Sound Maps

After the sound workshop that we had last Wednesday, Neveah and I were inspired to go and investigate the territories of sound in Trafalgar Square as created by sound. We were interested in creating a column of sound, but recording sound at different heights–from the underground to the highest point that we could get.

So, we went to Trafalgar Square at around 2pm on a Thursday to take in some of our environment. We were planning to use apps on our phones to monitor our elevation, but it turns out that they were pretty inaccurate when we measured against each other. So, we will probably end up just looking up the different points of elevation if we do decide to create this column.

The sound distribution was interesting, as it wasn’t a super busy day. But perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the exercise was something that happened to us that we could not have expected.

The mic with the fuzzy cap made us very visible within the square–particularly around the lions. A young man, who could have been no older than 18, came up to us and asked us if we we were recording sound video. We told him that we were making audio recordings, and he said, “Please can you turn that off. I do not want to be recorded.” We obliged, not wanting to get into any kind of altercation.

He then told us that he had autism and that spaces like Trafalgar Square made him very uncomfortable–that he hated London, because it made him feel so alone. He said that he needed someone to talk to for 15 minutes.

We obliged him up to the point that he started leading us out of the square itself. At that point, our own safety was compromised. We said we were happy to talk, but in a public place, for the sake of our own safety. He was very frustrated by this, and we were quite shaken as well.

It was interesting how the public nature of Trafalgar Square transformed us into people that were also ‘there for the taking’ in a sense. There is a certain anonymity in crowds in which the code of behavior dictates that one does not speak to strangers. However, in this space, for whatever reason, there is a heightened sense of exposure, and perhaps an assumption that people want to be visible–most of the time, privately visible within the realm of selfies and private vacation conversations.

Because we were not expecting this kind of interaction, we felt vulnerable in this interaction. Unlike the street performers, we were not necessarily inviting people into our realm of conversation, but perhaps next time we would try to flip that expectation by going on the conversational offense.