countermapping the city through sound

the workshop

on March 17, 2022 after the Soundwalk experience, a group of students led their in-class workshop to counter-map the city. The students, Chizorom Ogbuagu, Deanna Bogaski, Katherine Barret, Leah Ross, Thomas Molnar, and Yasmine Butlin-Legras, designed the workshop by leveraging the insights provided by the Soundwalk.

to do this, they identified five main types of urban space that people encountered during the Soundwalk: residential streets (busy and not), intersections, industrial areas, and parks. Then, they asked their colleagues to map the sounds they heard in each of those types of space and the sounds they expected to hear but did not. After that, they asked their colleagues to reflect on the emotions connected to each sound and to map them. As the last activity, they engaged the participants in identifying alternatives that could generate the sounds that catalyzed positive emotions.

long and intense conversations happened throughout the process, and existing, invisible and desired cities emerged.

the counter-maps

after the workshop, students reorganized the insights emerged during the activity in a set of counter-maps representing the sounds that are present in the urban space, the ones that are absent and the urban imaginaries evoked by the sounds.