Social Acoustics: Infrastructure, Sound and Public Memory
Event Information
Description
A conversation about Social Acoustics – infrastructure, sound and public memory
This conversation between Dr Ella Finer and Dr John Bingham-Hall will explore the intersections and counterpoints of their respective research practices, both of which consider the relational, sociological and political effects of sound in public space. Finer’s ongoing interest in how bodies can acoustically disrupt, challenge or change the order of who is allowed to occupy – command – space, intersects with Bingham-Hall’s work exploring cultural infrastructure through the sonic: how different acoustic conditions give way to often divergent social effects/affects. While playing back and listening to sound experiments of their own and others’ making in urban sites of acoustic interest, they will discuss what it means to attend to a “social acoustics” in such projects - who is being heard in these spaces, why and how.
Ella Finer’s work in sound and performance spans writing, composing and curating with a particular interest in how women’s voices take up space. Her ongoing project Sound Politics queries the ownership of cultural expression through sound, informing recent curated events Selector Responder: Sounding out the Archives (I and II) at the British Library (as part of their Season of Sound 2017 and ‘18) and Longplayer Legacies: Live at the Lighthouse with Laura Cannell, Larry Achiampong and Vanessa Brown. She was a 2018 Sound and Music Composer-Curator and is a trustee of Longplayer (longplayer.org).
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John Bingham-Hallis Director of the charitable research centre Theatrum Mundi, which aims to expand the practices of city-making through projects linking built environment and artistic disciplines, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at UCL STEaPP. With TM he has led programmes on cultural infrastructure, sonic urbanism, urban commons, and choreographing urban mobility. He has held research posts at LSE Cities and UCL STEaPP and an associate lectureship at CSM. He has a multi-disciplinary academic background, holding a BMus (Music) from Goldsmiths College, and an MSc (Advanced Architectural Studies). His PhD (Architectural Space & Computation) from the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture focused on hyperlocal media, mapping relationships between urban form, communication technologies, and the neighbourhood public sphere. His ongoing research interest is in the ways urban design shapes the public lives of cities, linking study of and through technology, performance, media, and infrastructure.
Chaired by Ruth Bernatek (Bartlett, UCL)
