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Occasional posts on subjects including field recording, London history and literature, other websites worth looking at, articles in the press, and news of sound-related events.
14 January 2014
Consuming Sounds: a shopping centre odyssey this February with Points of Listening
SALOME VOEGELIN AND Mark Peter Wright are two well-respected sound artists and researchers based at CRiSAP in the London College of Communication. They’re responsible for an exciting new series of talks, workshops and other activities under the title Points of Listening.
It was a real pleasure to be asked to run the second session on Wednesday the 12th of February at 3.30pm. It’ll be a public event to which everyone’s welcome. Keep an eye on the Points of Listening blog for for full details of venue location, times and how to book your place. You can also keep up to speed with what’s happening via Facebook.
I’ve decided to focus on the sounds of shopping centres. All right-thinking cultural commentators like to take an ostentatiously dim view of such places (there’s a good example of this in Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital when he visits Bluewater in Kent) but it’s one that’s evidently not shared by the huge numbers of people attracted to them.
Shopping centres are among the most significant 21st-century urban gathering places. There are interesting contrasts to be heard between the latest ones which function as well-integrated top-down systems, and the older ones where the public are left more to their own devices.
Here’s the official blurb:
Amongst the thirty thousand souls that peopled it the day I was there not one loud noise was to be heard, not one irregular movement was seen; the living tide rolls on quietly, with a deep hum like the sea heard from a distance.
So wrote Charlotte Bronte after visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851. Today’s global exhibitions are the capital’s shopping malls, and the goal of managing public behaviour within them exists just as it did in Bronte’s time. How is such top-down control manifested through sound, and what can be heard when that management becomes less certain and less focused?
Ian Rawes of the London Sound Survey will be leading a listening exploration of two very different locations: the Elephant and Castle shopping centre and Westfield Stratford City, with time en route and afterwards for discussion. Westfield Stratford City is London’s newest and largest shopping centre and it forms a major hub in a part of the city already well advanced in its redevelopment.
By contrast, the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, built in 1965 and now scheduled for demolition, has taken on many unforeseen uses. These include becoming a de facto community centre for the Colombian diaspora, as well as the growth of a surrounding hinterland with its open-air market and the occasional unlicensed minicab office.
Participants are welcome to bring along discreet, pocket-sized recorders or binaural microphones. But thoughts and impressions jotted down with pencil and notebook will be just as valuable as recordings. Please also bring an Oyster Card topped up in advance to allow you to travel to Zone 3. Bulky, eye-catching equipment like DSLR cameras or microphones housed in blimp-style windshields should be left at home.
Suggested reading in advance: Anna Minton (2009), Ground Control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city.
Hope to you see there and then!
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Sony PCM D100 recorder review – May 2020
Chant – May 2020
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Street Cries: London Lickpenny – February 2020
Successor – February 2020
More January street cries – January 2020
Tidal Thames: Procter & Gamble, Thurrock – January 2020
Street Cries: January 2020 addition – January 2020
Sounds of the London Loop – December 2019
LMA talk: thank you – November 2019
Recordings: November 2019 additions – November 2019
November talk – November 2019
Street Cries: October 2019 additions – October 2019
New guestbook – October 2019
Rutting season – October 2019
The clattering bridge – October 2019
London Metropolitan Archives – March 2019
Street cries now being added to Pinterest – January 2019
Social media – January 2019
Recent site upgrades – December 2018
Hiatus – August 2018
BBC sound effects plotted on a map – July 2018
In memory of Richard Beard, wildlife recordist – June 2018
New section on historical street cries – April 2018
Long in the tooth – June 2017
Acoustic baffle – January 2017
MixPre-D clamp – November 2016
New York Times – August 2016
The EU referendum and the silence of the streets – June 2016
Media chancers – April 2016
New feature: Sounds of the Musical Museum – February 2016
The soundscape of Oxford Street – December 2015
Tim Hunkin – November 2015
The reverberant city – November 2015
New! Old! More historical recordings added – November 2015
Sounds of 1960s Las Vegas – November 2015
Five fundamental stances in recording – October 2015
The trouble with sound maps – May 2015
The average of the average – March 2015
The sounds of sectarianism – March 2015
Which sex does a computer sound like? – February 2015
Why girls shouldn't run away to London – February 2015
Arthur Machen: the sounds from beyond the veil – February 2015
Vanished City: London's Lost Neighbourhoods by Tom Bolton – January 2015
Sound and Music's Creative Data Club – January 2015
Out of town: Whittlesey Straw Bear festival – January 2015
The Bird Tree – December 2014
Down with noise: first impressions of Sennheiser MKH 8020 mics – December 2014
The Block: making a simple stereo baffle – December 2014
Thanks to everyone at the Marlborough and the Social – December 2014
The London Sound Survey as a full-time concern – August 2014
Thanks to everyone who came to Earshots 4 – June 2014
Edgelands: Staines Moor – June 2014
Guest post from Cities and Memory – May 2014
Darwin among the earthworms – May 2014
Up with the lark: soundCamp in Rotherhithe, May 3–4 – April 2014
Coming this April: Field Studies 2014 – March 2014
Hello and welcome to Mail Online readers – January 2014
Sensing Cities back on Resonance 104.4 FM from this Friday – January 2014
Sounds in poetry: 'Adlestrop' and 'Death of a Naturalist' – January 2014
Sound and the Law: Sounds you must and must not make – November 2013
Sound and the Law: What are the limits on recording? – October 2013
Permanent present – September 2013
Ships' Opera at the Thames Festival – September 2013
Quiet please #2: Peabody estate, Victoria – September 2013
Extra! Recordings of English newspaper sellers – August 2013
Quiet please #1: Lincoln's Inn – August 2013
All systems go – July 2013
London Sound Survey LP progress report – June 2013
What does London really sound like? – May 2013
These Are The Good Times album cover – May 2013
When sounds don't play on Safari – April 2013
Street noise and the taming of Victorian London – April 2013
Here soon: the London Sound Survey vinyl LP – March 2013
Crossing the Thames at Woolwich – March 2013
Sounds of disaster in peacetime London – February 2013
Reverberation and Authority – January 2013
London on Christmas Eve – December 2012
Beware the Cat: auditory overload in the 16th century – November 2012
Jez riley French in Soho – November 2012
Coming up! Second batch of vintage BBC radio sounds – November 2012
The resurgence of religion in London – November 2012
Searching for unearthly sounds – October 2012
Sound, hallucination and the moment of epiphany – September 2012
London voices: outline of a new sound map – September 2012
One-track mind – August 2012
Yeah, yeah, industrial estate – August 2012
Rudyard Kipling and sonic warfare – August 2012
Field recording and Philip Larkin on poetry – July 2012
The man who heard the flowers scream – July 2012
Motorcycle Wall of Death – July 2012
Casanova in London – June 2012
Third annual report – June 2012
Hello to Wire magazine readers – June 2012
A quick thank-you to Sound Network – May 2012
Mapping London's subterranean rivers – May 2012
Time off in the Scottish Highlands – April 2012
Absence of sound – April 2012
A taxonomy for field recordings – March 2012
Victorian cage-bird fanciers of Brick Lane – March 2012
The slow movement – February 2012
Thoughts on classifying field recordings – February 2012
Building a field recording system 3: recorder accessories – January 2012
Building a field recording system 2: the compact recorder – January 2012
Building a field recording system 1: introduction – January 2012
Where Londoners come from – January 2012
Nice to meet you, London Historians – January 2012
Thanks, Londonist – December 2011
James Greenwood's 'The Wilds of London' from 1874 – December 2011
Our synthetic sound environment – December 2011
Making engine noises with a jam jar – December 2011
Spam attack! – December 2011
Five compact XLR-enabled audio recorders – November 2011
Some recordings from the Waterways sound map – November 2011
Victoria coach station in 1935 and 2011 – November 2011
London sounds from 1930s and 1940s BBC radio – October 2011
Your recordings from Embankment and Dalston – October 2011
When the planes stopped flying – September 2011
Sound and health – September 2011
New recordings in from Sam Appleby and Craig Barrett – September 2011
Making soundmaps with iframes and image maps – September 2011
Sound-mapping London's waterways – August 2011
Looting the Iceland store in Rye Lane, Peckham – August 2011
East London Line recorded by John Bingham Hall – August 2011
Wind-powered sound art in Cumbria – July 2011
Sonic pleasures of the landline telephone – June 2011
Les Passages Couverts – English Style – June 2011
Shopaholic – June 2011
Sounds of the Thames estuary remembered – June 2011
The London Sound Survey at SoundFjord, 12th June – June 2011
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What do tornadoes sound like? – May 2011
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Sounds of protest from 12 Gates to the City – April 2011
Adrian Stokes: an aesthete in Hyde Park – March 2011
Thames drifter – March 2011
Howling wolf – March 2011
Cuckold's Haven – March 2011
Willesden Junction at dawn – February 2011
Mug-house riots and a short history of hissing – February 2011
Sights and sounds of London street markets – February 2011
Historical maps now online – February 2011
Make the darkness your friend – January 2011
New uses for old London maps – January 2011
Real sounds of Lagos – January 2011
Sound maps from Inukjuak and New York State – January 2011
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Three recordings from Greenwich and its peninsula – December 2010
Two quick recordings from Camden Town – December 2010
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New Thames estuary section now added – July 2010
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The walk won't do you good – June 2010
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The London Nobody Sings – May 2010
Out and about on May Day – May 2010
Nocturnal emitters – May 2010
The sounds and history of Caledonian Road – April 2010
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???????????? ? ????? ?????????? ? ???, ??????? ????????? – January 2010
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Weird Vibrations and the politics of sound – January 2010
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Wishing you all a happy 2010 – December 2009
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Modern voices of authority – December 2009
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Some auditory curiosities – November 2009
Two great sound references from 'History is Made at Night' – November 2009
Golden days of the rag-and-bone men – November 2009
Jive at the Paramount Ballroom, 1947 – November 2009
Doodlebugs – November 2009
Past sounds of Lambeth Walk and London Bridge station – November 2009
Sounds of the Chislehurst underworld – November 2009
Kenneth Williams and the Mayor of Garratt – October 2009
When smashing windows is a sound action – October 2009
Catford night life – October 2009
Gone to budgery – October 2009
Birds and police whistles – September 2009
Weird for sound – September 2009
How Islington sounded in the 1950s – September 2009
Noisy streets of London – September 2009
Doves from above – September 2009
London Sound Survey on Radio 4 – September 2009
New wildlife section – August 2009
The Elephant and the Submarine – August 2009
These are the warning sounds – August 2009
Gypsy buskers on the Underground – August 2009
The train beggar – August 2009
1892: Grisly sounds in a London church – July 2009
From the Crystal Palace to Bluewater – July 2009
The decline of whistling – July 2009
Fairground barkers – July 2009
A few words at the beginning – May 2009
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