to bring you a collection of posts that will change the way you hear cities. The Sounds of the City series will prompt readers to think through ideas about urban space and sound. Are cities as noisy as we think they are? Why are cities described as “loud”? Who makes these decisions about nomenclature and why?
We kicked things off last week with my critical reading of sound in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, a play about African Americans in Chicago that still rings/stings true today. Regular writer Regina Bradley will discuss the dichotomy of urban and suburban in the context of sound (noisy versus quiet, respectively), and CFP winner Lilian Radovac will share with us a photoessay on the sound installation Megaphóne in Montreal. Today, guest writer Linda O’ Keeffe takes readers on a soundwalk of Smithfield Square in Dublin, Ireland and specifically of the Smithfield Horse Fair, in order to illustrate how urban renewal disrupts city soundscapes and how sound reclaims those spaces.–Managing Editor Liana M. Silva-Ford
—
Since 2010, as part of my PhD research, I have conducted over two dozen sound walks through the Smithfield Square and its environs, in Dublin’s North Inner city; with teenagers, by myself and through organising deep listening group walks as part of World Listening Day. These walks were designed to encourage the participating walkers to listen intently to this space and compare it to other spaces on the north side of Dublin city. The walks were also designed to examine the changing use and design of the Smithfield space over the past four years. This essay is drawn from the findings of this research, which explored the co-production of space and soundscapes with 84 teenagers (43 girls and 41 boys) from Dublin, Ireland. I include some of their observations of Smithfield Square here.
The Smithfield Square’s redesign began in 1996 as part of an urban regeneration project, and was completed in May of 2013. Smithfield is a traditional working class area, historically connected to wholesale markets, and in recent years it has gone through many iterations. In a push towards gentrification, the Smithfield Square space was ripped up, rebuilt, re-imagined and ripped up again because each iteration of its design proved unattractive to potential visitors/users of this space. According to the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (1991), Dublin City Council considered these users were tourists and new middle class urbanites, not the locals.
Large-scale apartment complexes with business premises on the ground floor, tourist facilities, and an art house cinema were situated alongside smaller, older social housing, flat complexes and wholesale markets within the area. This reshaping of architecture impacts the diffusion of sound in space. It changes what Brandon LaBelle (2010) calls the acoustic territories that demarcate space where sound is no longer attributable to specific spaces or communities. Additionally, since the early 1990s, sounds within Smithfield began to change with the removal or downsizing of certain productive practices, such as the fish and fruit markets. This reduced the kind of traffic, both pedestrian and commercial, which would have moved and sounded through the area. The Smithfield Horse Fair disrupts the area’s soundscape and opens up the possibilities of the space of Smithfield Square for the broader community.
The design of the square, its restaurants, boutique shops and cafes, suggest that the soundscape designed for this space was meant to be a quiet and calm, recreating in the square what Karin Bijsterveld has defined in Mechanical Sound (2008) as the quiet of the middle classes. The sounds produced by the fair are then seen as counter to the types of sensory experiences that, Monica Montserrat Degen argues in her book Sensing Cities: Regenerating Public Life in Barcelona and Manchester (2008), are acceptable to the middle classes, who purchase a type of sensory/sonic experience. However, the soundwalks I describe contest what “quiet” means in the context of the square.
Listening to the Square
The Smithfield square in 2009. All pictures in this post come courtesy of the author, who holds the rights.
The Smithfield Square in 2009
In 2009 the Smithfield Square, which is laid with thousands of cobblestones, had placed around one side twelve 26.5 metre gas lighting masts, at one end of the square two lines of trees were planted with seating placed among them, and at the other end some large concrete plant pots. The seating located within the trees, attracted groups of homeless people and addicts. As a result, the dominant soundscape during the day was the sounds of men and women shouting obscenities at each other, with the susurration of trees rarely heard over this dominant sound. One of my teenage participants noted, “you always hear people screaming in the background” (Participant 2).
The Smithfield square in 2009
Aside from the shouting voices and loud reflections from singular sound sources within the Square such as the clatter of suitcase wheels across the cobblestones, seagulls screeching overhead, the beeping of trucks reversing and even the sounds of people talking at a distance, the teenagers who participated in the soundwalks defined the space as silent. Their use of the word silent did not mean the absence of sound, but rather an absence of activities, life, general sounds of community, consumption and production.
One sound that dominates the soundscape of Smithfield and its surroundings is the sound of the Luas tramline. The Luas line sits at one end of the Square and the sounds produced are distinctive: there is the whoosh as it passes, the ding a ling of its bells and the sounds of the doors opening and closing. The sound of the Luas echoes around the area from 6 in the morning till midnight. The sounds have become synonymous with that part of the city. The teenage participants defined these sounds as rhythmic, musical, “like a ballet.” For the teenager participants, the sounds of the Luas has been the only constant sound within Smithfield.
Public housing areas surrounding Smithfield
The sounds of children and teenagers were absent, even with the vast housing areas that surround Smithfield Square—some dating back to the 1940s. Within five minutes of the square are two primary schools and one all-boy’s secondary school. During the day, I would hear the children playing in the school grounds, and in flat complexes close to the Smithfield Square. Each of these spaces were gated and enclosed. Most of the teenage participants lived within such housing areas, and would often refer to the level of noise made by the children within their immediate housing areas. Yet, none of the teenagers, and no young children, used the Smithfield Square for “hanging out” or playing.
A primary school in Smithfield. The play area is on the school roof
The teenagers argued that the Smithfield Square had no point; it was too wide open and too quiet.
Group 11b: Although, there probably was sound for somebody who listened to it but because we were all coming down from the city, the space seemed to be nothing… it just seemed real quiet, empty.
Because of that, the teenagers felt they could not group together to chat. For them, it would be like situating themselves in the middle of a stage. Their sounds were amplified or reverberated, ironically creating a feeling of being surveilled. They felt more comfortable and safer in confined areas, such as street corners, laneways, and the archways of large buildings. Within these smaller spaces, the sounds produced have closer reflections. Teenagers often surround themselves with sounds by shouting, playing music, etc., creating what Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter in Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? (2009) call a sonic bubble. These “territorial bubbles appear as if by magic around a group of individuals if they begin to interact, and the group quickly acquires rights to the arena” (2009:34) thus creating a temporal space. They did not feel they could do so in such an open area.
Smithfield Square by the summer of 2010
The Smithfield Square in 2011
Because of the poor planning and design of the Smithfield area, there are vast empty spaces surrounded by fencing or construction hoarding, numerous derelict buildings, and closed-down shops and restaurants. The Smithfield Square is no different, with numerous buildings left empty as a result of foreclosures or bankruptcy. The silence in this space is indicative of the loss of the social and economic processes. The vast square then takes on another level of silence, the loss of productive meaning, the presence of poverty, homelessness and unemployment.
On one walk with the teenagers I noted that they would group together in the square, even when they were told to walk around and record sounds within the space independently. Later, they said there were no sounds to record, so they just walked towards the closest sound source, a small shopping market in the square. I had noted numerous individual sounds, but they would have required standing in the middle of the square to record them. During focus group sessions after the soundwalks, the teenagers defined positive soundscapes as places with numerous loud sounds, the voices of hundreds within busy shopping streets, music coming from stores and traffic in the distance. These sounds defined a city, and made the teenagers feel safe and enclosed. Smithfield contained none of these kinds of sounds.
Soundwalking the Smithfield Horse Fair
Displaying horse carriages
There are a few events held regularly within the square since it re-opened in 2013. Some of these events are part of the Dublin City Council’s efforts to invigorate the space, such as food and art markets, as well as fairs for various seasons and holidays. One of the few public events that take place in Smithfield Square is the Smithfield Horse Fair, which happens on the first Sunday of every month. Having walked through this space repeatedly over a period of 3 years, it was only when I attended the horse fair that the space came alive, it had a purpose.
The horse fair has been a contentious event for both locals and city managers for the past two decades, with the horse dealers arguing that there is either a historical precedence for the horse fair or with the Dublin city councillors arguing that the land was historically used for the selling of cattle for market. The appearance within the Smithfield Square once a month of the horse fair brings with it a vast and lively, and sometimes, as defined by the media and Dublin City Council, a threatening soundscape/environment.
Some sounds defined as threatening are the loud whinnying of horses as they are jostled around the fair. The media has also reported, on several occasions, large-scale fights, which have broken out during the fair, leading to the presence of riot police. This eventually led to the gating of the fair and an extreme police presence as if these measures might reduce such sounds through the threat of arrest. For those living in the new apartment complexes, the sounds produced at the fair are amplified because of the design of the space, and possibly sound more threatening as a result.
During one walk of the Smithfield horse fair that I did in April 2013, some of the audible sounds were horses neighing and whinnying in panic, horse shoes on the cobblestones, traders shouting out their wares of horse paraphernalia, seats, stirrups etc., the voices of old men, which was the dominant background sound, and the sounds of traditional Irish music.
Outside of the gated fair were the sounds of large groups of teenagers, shouting and calling to each other. The space was alive with sound; the voices of teenagers merged with, or were lost within, the chaos of other sounds, becoming part of a larger soundscape. Because the space was busy with people, activities, music and even security there was a reason to use the square, even if you were not actively taking part in the event. The fair created a space for teenagers to engage with, and perhaps feel safe within the boundaries of its soundscape. Suddenly the square was as busy and as loud as the city centre.
Security at the horse fair
Smith hammering horse shoes at the horse fair
While walking through this soundscape, I encountered different kinds of soundmarks. For example, the banging of horseshoes was quite distinctive because it is, as Schafer would define, an archetypal sound, one that no longer belongs in the city. It felt like hearing a sound from the past. Yet this kind of sound creates a kind of historic continuity with the past (Barry Truax, Acoustic Communication, 2000). When discussing the cobblestones within Smithfield Square, most of the young female participants stated that it was not so much the look of the cobblestones that gave the space a sense of history but rather the sounds made when something moved over them. The lack of people and activities within the square meant that these sounds were rarely activated. The soundscape of the fair on those days transformed Smithfield, lifting it out of its everyday silences, which seemed to invite young people to participate. It was reactivated with life.
What was noticeable about the two fairs I visited was that by the second event in 2013, there were far fewer horses than at previous fairs. There were about 8 or 10 horses being paraded around the space by what looked like homeless people or addicts. There seemed to be no real horse-trading; the soundscape lacked the sounds of horses. Instead, the space had become a gathering space, with groups of tourists wandering around taking pictures of anything and everything.
Teenage boys outside the gates of the horse fair 2013
Teenage girls at the fair
Conclusion
This fair does not fit within the cultural ethos of regenerated urban spaces like Smithfield, where culture is defined as a consumerist process or part of the arts. However, the space takes on new potentialities as a result of the presence of people, sounds and activities, allowing the teenagers to view the possibilities of spatial use. Sounds can distinguish a space, as identified during the Smithfield horse fair. These sounds also remove focus from teenagers’ voices audible within the space, and transfer it to other sounds. The space was no longer a large fishbowl viewable from any angle; instead it had become a busy vibrant immersive soundscape.
—
Featured Image: “Smithfield Horse Fair, Dublin” by Flickr user Admanchester, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
—
Linda O Keeffe is secretary to the Irish Sound Science and Technology Association and editor of the Interference Journal. Her practice is concerned with an exploration, both academic and creative, of the ways in which sound alters our experience of different spaces. Her art training was within the sculpture department of IADT under the tutelage of Finola Jones. She completed a Masters in Virtual Reality in NCAD with Kevin Atherton, and just finished a PhD in sociology in NUIM. Her research examined the urban of Dublin city soundscape as socially and technologically co-constructed. She has composed for dance, theatre, quartets, and new instrument performers, installed sound installations for commissions in Ireland, China and Holland, and has had radio works performed both nationally and internationally. In 2008 she was mentored under Eric Leonardson in Chicago, a sound artist and performer. More recently, she was commissioned by Resonance FM to create a work for radio for the 2013 Derry city of culture event. Current projects include a solo exhibition in November 2014 for the Limerick Sculpture Centre, which will be a creative realization of her PhD research. You can find her at www.lindaokeeffe.com.
—
REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig:
“Heard Any Good Games Lately?: Listening to the Sportscape”-Kaj Ahlsved
“Park Sounds: A Kansas City Soundwalk for Fall”-Liana Silva-Ford
“Sounding Out! Podcast Episode #7: Celebrate World Listening Day with the World Listening Project”
Share this:
Current Top Posts
April 2021
January 2020
November 2019
October 2019
August 2019
April 2014
November 2017
March 2015
December 2017
October 2015
Sounding Out! 
Recent Comments