Vancouver Soundscape project

Inside Magazines: Independent Pop Culture Magazines
EDS. PATRIK ANDERSSON AND JUDITH STEEDMAN
BIS/Ginko Press/Thames & Hudson

The soundscape is any acoustic field of study. We may speak of a musical composition as a soundscape, or a radio program as a soundscape. We can isolate and study the acoustic environment as a field of study just as we can study the characteristics of a given landscape.
— R. Murray Schafer, “The Tuning of the World”

‘In the spring [of 2001] I recorded soundscapes around Vancouver, also taking photographs of each location. Later, examining what I had collected, I found similarities between our soundscapes, landscapes, and weather [and recorded these in a self-published project for my undergraduate degree in communication design at Emily Carr University.]

Vancouver is a softly coloured city: green, blue and grey with flashes of yellow and red, more vibrant in relief to the constant cloud cover that diffuses the sunlight. This weather muffles our city’s sounds—sometimes the sounds of the rain and traffic overwhelm all the others. We had an unexpectedly dry spring this year, making these soundscapes and landscapes clearer and brighter than they might have been otherwise.

The Vancouver Soundscape Project is a small book divided into two main parts, and comes with a CD of sound recordings. The first part of the book contains a series of photographs. The second part contains a corresponding series of simple collages based on the recordings, as well as the shapes and colours in the photos. The appendix of the book includes an image taken from a Vancouver city map, and a ballpoint pen diagram of the city’s sonography from my notebook.

The idea for the project came from two main sources. One was the World Soundscape Project, based in Vancouver in the mid-1970s, which documented endangered soundscapes around the world. The other was the work of the situationists, in particular their concept of the dérive, which Guy Debord describes as “a technique or rapid passage through varied ambiences involving playful constructive behaviour.”’

Selection of Vancouver landscapes and soundscapes
audio mastered by Brady Cranfield & Kerry Uchida

Inglis and Agar Drive, Richmond

Strathcona Elementary, Vancouver

Bon Ton Café, Vancouver

Seabus

Gilbert and Baker, Richmond