In the past weeks, I’ve been immersed in a race against time to analyse, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the 50+ soundscapes I recorded during the first 69 days of the lockdown from my home window in Getxo, in the Basque Country, North of Spain (well I actually recorded almost everyday, but some material was not up to quality standard for ‘real’ research).
I was not alone in this race, as my colleagues and friends PerMagnus Lindborg and Juan Sadaba played along, and a lot of friends and fools helped out with the semantic annotations of all these soundscapes - something you can get nuts with, even if you are a sound expert, as I like to think of myself.
So, while we await reviewers’ feedback after submitting the results of the research for publication, I’d like to share some insights of this investigation which was mainly born as a personal project, a daily exercise in documenting this historical moment and, why not, a way to preserve mental health while in lockdown for well, 99 days in the end.
As mentioned, we considered about 50 soundscape recordings (we edited, cleaned, and extracted about 2 minutes worth of analysis) and drafted five preliminary hypotheses. Hypotheses were based on personal considerations, expectations and predictions based on experience, yes, but also on what we could define ‘widespread belief’ that the ‘soundscapes of our cities’ had ‘turned quiet’ due to (or thanks to) generalised lockdown in the world as we know it. If you want to check out some sources, as mere examples I can point you at: The New York Times, the Guardian, Forbes…the Guardian again, the Guardian on the specific situation in Spain. Plenty of projects out there are calling out to document and share these changes in the urban soundscape - obviously The Sound Outside, which I am co-curating, but also…
Long story short, some of our hypotheses were:
that the overall loudness of the urban area where I recorded would decrease;
that indicators linked to machinery and human activity would also decrease;
that indicatore linked to natural sounds (mainly birds) would increase;
We are also very interested in evaluating and discussing the changes introduced by new mobility - to the urban space and its soundscape - as tangential to the intangible city project. So we added another hypotheses regarding the changes introduced by a potential shift from fuel transportation (virtually banned during lockdown) and light mobility (scooter, skaters, roller skaters…). Based on personal experience, we hypothesised that loudness would not change, as light mobility is indeed a source of noise - think of roller skaters and skaters running on the old pavements of European cities’ centres vs a Toyota Prius driving in low-speed urban conditions.
So we set out for a correlation analysis of perceptual and computational descriptors of which you’ll read more in the full article (not my field, so I won’t even try to share the methodology here! It was all done by my good friend and colleague PerMagnus Lindborg from City University of Hong Kong ) and qualitative analysis within an empirically grounded approach using free-form semantic annotations and twelve volunteers. Additionally, we used as another source of data my personal diary notes, which I took to complement recording, every day. Diary notes were checked against keywords that emerged during the annotations analysis and that we then used to build the taxonomy for populating the three final categories: natural, technological and human sound sources. We then cross-checked all this with the lockdown phases in Spain. We defined six lockdown phases: from Phase 0 to Phase 2, we took the official definition by the Spanish government, with Phase 0 being the end of the strictest measure (nobody allowed out except for emergencies and food supply) and Phase 2 being when we were allowed to go out strolling with the family. We added three phases running up to zero: Phase -3, an intermediate two - weeks phase where Spain basically stopped completely, blocking all works except necessary jobs; Phase -2 (the original lockdown which happened all over Europe) and Phase -1, where kids started being allowed out for one hour a day.
Sum up of qualitative analysis + quantitative analysis + diary notes over 69 days of lockdown in Getxo, Spain. Image by Juan Sádaba.
It would be unwise to share thoughts on how we read the results against our initial hypotheses, before we hear back from reviewers. But if you take a look at the image, it seems that things might now have gone as initially expected. A bit more of contextual information might help those who want to draw conclusions by themselves :)
Firstly, we ‘say’ we document the soundscape during the weeks of lockdown, but what I actually documented is the path from lockdown to ‘unlock down’ i.e., from total closure to a progressive recuperation of the urban activity. So as the image shows, except for the ‘stall’ in human activity during Phases -3 and -2, the beginning of Phase -1 marks a progressive fork between natural and human sounds…is that the sound of life as we know it, going back to normal?
Secondly, in my diary notes I documented how the residents of my neighbourhood started, day after day, to move the center of their lives to the balcony: supported by an exceptionally warm weather, conversations, phone calls and other activities took place more and more on balconies of with open windows. This rather surprising behaviour, given the characteristics of this road - a highly gentrified area dominated by ageing population - is what could explain the increase in human activity-related sounds to the expenses of birds.
As for any consideration on the sound of mobility (traditional vs light), we must consider the specific conditions of the road where I recorded, which is pedestrian, with very little traffic sound even under normal conditions, and paved with stones, which makes it the perfect setting for anything with little wheels to sound utterly annoying.
It would be certainly too early and based on non conclusive results to hypothesise now that…
we humans, and not the artefacts we produce and use (cars, tools, etc) are the real source of noise pollution which is preventing birds’ voices to emerge in the urban context…
the transition to light mobility is not likely to transform our cities in that quiet zone many people are expecting - and hoping - for.
I must admit, I see some light here, nonetheless. I am a fan of cities, I do believe with Rem Koolhaas that cities are those places where you are granted a freedom that in a rural context you are not. I was born in a tiny village in the Alps, I know what I’m talking about! So, if the reaction to being confined at home has been to raise our voices, talk to our neighbours and spend more time on the balconies, well, I don’t see it as a bad thing even if this disturbed the birds nesting on the tree in front of my window. Also, this dreadful experience taught me that hoping for the sounds of the city to disappear, well, could not always be a good thing. Beware of what you hope for, it might become true, as E. Allan Poe said somewhere, most certainly quoting Aesop. Also, that sustainability and new mobility do not necessarily go the same way: results, as for the city soundscape, could be more unpredictable that what we think.