During the 2024 EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) conference in July in Barcelona, we had organised a workshop and an experiment. With fellow anthropologists, we sought out what it means to capture noise in Barcelona. A city increasingly troubled by how it sounds, increasingly associated with what is called “residential noise” or “leisure noise”. This is a noise linked to nightlife, partying, cafés, terrasses, and tourism. A noise, in turn, emitted from models of urban development associated with post-industrial economies of particular European cities.
The experiment was staged as such. (You can find a previous iteration of the experiment that was organised with Prof. Andrew Gilbert in Berlin here). We had two questions: (1) What are the noises of Barcelona? What does this city sound like? What are its different “noisescapes”? (2) What are the challenges of attuning to and capturing these noises? How do different modalities of capturing noise relate to one another? Do they each refer to the same thing and does something “new” emerge in their relationship? The aim was thus to explore the challenges of capturing, attuning and relating to noise in distinct ways, and to reflect on the difficulties of making noisy knowledge.
We then asked the participants to explore Barcelona, either in groups or on their own. Our colleague Albert Arias-Sans had prepared a contextual guide (see below) for three neighbourhoods in Barcelona, each with their own particular noise-history and their own noise-scapes: Gràcia, Eixample and El Raval. They were then asked to visit these areas and to select different modalities to (make) sense and capture noise (photographs, video, texts, drawings, and audio recordings), and to see what it means to capture a particular trace of the sonorous: how does a written text work with or against an audio recording? What does it mean to hear the traces of a passing car through a photograph? What escapes an audio-visual perception?
We also provided instructions for each mode. For instance: PHOTOGRAPH the sonic event or object paying attention to the material, social and sonorous elements and context. After 30 minutes, review the photographs and create a sequence between 5 and 10 photos of the sonic event or object.
The next stage of the event was to compare: both of the different modalities and with others in your group (this tended to happen during the workshop, more below). What are the possibilities and limits of each? What “dynamic friction” (Peterson 2021) appears between them?
The third stage was to upload all the materials, raw or cooked, onto an “ethnographic noise map” that we had developed for our website. You can go there now to see, hear, and read some of these traces. (Note: if you would like to work with our map in your own projects, please get in touch!)
The last stage was a “de-brief” conversation held during the conference. We met to discuss these tunings into and out of noise in Barcelona. In groups based on the neighbourhoods, we talked about how the noise of Barcelona appeared to us in different ways, how the modalities altered those experiences, their differences and frictions, and what sorts of urban stories appear through them.
What does noise index for urban life?
We also had the wonderful opportunity to hear a presentation and be in discussion with an expert from the Barcelona City Council. He told us how noise takes shape for the city, what projects and interventions the city is doing to allay and mitigate noise issues, and what, in turn, it means to “listen like a city” and a technical expert.
Below you can listen to an audio-essay that emerges from the experiment and discussion. This has been mixed by Valentin Watermann. It includes sonic traces of Barcelona’s noise, and traces of the discussion that emerged out of the experiment on the last day.
We would like to thank all the participants in the experiment and Xavier Pont Baldellou, the city official, for joining us and for participating in this experiment. It was only through this participation that the experiment had been possible, and through which we emerged with a new ear and sensitivity to the city of Barcelona.
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