Listening to Pafos

Creating a Pafos Soundscape

During my stay in Pafos, I have been contemplating the different ways in which us humans can interact with, and archive, cities. An idea that I developed whilst writing my Capstone started to reverberate in my mind as I navigated myself through the urban environment. This idea was that sound is integral in both communicating information and, more importantly, creating emotional atmospheres. In this vein, this blog post attempts to contend the common notion that seeing is believing, that one needs to see something before they can accept that it really exists.

Listening to Pafos took on a methodology of practicing a sort of flânerie through listening, thereby rejecting ocularcentricm in favour of capturing the ambiance of a moment through sound. Predominantly, we make sense of the urban space through visual cues such as signs, lights, and movement of people. Whereas noise and sound are generally seen as a nuisance, or at least an effective way to tell if a car is approaching. But what happens if we close our eyes and really listen to the city? What can a purely audio experience of the city tell us about its character?

I wanted to create an alternative impression of Pafos that moves away from the reliance on visual media, which is proliferating in the digital age. In fact, in our hyper visual society the role of urban sound may be becoming impoverished. More and more, I see people isolating themselves from experiencing the sounds of the city by adoring their ears with little white gadgets, which are capable of blasting out all undesirable noise. As much as I love listening to music, I do think it is a shame to be unawares of the rich sonic landscape that is created and amplified by an urban space such as Pafos.

The idea of a soundscape of the city embraces the uniqueness and ephemerality of sound, which echoes the character of the city in a particular moment. Soundscapes date back to the 1960s, when R. Murray Schafer wanted to engage with the acoustic ecology of urban environments. As an environmentalist Murray Schafer was concerned with the reduction of sound to noise via the proliferation of anthropogenic noise such as traffic and construction, which cause us to tune out of sound emanating from our local environment. Nevertheless, Murray Schafer proposed that even noise considered to be pollution could indicate much about the socio-cultural context of a place.

Moreover, an interesting analogy to the importance of sound is that whilst sight is the most relied upon sense, we forget that we could all listen before we could see. An unborn child can hear the sounds experienced in the world of its mother, yet it does not see until weeks after birth. Sound waves can permeate the structure of a swollen womb and thus tiny humans are accustomed to sound before they are able to imagine what vision is. This reflection demonstrates the power of sound, and it’s ability to encompass people and the built environment and communicate messages, feelings, and atmospheres, that vision cannot.

So... close your eyes and open your ears!

(you need flash player to access the sound videos)

by Daisy Corbin O'Grady