Case Study Sites:

Identification of the exact fieldwork location will be determined once the project has commenced. A pilot study will help determine this and is currently underway. Click here to find out more about the pilot study. The project will focus on one geographical study area, within Manchester, containing several different soundscapes. To be most relevant to planning outputs, the area will be urban, though not dominated by traffic noise. The project may choose, for example, three different case studies in the city centre where there is a contrast between busy roads with traffic noise, urban green spaces, and pedestrian areas with voices.   The case studies could be: urban pedestrianised, urban indoor/outdoor (like an open air shopping centre or market), and urban green space.  This will give a variety of interesting positive sounds.

Soundwalks:

This is an active form of participation in the soundscape whereby six to ten participants walk a pre-selected route, taking note of the sounds they hear.  The essential purpose is to encourage participants to listen discriminately and to make critical judgments about the sounds heard and their contribution to the balance or imbalance of the sonic environment.  Sound-making may be incorporated into the walk; for example, the effects of different ground coverings.  The purpose of a soundwalk is to explore sounds related to the environment and to be aware of one’s own sounds.  The walking route is recorded on a map which also highlights features of acoustic interest.  This map develops with successive soundwalks, each one adding to the acoustic features recorded on the map.

Some of the soundwalks will be recorded to provide part of the material for the project’s laboratory experiments. Participants in the soundwalks will also be asked to rate defined aspects of the soundscape. This data can then be compared to the results of the project’s lab tests. Focus groups or interviews will also be conducted with the soundwalk participants.

If you would like to participate in a soundwalk, please contact Joanne Leach on joanneleach@postmaster.co.uk or on 0161 295 2690.

Soundplay:

A Soundscape Sequencer will be developed that will enable users to manipulate blocks of sound to produce their own creative soundscapes. The sounds necessary to create the building blocks for the Soundscape Sequencer will be derived from the soundwalks and other areas of this project; however, the project also intends for others, such as creative artists, to upload sounds that can then become part of the Sequencer. In this way the Soundscape Sequencer will develop until the user has at his or her disposal a considerable range of sounds from which to choose.

Peter Cusack’s long-standing Favourite Sounds project will provide another powerful mechanism for investigating soundscapes from a creative perspective (see Favourite London Sounds). The project will coordinate a Favourite Sounds of… investigation that culminates in an audio CD for Greater Manchester. Visit www.favouritemanchestersounds.org to vote for your favourite Manchester sound.

These artistic contributions to the Positive Soundscapes project will culminate in an exhibition that will have a gallery-based dimension including visual works depicting the acoustic environment, an innovative web presence aligned to the Soundscape Sequencer, radio programmes and a sonification project where numerical and graphical data gathered in other areas of the project are reinterpreted as sound.

Lab Tests:

This part of the project will involve playing real and synthesized and/or mixed soundscapes to participants in a neutral, well-damped listening room and requiring them to make judgments about what they perceive.

Of particular interest is the relationship of speech intelligibility in an acoustic environment to perceived sound quality of that environment. This has great relevance for the hearing impaired, who often experience extreme difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments.

Participants will also be asked to generate their ideal urban soundscape. Participants will be able to manipulate a wide variety of sound components to create their perfect soundscape.

Watch Warwick's iCast to find out more.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) will be used to measure brain activity in participants as they listen to pre-recorded urban sounds. It is anticipated that pleasurable soundscapes will cause activation in brain areas associated with reward and the opposite will be true of aversive or stressful soundscapes. Colour images generated from the brain scans will then be used by the artists and incorporated into the exhibition, encouraging the public to think about how environmental sound impacts on their thought processes.