The Favourite Sounds Project
The 'Favourite Sound' Project was first set up in London by sound artist/musician Peter Cusack for the artists’ radio station ResonanceFM during 1998. It has been running since. The aim is to discover what city dwellers find positive about their city's soundscape by asking the simple question, "what is your favourite London, or Beijing, or .......... sound, and why?" The replies create a database of knowledge about the city's sounds and what people think and feel about them. The responses are fascinating. There are regularly unexpected suggestions and everyone has a different perspective on the question. Collectively it reveals much about the significance of sound in everyday life.
In London over 1000 responses have now been received. Many of the sounds have been recorded, by both project members and those making the suggestions, leading to radio programs worldwide, a CD entitled "Your Favourite London Sounds", exhibitions (together with photographs of London) and a wide variety of educational and arts involvements. A follow up “Favourite Sounds of London” CD is planned for 2007.
The project has generated much discussion in the media and education and also
in more unexpected places, such as the Greater London Authority environment
department who were interested in relation to London's new ambient noise strategy,
published in 2004. Discussions around the project raise issues like the sound
identity of cities, the rapid changes to our soundscape caused by local developments
and by globalisation, the disappearance of traditional sound and the emergence
of new ones, how noise problems are tackled and future creative approaches
to the sound environment. It is intention of the Favourite Sounds’ project
to continue to contribute to this debate and to raise awareness of the need
for a positive approach to planning as far as our everyday soundscape is concerned.
The “Favourite Sounds’ project is now international. Favourite
Sounds of Chicago was set up in 2006 with significant involvement of local
radio. Chicago sounds and further information can be found here.
In 2005 ‘Favourite Sounds of Beijing’ was carried out in the Chinese
capital as part of the British Council’s ‘Sound & the City’ initative.
A CD "Your Favourite Sounds of Beijing" is in preparation and will
be released in 2007. Educational workshops were arranged with the Central Academy
of Fine Art and the Beijing Conservatory whose students subsequently made a
major contribution through their own recordings. Again it generated wide attention
with interest from the media, artists, urban planners and educational institutes.
As the project takes place in different cities, comparisons can be made, not
only across geographies, but also culturally. The responses in London and Beijing
revealed not just different soundscapes, but differences in the way that people
felt and spoke about their relationship with the sound environment. Exploring
these cultural differences in attitudes to sound is one of the project’s
long-term aims. As is the investigation of how, and by what routes, sounds
migrate from place to place, city-to-city and world region to world region
in this era of rapid globalisation.