record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00875
Thesis Title
Noise Pollution
Author
Lou Terry
2nd Author
Katie Tindle
3rd Author
Ernie Lafky
Degree
MA Computational Arts
Year
2019
Number of Pages
Currently on one large web page, but estimated at 8/9 physical A4 pages
University
Goldsmiths University of London
Thesis Supervisor
Helen Pritchard
Supervisor e-mail
h.pritchard AT gold.ac.uk
Other Supervisor(s)
Language(s) of Thesis
English
Department / Discipline
Computing/Computational Arts
Copyright Ownership
Lou Terry, Katie Tindle, Ernie Lafky, Agnes Jun, Rongzi Wu
Languages Familiar to Author
English
URL where full thesis can be found
doc.gold.ac.uk/compartsblog/index.php/work/noise-pollution/
Keywords
noise pollution, acoustic ecologies, techno-feminism, culture/nature, multispecies, noise abatement, systems theory, sound art, spectogram, material semiotics
Abstract: 200-500 words
Although noise pollution is a commonly understood concept, and is widely acknowledged as a waste product of industrial and technological production (Malaspina and Brassier, 2018) its specific effects on our environments are less problematised than more material or visual pollutants, for example carbon emissions. Noise pollution has however, been acknowledged as having an adverse effect on our physical, social and mental wellbeing (Berglund et al., 1999), and has significant impacts on our environment. Soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, for example, posits that the impact of techno-industrial noise disrupts our sonic environment to the extent that it inhibits the ability of animals to vocalize effectively in their ‘spectral niche’, again inhibiting their social behaviors and potentially resulting in species loss (Krause, 1993). In order to engage with noise pollution and its consequences we interrogate the epistemological question of noise pollution’s definition. As a phenomenon noise pollution is polymorphous, bound not only by empirical qualities (Dbs, Hrtz), but the context in which is it perceived (Fong, 2016), its frequency and its subjective aesthetic value. Given these ambiguities, the ability to decide what is acceptable noise and what is noise pollution, and subsequently enforce regulation to limit its effects, becomes a political power (Malaspina and Brassier, 2018). With this in mind, we began our research by referring to the noise abatement guidelines issues by Lewisham Council (Noise and other disturbances we investigate, 2019). These guidelines define what the local community can report to the council for investigation, and what the council legally cannot deal with. The majority of noises the council were unable to address are symptomatic of intense urbanization, namely aircraft and railway noise, traffic, and approved road and commercial construction work. We chose to focus on these noises in particular as emblematic of industrialised pollution but also of the structures which deem them outside of local remit. Via a series of walks around Lewisham we collected field recordings of the un-abated noises listed above. Using live flight data and traffic updates published online, we created a patch in Max-MSP which disseminated our field recordings in a manner dictated by the data, for example, as planes were seen to reach Lewisham’s centre, playback volume increased. A performance was staged from one of our homes within Lewisham, intentionally loud and undeniably unpleasant. The justification, if we were asked to stop, would be that it was a concert of unregulatable sounds and as such could continue ad infinitum. By inflicting the performance on an unconsenting public we were situated in the morally ambiguous position of being both complicit in and critical of the definitions of noise pollution. Finally, despite being concerned with the effects of urbanisation and industrialised production on our ecology we did not approach this project from a technologically conservatism or nature vs. culture essentialism. Rather than perpetuate the myth of a technological/natural binary as typified by the concept of the Anthropocene, we prefer to approach our environment as a series of ‘rich multispecies assemblages’ (Haraway, 2015).