Sound design

I spent a great deal of time last week trying to untie various kinds of html code in order to embed sound files in my blog posts. Blogger gives the option of embedding image and video into a post in the toolbar at the top of the window where it is composed, but no such handy icon appears for audio files. Instead, I've been up, down, and all around, starting accounts on multiple file-hosting sites only to discover that they won't load the mP3, or they only host audio files that have been recorded via phone onto the site, or or or or.

I find this conundrum very interesting. In terms of cities, sound is often viewed as an inevitable side effect, an inherent—and usually negative—consequence. Traditional urban planning and design practices have focused almost exclusively on visual design—even now, many of the design ideas we’ve come across in class have few hints towards what kind of auditory world might accompany their visual imaginings. Sound, it seems, is beyond the scope of much city design (visual metaphor intended)--although the Urban Sound Institute provides a recent example to the contrary.

If my experience with embedding sound files is any indication, the Internet is also designed to be a visual beast. Web pages contain visual content by their nature. But the status of online audio seems to be almost the opposite of urban soundscapes. The latter represent the often accidental consequences of processes that consider them secondarily if at all, whereas online sound represents the result of some careful programming and clear design intent. Granted, the case of videos may be an exception to this rule. The point remains, however, that sound must be designed into web pages to a far greater extent than it has been, so far, into cities.

A couple of questions spring to mind. Is it possible to conceive of an online environment in which sound would be accidental? What would that sound be—slick, mechanical, modern; the sound of chaos and billions of voices; something different altogether? And if sound were engineered more carefully in urban environments, would the effect be to sterilize them or to improve them?

WALL-E

In a recent seminar, we saw a picture of a floating city designed to house survivors of a natural disaster. Someone compared it to the spaceships in the movie WALL-E (excellent--definitely watch it). That comment was perfectly timed, because I had been writing a blog post about this little nugget, a clip from a 20-minute short documentary that's included in the DVD's special features:



The movie has a few different messages, some fraught with tension. The fact that a film which is highly critical of North American big-box consumer culture has firm ties to the Disney corporation is one of the most obvious. But what I found so lovely about WALL-E, much like what I found endearing about the idea of pet architecture, was its appeal to affect and irrational feeling.

The spaceship on which the movie's exiled earthlings have been circulating for 700 years is the epitome of a rational, cold, hegemonic vision--Lefebvre's representations of space taken to the nth degree. Talk about city design--every part of its operation, from the jumpsuit uniforms of its residents to its robotic staff, is planned, leaving little room for spontaneity and effacing the sense of difference and diversity that's understood to be characteristic of cities. Its inhabitants circulate in chairs outfitted with in-your-face screens that move along seemingly predetermined routes, and we quickly discover that the real brains behind the operation isn't the well-meaning, bumbling human captain--it's a robot named Auto. Back on Earth, WALL-E putters around in the midst of a technological wasteland, the shining promise of futuristic visions covered in layers of dust and rust. Yet in the midst of the movie's technologically determined, robotic world, the simple, timeless act of holding someone's hand is still the ultimate goal.

The documentary clip above is, I think, analogous to this idea. Here is one of the most respected film sound designers in Hollywood, with techno-beeps and computer-generated boops at his fingertips—and yet (to my memory) a good one-third to one-half of the long-version documentary focuses on his delight at finding the amazing analog sound contraptions Disney had kept around since the days of ye olde Mickey Mouse. These sounds are tangible and concrete in a way computer-generated sounds may not be. They represent a playful ingenuity and resourcefulness that hasn’t lost its charm.

I found Ben Burtt's comment about creating a world of sound very interesting as well. I'll likely be writing about that one again.