Sound in Lefebvre's trialectic

In last week's seminar, we began talking about Henri Lefebvre's trialectic of space. In The Production of Space (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991), Lefebvre identifies a "conceptual triad" (p. 33) that he employs to think about space and society:

• Spatial practices or practices of space (perceived) involve the everyday interactions of people in space, ensuring "continuity and some degree of cohesion" (p. 33). Practices of space affect and are affected by the social space of a particular society in a "dialectical interaction" (p. 38).
  

• Representations of space (conceived) are connected to the sense of vision, the hegemony of city planning practices, and language and the sign. Representations of space tend to be the "dominant space" in a particular society with a particular mode of production (p. 39).

• Representational spaces (lived) foster resistance to the imposition of representations of space and their hegemonic visions, challenging their apparent transparency while nonetheless often being dominated by them (p. 39). Representational spaces are "linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life" (p. 33) and provide room for creativity and imagination.
  

Lefebvre calls for an uprising of the body against language, the sign, and representations of space, criticizing their focus on the abstract mental realm at the expense of embodied lived experience. The knowledge of the body, he argues, precedes the abstract knowledge of the intellect (p. 174), and the trialectic of space must be able to "grasp the concrete" (p. 40). So, how might one think of Lefebvre's trialectic in terms of the embodied experience of hearing and sound in urban built environments?

Lefebvre writes, following Tomatis, that hearing and sound help us with the "lateralization of perceived space. Space is listened for … and heard before it comes into view” (p. 200). In terms of spatial practice, sound acts as a mediator that locates the body in relation to other bodies (p. 200) in the space of everyday urban reality. Packed like sardines in a crushed commuter train, we use the sounds of others' shuffling feet and voices to inform our own movements and actions (that is, if our ears are open).

Representations of space rely on vision and abstraction to attempt to determine experiences of cities. Writing in Steinberg and Shields's What is a City? (2008), C. Tabor Fisher notes that "[t]hrough abstraction, persons, space, and social relations are viewed metonymically as passive, objectified images" (p. 160; my emphasis). But regulatory structures and their effacement of sensory difference also operate in the sphere of acoustics. This dispute over 'noise pollution' in the pre-Katrina French Quarter suggests that the Big Easy had its fair share of attempts to standardize its soundscape. That article mentions quantitative measures of sound, which have been criticized as overly abstract ways to conceive of sound when unaccompanied by a qualitative consideration of context (see Raimbault, M., & Dubois, D. (2005). Urban soundscapes: Experiences and knowledge. Cities, 22(5), 339-350). Fisher points us to another useful quote from Lefebvre, where he cites "the silence of the 'users'" of space as the key problem with administrative planning entities (1991, p. 365; my emphasis). The silence of displaced residents of New Orleans, which I've written about, is one related example, where bureaucratic abstraction came to have very real consequences for people's ability to be heard.

Finally, spaces of representation, lived experience, the "object" of the body (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 201), are "'mixed' space[s]" (p. 203). The body "preserves difference within repetition" and "is also responsible for the emergence of the new from the repetitive" (p. 203). A focus on this aspect of space can reveal "an affective kernel or centre" in urban space (p. 42). Hmm ... affective kernel or centre--pet architecture? In terms of sound in particular, I wonder if this project is an example of a space of representation. Its product is a "symbolic work" (p. 42) that draws on Mancunians' affective relationships with their soundscape to represent a new way of understanding the sounds of everyday urban space.

Other ideas? ...

The sound of sirens

Tuesday afternoon, reading week, University LRT station, Edmonton.

New Orleans, late August 2005, just prior to Katrina.

What would these soundscapes have in common? Maybe a sound like this:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/56859945da463dde/

R. Murray Schafer, in The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994), describes the "civil defense siren" as a (potential) sound that is common to "almost every modern city" (p. 202). He writes that loud sounds evoke authority and inspire obedience; the LRT siren certainly did the trick for me. It was strange to travel to a campus I expected to be fairly dead, and then to walk off the train into this huge wall of acoustic urgency--not to mention seeing police in jumpsuits reminiscent of bomb squads on television. The police walked casually, calmly; their body language and averted eyes suggested that the auditory assault wasn't to be taken seriously. Had it been a different day, a different place, a different context, that siren, so loud it was almost tangible, would have left very little room for misinterpretation. As it was, I was already skeptical. Would something truly siren-worthy really be occurring here, now--in Edmonton, of all places?

Schafer writes that the civil defense siren is a proscripted sound, a sonic taboo "held in reserve for that fateful day, then to be followed by disaster" (p. 202). By banishing it from the soundscape except for true emergencies, "we do it the ultimate honor of making it all-powerful" (p. 202). When it does sound, its power comes not so much from its use as from its default state of absence. This is, perhaps, the reason I couldn't quite take it seriously on a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of reading week--in Edmonton, of all places.

I'm trying to find information about acoustic alerts during Hurricane Katrina. So far, searching for hurricane katrina sounds, hurricane katrina alarm, and hurricane katrina siren, I've pulled up sound metaphors on news sites and blogs, and interesting pieces about how Katrina has changed the music of New Orleans, but very little that directly discusses what New Orleans sounded like during the calm (?) before the storm. I imagine the incredibly high winds and pelting rain would have dominated once the devastation hit, but what about while people were being evacuated? Were there alarms sounding? (Not here, and not here ...) If there was a siren sounded before Katrina, along with the warnings and states of emergency issued by all kinds of governing bodies, its message, I think, would not have been lost.

The siren sounds; following its sound comes disaster; and following disaster comes, in some ways, the most frightening sound of all, a reminder of human mortality: silence (Schafer, 1994). Whether or not a 'real' alarm bell sounded before Katrina, Jordan Flaherty's piece, "New Orleans Culture of Resistance" (Steinberg and Shields, What is a City?, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008), makes clear the magnitude of the silence that followed. Socially marginalized and non-privileged residents of New Orleans, displaced and destitute, had their voices silenced. In turn, the communicative silence of government and other agencies about the state of relief efforts helped to reinforce the futility of speaking up. In the end, Flaherty expresses hope that acts of resistance will break the post-disaster silence and help to restore community voices to the New Orleans soundscape, but the power of silence has already done significant damage of its own.