Mission
Acoustic City is an initiative of Linz 2009 European Capital of Culture, which is intended to reach far beyond the year 2009 to promote a conscious design of our audible environment in keeping with human dignity. It is based on the conviction that human beings are touched and influenced to the core by what they hear. For this reason, Acoustic City is committed to promoting an acoustic environment appropriate for human beings.
Our acoustic environment is an important part of our living conditions. It affects us directly and we cannot escape from it – we cannot turn off our ears. Nonetheless society as a whole has a disregard for acoustic conditions.
One space in which our living conditions directly materialize, are in fact even incarnated, is acoustic space. Acoustic space is defined by the type of sensory perception. Everything that is audible forms acoustic space. It is equally public and private, both publicized and intimate. It is totally comprehensive.Acoustic space is the space of a revolution, a revolution that applies to everyone, resulting in profound social, individual, physical and mental impacts. This revolution is currently underway.
Because of this revolution, for the first time in the history of humanity it is now possible to introduce sound in any place, at any time, in every conceivable form. With new technologies, acoustic space is re-invented, virtually unfolding into something previously unimaginable. This means that the human being becomes the object of previously unknown emissions in every area of life, from restrooms at an airport to sound-proof walls.
We can take recourse to traffic space, in particular, for historical parallels: due to incredibly rapid technological developments a space has emerged (up to the present and still progressing), in which motorized traffic moves. This space unfolds at a greater speed than behavior norms for it can be created and refined. Regularly emerging vacuums attract social forces that are technologically, financially and mentally capable of filling the emerging space. As they do so, they are still free from socially recognized rules. At the same time, there is a widespread social consensus that a uniform standardization of traffic space is to be achieved. The standardization arises from an ongoing process of political debate and must conform to the principles of a democratic, republican society.
Acoustic space is in a similar phase of rapid development. What we observe is something like the Wild West of hearing. Technology makes it possible to occupy new territories. Their occupation promises later rights of ownership and utilization. What is taking place is a "value definition of public goods", as described by Elmar Altvater in a different context.
This is why sound floods every area of human life. We hear acoustic icons when operating all kinds of devices, we make our own soundtrack and simultaneously have other sountracks imposed on us in every life situation. More and more, we are the victims of diverse noise settings. In brief, our bodies are continuously stuffed with sound, are the objects of total treatment.
Our bodies are the battlefield of social disputes. Yet we do not even notice it. We neither feel nor sense it. Consequently, we are still far removed from a standardization of acoustic space.
Why?
Can you turn your hearing off?
Can you close your ears?
No?
Of course not. From the fiftieth day after fertilization until after we take our last breath, we are condemned to hear. To enable us to be able to deal with this flood of impressions, what is heard is unconsciously processed. The unconsciousness of the act of hearing has many – phylogenetic and ontogenetic – roots, and it is a fact.
We do not know that we hear. We hear. Nor do we know what we hear. We hear.
The increasing emission of sound has far-reaching physical and mental consequences. It ultimately influences society fundamentally and permanently, and for this reason it needs to be shifted to the focal point of debates.
Acoustic space must be made more consciously perceptible and subjected to a spatial order. Human beings must regain sovereignty over their own bodies. The culture of acoustic space must be worthy of a democratic society.
Acoustic space must become political space!
