Urban acustemology (without) movements. About listening to mobility and congestion

Each city has its own sonic climate, which changes with time and inhabitants. In the series of lectures accompanying the exhibition “Kraków. Sounds, melodies, words” we bring together the different faces of urban sounds.

This time the lecture will be devoted to the sounds of mobility: the rhythms of traffic, pedestrian trajectories, the acoustics of infrastructure and the micro-stagnation that interrupts the fluidity of the city. The recordings from the City of Sounds blog will serve as an example of how listening reveals the hidden layers of everyday life and how acustemology allows us to understand urban movement — and stillness — as a social, material and emotional experience.

Mobility has its own sounds, and each of them carries knowledge about the city: about its pace, overloads, tensions, about what is stable and what is fragile. The sounds of movement — and the sounds of stillness — form a layer of memory, emotion, and everyday micro-narratives. In this sense, the acoustic identity of the city is formed not only thanks to unique melodies (such as the Krakow trumpet or bells), but also thanks to repetitive, often imperceptible acoustic gestures, of which we are co-creators and co-creators.

Supervisor: Agata Stanisz, prof. UAM

Agata Stanisz, PhD, professor of UAM — social anthropologist and sound researcher associated with the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology of the University of Warsaw University of Applied Sciences in Poznań. He deals with the anthropology of sound, field recording, mobility and infrastructures, as well as the relationship between the environment, technology and everyday practices. Author of audioethnographic projects, such as: City of Sounds, Transportodrone, 3m2.

The walk is an event accompanying the exhibition “Krakow. Sounds, melodies, words.”