The Sound Map; overview & critique of the current model/s

Spanish sound map; one of the few to offer the ability
to upload visual support material

The established design-model used in most sound-maps seems to involve a body of recordings produced by discrete users tagged to an online map; typically an embedded goggle map with modified API. They create a platform for users to upload recordings, facilitating a basic documentation of the sound environment, and provide a body of sonic reference material to the interested listener.


The experience of interacting with such a map/body of recordings provides a somewhat disassociated  listening experience; as the listener is presented with a mass of discrete/disembodied sound bytes of the sound-environment of the region in question tagged to a map. The recordings are typically linked/associated often only by technical specifics of the content; time, date, recording medium etc. Some sound-maps offer more involved means of creating/elaborating narratives from the recorded material; textual and visual support material etc, and creating associative connections between recordings by means of tags, but still the aforementioned issue is predominant. In such a way the current model, seems to only go as far as -at best- allowing a basic representation/documentation of the sound-environment. The living, breathing, sound-world though remains largely obscured.


The nature of an online map in itself provides another inherent issue; that of disembodiment. The user's experience of the sound-environment in such a model is entirely disembodied and disassociated from the environment from whence the recordings came. On one level this can facilitate a closer listening of the soundscape/sound-objects of the given environment, as they are stripped of the visual referents to which they would often be reduced, but in the same sense it creates a total spatio-temporal displacement/disassociation that is problematic, the recordings tagged merely to a abstract cartographic rendering of a living place/space. 


(The soundwalk provides an interesting contrast here in that they create a temporal but not spatial disassociation; something I will explore in an upcoming post) 


This displacement limits the understanding/engagement with the inherently participatory nature of the sound-environment as the user/listener in such a context is left to interact with a series of disembodied collection of recordings without any understand of the nuances and specifics of the space from whence the recording came, and without any required engagement/participation in the spatial dynamics of the place.


Critique: 

• The current sound-map model seems to produce a body of discrete recordings, made by discrete users. In doing so it fails to reveal the living breathing sound-environment on a level beyond basic representation/documentation. In such a way the human element is largely left out, and the inherently participatory aspect of the experience of listening are largely ignored. 
• Secondarily, the complete spatio-temporal displacement that is engendered by the interface in question (the online embedded-map) creates a disassociation from the actual environment that I think further obscures a participatory and embodied engagement with the sound environment that is key to cultivating aural/acoustic awareness. 

Examples:

• Barcelona Sound Map
• Spanish Sound Map; one of the few to offer the ability to offer visual support material.
• London Sound Survery; distinct grid based geotagging system, also offers a wide variety of recordings, content etc.
• Montreal Sound Map