Music and noise in the streets: Exploring cultural soundscapes

Abstract

People's contact with music is characterized by the listening conditions which create a context that already consists of sound objects from various sources of the wide acoustic environment. This way, there are such conditions created, that sounds of music mix with the noise of the environment to create new and original soundscapes that are unique and underived from the elements of the biomatic acoustic experience of the listener, at that particular moment. An example of such a dynamic interaction is the listening of buskers' music, where sound characteristics (intensity, rhythm or timbre) combined to personal characteristics (socio-cultural identity, values, principles etc.) of the listener define the form of the final reception of a unique noisy soundscape, that among many functions refers to meanings connected to the special characteristics of the space given. In order to create an audio walk along the streets of the world, with reference to the characteristics of the soundscape created by the combination of environmental/urban noise and buskers' music, we created an interactive map, that works in two levels: Firstly, it creates cultural representations for live acts from humans' societies and secondly establishes significations for the space/place, its people and their socio-cultural conventions. This way, the ability of the soundscape consisting of noise and music to reflect aspects of the audio culture from the corresponding geographical places during the listening of buskers is elevated.