Situating Artistic Work in Dynamic Urban Planning: The Coexistence of Artistic and Urban Practice in...

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Situating Artistic Work in Dynamic UrbanPlanning:

The Coexistence of Artistic and Urban Practice in European Metropolitan Areas

Anamarija BatistaSzilvia KovácsCarina Lesky*

AbstractAs the aesthetic experience of the urban landscape can enhancethe sensual quality of our territorial, social and economic en-vironment, in this paper we will investigate artistic interventionsin public space and their impact on the urban environment. Theimpulses that derive from the artistic practice can stimulate andaffect urban structures. Especially public space is transformedthrough bodily movement and vocalisation into meaningfulspace. This makes the analysis of those concepts and theirintegration into urban planning processes an interesting andrelevant subject matter for this paper. More specifically it focuseson the art form of sound art and its connectivity to contem-porary planning strategies, drawing from theories and concep-tions of the Situationist International.

KeywordsSituationist International, Experienced Urbanity, ArtisticIntervention, Urban Planning, Public Space, Sound Art

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* Recipients of a DOC-team Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Science; inalphabetical order.

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reflected in the actual urban discourse. To this end, the articlefocuses on examples of artistic interventions within the field ofsound art, which both in its origin and structural composition isclosely connected to urban space and its perceptive disposition.Thereby we deal with the following questions: Is the artisticcriticism, practice and installation disciplines part of urbanplanning processes in Western and Central Europe? What impactdoes art and sound art in particular, have on urban structures inphysical and social meanings? What new logics, relationships,opportunities and potentials emerge from such interventions? Inhow far does art affect and alter semantic systems of concreteurban spaces globally, zones and neighborhoods locally? So weare interested in the essence of the place attracted by theintellectual context for activating urban planning to supplementits familiar techniques.

The fusion of these urban livability discourses in the frame ofartistic intervention and urban development are inter-disciplinary in their orientation and require a methodologicalvariety. The combination of a humanist approach with methodsand techniques of social sciences is essential to meet the comp-lexity of Charles Landry’s phenomenon about ‘creative city’. Thepaper works with critical literature analyses, case study rese-arches, bearing in mind potentials in comparison as well.

The Situationist International

The idea was inspired by Lefebvre, who distinguishes threekinds of space: conceived space, perceived space and lived space(Lefebvre, 1991, p. 30). Conceived space (le concu) is – in histerminology – the distanced and powerful view from above. Itincludes the discourse on space as established by urbanplanners and experts (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 33). On the otherhand, the urban space as it is shaped by routine practicesaccording to common rules and values of the dominatingsociety, Lefebvre calls perceived space (le percu). From his point

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Situating Artistic Work in Dynamic Urban Planning

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Anamarija Batista, Szilvia Kovács, Carina Lesky

Introduction

Cities have always built the centre of modern value creationand these days, with the increase of urban population, citiesalready mean urban dominance in the place of residenceworldwide. Where not only the population is cumulated, butcities and city regions are the most concentrated spaces ofeconomic, political, cultural and social potentials as well.Where hand in hand, the long-standing acute problems ofinfrastructure, administration, economy, demography, politicand ethnicity, the dramatic changes in spatial social stratifi-cation led to the quest of paradigm shift in the developmentand running of urban life on every – individual, social,institutional – level.

One of the developments that came along with this shift is theintegration of art projects into urban planning techniques. It isbased on the idea that the artistic work and perspective canexpand and revive urban structures. The idea of stimulatingurban structures through experimental use was also at thecentre of the Situationist International (SI), a movement of the1960s. The grouping around Guy Debord advanced the ideathat – just as through architectural construction – city users havethe power to create city space through bodily activities of dwellingand movement. The idea was inspired by Lefebvre’s notion that ina social sense space only subsists in combination with movement,»for and by virtue of activity« (Bruno, 2007, p. 21). It offers anopportunity and, at the same time, the invitation to overcomethe pre-construed and inveterate structures determined by thedominating social group: the society of the spectacular(Debord, 1967). Seeking to dissolve settled structures of cityspace, they experimented with urban lifestyle and animated citydwellers to active and playful use of their city environment,thereby rediscovering and reviving it, creating integral city space(Debord, ‘Contribution’).

Hence, we would like to investigate, how social spaceconceptions, active sensation and forming of the Situationists are

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overcome capitalist functionalism, exploitation and paraly-sation. Nonetheless, not their Marxist concepts and their poli-tical impact are what makes the Situationist International rele-vant for the subject matter of this paper, but much more so istheir concern with experienced urbanity – as a motto of thecurrent research. At the centre of the Situationist Internationalstands the idea to change the world through the construction ofsituations, or the active creation of moments of life. Thereby thenotion of psychogeography is of vital interest, basically meaningthe interaction of body and environment (anon. 1958). »Wemust develop a systematic intervention based on the complex factors oftwo components in perpetual interaction: the material environment of lifeand the behaviors which it gives rise to and which radically transform it «(Debord, 1957). Just as surroundings affect behaviours,activity is, vice versa, capable to transform environmentalstructures. These considerations are thus what determined thefield of action of the SI and which should open new paths ofurban experience towards a new collective way of life and theend of what Debord called the society of the spectacle(Debord, 1967).

The society of the spectacle was a thorn in their sides, meaninga social order that replaced lived experience and desire by thepassive consumption of images portrayed by mass media. A soci-ety that is paralysed by the spectacular consequently producesstagnating and heteronymous urban structures that arefragmented by functionality (Ford, 2007, p. 64; Debord, ‘Intro-duction’). Debord and his companions held that contemporaryEuropean cities, like Paris, Brussels, or Amsterdam remindedmore of museums than of living space. The streets with their archi-tecture had merged into visual attractions – mere static spectaclesstaged for the tourists’ gaze from their panorama buses (Debord,‘Society’). Just as passive and alienated was the way that citydwellers used urban space. Their paths and habits were virtuallycompletely other-directed underlying functional sequence andpurposes. This notion was based on statistics by Paul-HenryChombart de Lauwe (Ford, 2007, p. 64). In the 1950s the socio-

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of view it is the society of Neocapitalism that shapes functiona-lised and fragmentary space, not only from the outside but alsofrom the inside. In addition to the two concepts he introduces athird kind of special sphere that he calls lived space (le vécu): thespatial imaginary of the time. It is the space of artists andinhabitants that is altered through imagination, memories andmoments that are lived in space (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 38). Thisconcept of lived space is based on Merleau-Ponty’s concept ofthe lived body and the idea that »there are as many spaces asdistinct spatial experiences«11 (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, p. 344).Experiencing the urban space through bodily interaction, theyare constantly engaged in the production and formation of thelived sphere of the city.

Hence the sphere that Lefebvre and consequently the Situatio-nist International are referring to is a social space that is createdby ordinary practitioners. The Situationalist International aimedat putting Lefebvre’s theories into practice (Ross, ‘Interview’).They adapted Lefebvre’s notion of lived space a step further, notcontent with the mere existence of moments as features of space,but eager to create them actively through the deliberateconstruction of situations. They tried to transform urban spacethrough altered, experimental use of the city.

The grouping of artists and theorists around the leadingfigures Guy Debord and Asger Jorn emerged in the late 1950s asa spin-off of the Lettrist International, the InternationalMovement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, and the London Psycho-geographical Association later would become known as the lastavant-garde and would have an important role to play in the1968 Paris strike and revolts (Ford, 2007, p. 42, p. 124). Hold-ing a view of art as being closely associated to politics, theyattacked the capitalist society for being blended and paralysedby the spectacles of mass media and advertisement (Ford, 2007,pp. 23–34). They offered alternative forms of experience to

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11 Original text: »il y a autant d’espaces que d’expériences spatiales distinctes«.

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The results of Chombart de Lauwe’s investigation have notdecreased in actuality. With the technological innovation of GISapplications (Geographic Information Systems) and 3D visualisa-tion the mapping of individual trajectories in time and space hasexperienced a revival as a tool in urban planning and especiallywithin the field of Human Geography. Already in the 1960s and1970s the Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand and his fellowsdeveloped the approach of time-geography, in which individualmovements in time and space as well as their mutual dependencyand interrelation came into focus (Gregory, 2009, pp. 756–757).The technological development of GPS (Global PositioningSystem) facilitates the collection of movement data, tracking whenan individual entity is located where (Shaw, 2005, p. 2).

While digital technologies and GPS can be helpful tools inmapping spaces and understanding social phenomena, Googlemaps and cell phone navigation applications have also contributedto making our ways more direct and purpose aimed. Not losingourselves anymore on our ways, our city experience is restrictedconsiderably. By omitting places or whole districts, we fragment theactual city space through our behaviour. Ironically, on our displayswe are presented a holistic image of the city from above that in itsabstractness comes to substitute our own sensual perception.

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logist investigated the way urban space was used. For one year heaccompanied a student, documenting her everyday routes andpaths through Paris (Illustration 1).

The result showed that she was almost exclusively moving in asmall triagular field between her home, university and her pianolessons. Her use of the city was guided by routine and purposeand her experience of Paris or the urban space she createdthrough her bodily movement was highly fragmented and limi-ted (Ford, 2007, p. 64). It is the type of space that Lefebvre ter-med perceived space – shaped by routine practices according tothe dominating class: the society of the spectacular.

In contrast to this fragmented experience and monotony of citylife, bearing the traces of the society of the spectacular, the Situa-tionist International set their ‘Concept of Unitary Urbanism’(Ivain, 1953). It was the invitation to use the city environment inplayful participation and thereby rediscover and revive it (Illustra-tion 2), creating integral city space (Debord, ‘Contribution’).

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12 Original text: »Trajects pendant un an d’une jeune fille du XVIe arrondisse-ment«.

Illustration 1: Tracks of a young girl of the 16th district taken inone year12

Source: Chombart de Lauwe, 1957

Illustration 2: The naked citySource: Wark, 2008


space as it started in the 1960s has been further advanced bytechnological development. This is especially true for sound artin public space that naturally is bound to such advancements.

Stepping into the Street: Sound Art in Public Space

Depending on mood, concentration, focus and experience,city inhabitants hear their environment in many different ways.In most cases various sounds such as vibrations of bus and trainlines, snippets of conversations on a street, shoes rhythm on theasphalt or river sounds cannot be recognised. On one hand,there is a strong focus on the visual environment, on the otherhand the loudness and dominance of sounds as car motorsdoes not allow a differentiation of sounds. Rich details of thecity soundscape are widely ignored, although our hearingsituates and forms our city experiences. All we do in relation tothe sound of the city is trying to escape its noise, with the aim offinding a calm place to rest and talk.

In the past, sound was one of the crucial sources of infor-mation with semiotic meaning (Garrioch, 2003, p. 5). Conside-ring the difference of the auditory in cultural environment andpsychology, the recognition, mapping process and absorptionof sound varied from today’s one (Smith, 1999). »… to theinhabitants of European towns and cities in the seventeenth, eighteenthand nineteenth centuries, the auditory environment constituted asemiotic system. Sound was a vital element within an urban informationsystem without radio, television or newspapers. … it formed part ofpeople’s way of navigating in time, space and in the social world of thecity« (Garrioch, 2003, p. 6). Animal sounds and human voicesfilled the streets as people conversed and animals were livingnext to human inhabitants – not just as main means of trans-port but also as farm-animals.

The time of industrialisation brought a dominance ofmechanic and motor tones, the sounds of past authorities suchas church bells or individual sounds such as patters or rustling

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Tracing the SI: Situationist Strategies and ContemporaryPractices

As also the example of mapping in time-geography suggests,basic ideas and conceptions of the Situationist International aswell as some practical strategies, such as cognitive mapping or thedérive are echoed in contemporary urban planning and archite-cture within Situative Urbanism. At the same time the Situationistfocus on the interaction of the city users with their architecturaland geographical environment as well as their subjectiveexperience of public space find response in recent urbantheoretical approaches. For instance Sophie Watson and GaryBridge – in their recently published ‘The Blackwell Companion tothe City’ – emphasise the current relevance of paying attention tothe aspects of materialities, movement and affect in public spacein analysing the city. »Although they have developed independently, ifthought of together, materialities and mobilities further animate ourunderstanding of cities, opening out the analysis to consider the life in whatwas hitherto thought of inert (the material infrastructure of cities) and theimportance of movements (of objects, or bacteria) previously consideredinsignificant. Affect too that deals with forces and movements in the city (theemotions, affect, embodied agency) that have been overlooked in traditionalurban analysis. We can see that the city is part constituted through the forcesof materials, objects, microbes, and emotions – as well as humans and theirprojects and purposes« (Bridge–Watson, 2011, p. xiii).

While some ideas and strategies of the Situationist Internatio-nal live on in urban planning techniques and urban theory, theirconcepts are similarly reflected in contemporary art. In the formof Guerilla Art, Street Art, Performance Art or Video Art theystepped into the street right into the everyday life of city dwellerswhere urban space is produced. So the Situationist demand ofdissolving the boarders between art and life as well as theaesthetisation of everyday life have inspired art forms to leavethe museums, galleries and theatre houses that they were held in– which will confirms us to rely on SI-legacy as a conceptualstarting point in our research. Artistic intervention in public

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Towers’. The work combined the notions of interactivity andsound art and was based on the idea of implementing the aes-thetic vision of the city.

Nicolas Schöffer’s ‘Spatiodynamic Towers’ were 50 metres high,made of steel and assembled from colorful metal bars (Illustration3). The visual appearance was combined with the soundscape,which consisted of composed material and city sound. Schöffer’scooperation partner Pierre Henry experimented with the sound ofmetal bars composing works that were recorded on audiotapesthat subsequently were installed as part of the tower. Besides theinstallation of audiotapes, it was also endowed with microphones,photocells and sensors. Random ambience noise was recordedand aestheticised by adding organised sound (Föllmer, 2010, p.148). »The tower sang day and night, reacting to honking cars, daylightvariation, the wind and its own sound«14 (De la Motte, 2011, p. 2).

Characteristic of the cooperation of Schöffer and Henry is, onthe one hand its creation process that works across specificgenres and, on the other hand, the way it opens artistic practiceto an everyday and non-art context – into urban correlation.Schöffers and Henry’s project is regarded as pioneer project of

silk have slowly passed into the ‘noise-scape’ and lost theirmeaningful connotations. Our society has experienced a hugetechnological development, which produced new mute andshrill sounds, and sound compositions that overload the citystreets. As a result sounds have become inaudible and lost theirsemantic signification (Garrioch, 2003, p. 25).

In contemporary urban planning processes the design ofaudio elements is not considered in its diversity and wide rangeof possibilities. In most cases, the knowledge of methodologicalinstruments and conceptual matter is situated in the field ofsound art. Due to its complexity and abstraction sound artistscarry out an artistic research, an analysis of the micro level ofpublic space, aiming at exploring the soundscape of lived publicspace and everyday lives in the cities.

Within sound art, which is regarded as hybrid of acoustic andoptic elements a paradigmatic opening of the art forms is takingplace. »The space with all its bodily phenomena forms of utilization and itshistory becomes musical material. At the same time the sound installationadds to the time and space of urban life«13 (Föllmer, 2010, p. 341).The connectivity between the arts, which is generated throughperformativity, hybridity and multimodality leads to a reciprocaloptimisation (Diederichsen, 2008, p. 276). The optimisation ten-dencies of the Arts run parallel to the reversal oppositionalattitude between Art and Non-Art (Fischer–Lichte et al., 2010, p.7). The interaction of the artistic practice with everyday life canbe observed especially in sound art installations – sculptures –,objects etc. in public space. The work ‘Spatiodynamic Towers’ isa good historical example, how artistic practise can be entangledinto the time-space-flow of the city.

In 1954/55 at the international exposition of architecture andpublic works Nicolas Schöffer presented the ‘Spatiodynamic

13 Original text: »Der Raum mit allen seinen körperlichen Erscheinungs- undNutzungsweisen und mit seiner Geschichte wird damit zum musikalischenMaterial. Umgekehrt bereichert der Klang andere Kunstpraktiken um denzeitlichen Fluss und um nichtkörperliche, ephemere Ausdrucksweisen«.

14 Original text: »Der Turm soll Tag und Nacht gesungen haben, weil er aufhupende Autos, Tageslichtschwankungen, den Wind und auch auf eigeneKlänge reagierte«.

Illustration 3: Nicolas Schöffer’s ‘Spatiodynamic Towers’ in Lüttich, 1961 anddesign of 324 m high ‘TLC, Tour Lumiére Cybernétique’ for Paris-la-DéfenseSource: Föllmer, 2010


middle-class product by what he terms the neo-avant-garde,talking about performance artists, conceptional artists andother early art forms in public space (Schreuder, 2010, p. 29).

Since, these concepts have found recognition and been put intopractice in various academic theories and attained global account.Therefore, related studies render urban space more attractive forcreative economy (e.g. Hopkins, 2002) that could also secureeconomic status as well as competitive power. Paul Ray calls thisemerging class ‘cultural creatives’ while Richard Florida identifiesthem as ‘creative class’. At the centre of this group are peopleengaged in science and engineering, architecture and design,education, arts, music and entertainment (Florida, 2002, p. 8). In‘Cities and the Creative Class’, Florida also argues that members ofthe creative class look for the ‘three T’s’ characteristics16 ofmetropolitan areas when relocate. But beside the ethos of thisgroup, the tension between creativity and organisation was alsodetected and intended to be changed (Yantis, 2004).

What happened is that by merging art and everyday, the avant-garde has not only opened up the boarders of artisticinstitutions, such as galleries and museums, but also dissolvedthose of urban experts and governments, who now themselvespeer beyond their own nose to the arts and the avant-garde(Schreuder, 2010, p. 30). The revolutionary concepts of avant-garde thinkers have reached the everyday – less radical of coursebut for real. As urban planners use situationist strategies as thedérive and psychogeography, calling them city walks and cogniti-ve mapping, similarly artistic methods, creativity are finding theirway into social, economic and spatial urban planning processes,where their impact can be one beyond image and economicstatus, simply in improving the quality of our urban environment– what makes them highly relevant for further research.

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sound art. However, the term ‘sound installation’ was onlyintroduced twelve years later in relation to the work ‘City Links’(1967) by Maryanne Armachers and established itself in the late1980s and 90s (Straebel, 2010, p. 55).

The aesthetic experience of the urban landscape can enhancethe sensual quality of our environment. Especially public spacesare transformed through bodily movement, visual appearanceand vocalisation into meaningful spaces. Similarly, sound art asartistic form follows a similar approach. It wants to sensitise ordétourne the experience of the city and revive our blunted sensesby retrieving us from our daily routine and inviting us to associ-ate and interact with our environment.

Artistic Production and the Idea of Creative City15

In the 1980s, Charles Landry created his urban planningconcept of ‘Creative Cities’, in which artists have an importantrole to play in the composition of urban space. Moreover, itaims at inspiring city users to live their environment actively andcreatively, playing out their own ideas. In the ‘creative city’urban space is regarded as multimodal and synaesthetic livingspace and besides buildings, streets and infrastructure, alsoaspects such as atmosphere, mentality and collective memoryare embraced (Landry, 2000, p. 12).

This type of application of artistic production has of courseraised skeptical voices, criticising it as commercialisation andinstitutionalisation of artistic autonomy and the selling of avant-garde ideals that originally were intended as radical actionsprecisely against institutions and governments. So in ‘The Theoryof the Avant-Garde’ (1974), art critic Hal Foster distinguishes theway that historical avant-garde-ideals have been turned into a

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15 The study is not intended to reflect on the different creative city approches,it would like to use their basic pertinence about the role of artistic sphere inurbanisation.

16 Talent (a highly talented/educated/skilled population), Tolerance (a diversecommunity, which has a ‘live and let live’ ethos), and Technology (thetechnological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture)(Florida, 2004).


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environments in which phenomenological, empirical approachescan examine the human-landscape relationship, meaning theinteraction of the individual with his or her – in this case urban –environment. His works highlight that this transaction is an activeone. People not only observe their environment, but also want toparticipate within them (Taylor et al., 1990).

To step forward from existing results and experimental studies,the challenge for urban planning is in fact to translate those artisticresearches into practice. As the philosophical, city-economical,architectural, social and cultural role of urban environment and ofpublic space are changing in a dynamic manner, and in manyaspects due to effects of modernisation, globalisation, includingglobal economic progress, it is essential to look for newexplanations and applications for future directions.

An example is the operation of the ‘Institute for Research onthe Everyday Life’ (‘Institut für Alltagsforschung’ in Frankfurtam Main and in Vienna), which is dedicated to the research andrevolutionising of everyday relationships. As part of its mission,the Institute works with various formats of artistic research,among other projects, with a mobile research station (caravan)for analysing everyday varieties within urban environments(Illustration 4). They have a number of tools that already haveproven themselves and are regularly used, because they adapteasily to the situations: »Almost every presentation of the Institutebegins with a mapping of the newly explored territory, such as sketcheswith felt-tip pen on paper, models arranged from French fries, ketchupand mayo or as 3-D landscape of earth and grass. They serve to focusthe audience and put an emphasis on the open structures that influencedaily life in every place« (Institut für Alltagsforschung, 2011).

Another example is the ‘Subjective Budapest Maps’ project,which is a collection of artistic works that reflect the wide-rang-ing changes of Budapest urban life in the last 20 years. Duringthe transition, the appearance of the private sector and theinflow of foreign capital radically changed the city. Artistsreacted to these processes with acute sensitivity: »Budapest ismore than just an urban architecture consisting of nothing but buildings,

Art and Urban Planning: An Assessment of the PhysicalEnvironment and Social Perception

While the group of Situationist International created theconcept of psychogegeography through experienced urbanity inthe 1960s in Europe, a new psychology trend was formed inNorth-America, namely the environmental psychology. Ithandles physical environment not as passive ‘stimulus’, but as‘equal partner’ of human manifestations, interpreting it as atrigger or a kind of physical ‘bed’ of individual and socialbehaviour (Dúll, 2009, p. 11).

According to its content, the environment can be built,naturally or socially; based on human reactions, it can supportor inhibit group formation (Oxley et al., 1986; Saegert–Winkel,1990, cited in Dúll, 2009, p. 17); and by its scope, there existmicro (for example, room), mezo (such as school) and macro(e.g. city) environments. But mostly under the definition of envi-ronment, the gregarious and social medium is understood.Hence, as a critical approach, environmental psychology wascreated. While in the first period, it strengthened the significanceand role of physical environment, later on, it focused more onthe approach that every physical environment is actually a socialenvironment as well and vice versa (Dwyer et al., 1996).

If we keep in mind the detailed analysis of motivations and toolsconnected to the Situationist International and present followerswith their expanded ideas in relation to the interactive discoursebetween urban objects and townsmen, a parallel need could bediscovered for a multidisciplinary urban interpretation andtransformation. For Guy Debord, the Parisian avenues and boule-vards did not mean anymore the 19th century’s symbol of progressand liberation (Mumford, 1961) or of public-creator institutions.Rather, they reflected pejoratively how consume processes areorganised in the metropolitan lifestyle (Gyáni, 1997), as well asrealised the circulation of people and goods under capitalistdegradation. For Nicolas Schöffer urban environment has specialstimulation properties, especially auditory stimuli. He creates


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The Cooperation of Sound Artists with Urban Planners,Architects and Inhabitants

The hard and format oriented realities slowly disappear andspace is understood as social space, which is producible andcan be understood in its complexity, inconsistency anddynamics. Out of this the question is raised how artists ingeneral, and here especially sound artists, can influence theprocess of urban space planning.

The practice of sound art understands space at the same timeas an area of socio-political, cultural, social and economicaldiscourses. It also studies urban space by both reflecting andproving knowledge and forms. The density of stimulus andexperience of public space can no longer be reduced to visualstimuli. Barbara Barthelmes emphasises that a place or acontext can only be tangible when its spatial, plastic as well asvisual dimensions are just as much considered as its sound,symbolic and historical dimensions. »And this experience is con-crete, is the tactile qualities of a wall on the density and extent of anarea, the emotional impact of colour on the sound that passes throughthe body on its physical expansion that is experienced and perceived«17

(Barthelmes, 2010, p. 164). Reflections on such city soundplanning have already been taken up and formulated.

In his text ‘Stadtklang – Klangstadt; Klanggärtnerei, urbaneHörräume und mediale Stadt-Architekturen’ Andres Bosshardrefers to the study ‘Aux écoutes de la ville’ (1991) (Amphoux,1991), commissioned by the European Union, in which the citiesLausanne, Locarno and Zurich were analysed methodically anddocumented acoustically.

According to Bosshard, concrete requirements were created inorder to begin with extensive city sound planning. Unfortunate-

streets, squares and public works; it is also a network representing thememories, emotions and personal connections of a lost or disappearingage« (Subjective Budapest Maps, 2010).

A striking example for the integration of artistic production inurban planning is ‘aspern – Vienna’s Urban Lakeside’, a giantgreenfield development in the part of Donaustadt, a real estateinvestment in the 22nd the district of Vienna. Its vision states asfollows: »[aspern] creates a balance between personal needs andprofessional requirements, between entrepreneurial success and socialresponsibility – and a life in balance« (aspern + Die Seestadt, 2011).To realise this project, several actors were asked about theirideas and concepts of urban planning to encourage and expandart, culture and communication programs. One of them iscalled ‘aspern Lakeside PUBLIC’ within which people are invitedto participate in projects such as ‘urban gardeners’,‘stadt.schreiberInnen’ (city writers), so together with artists, thecity residents are committed to »share and try own utopias for anew city« (content.associates, 2011). To develop new theoreticaland practical perspectives – as follows.

Illustration 4: Archives of various materials that were collected by oneof the ‘Institute for Research on the Everyday Life’ research projectSource: Institut für Alltagsforschung, 2011

17 Original text: »Und diese Erfahrung ist konkret, wird an den haptischenQualitäten einer Mauer, an der Dichte und Ausdehnung einer Fläche, deremotionalen Wirkung einer Farbe, am Klang, der durch den Körper hindurchgeht,an dessen physikalischer Ausdehnung erlebt und wahrgenommen«.


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in the light shafts of London’s Somerset Houses. For monthsFontana recorded audio and video material along a 100-milestretch of the Thames. The artist’s concern was to call back theextraordinary story of the Somerset House to recollect and toillustrate the relationship of the house to the river.

The funnels that run all the way around the courtyard ofSomerset House, are not publicly accessible. Displaying thework ‘River Sound’ in this place, Fontana renders architecturalspaces of the city visible. Contextualising sound by connecting itto the architecture and its history is very important to the artist,as his intend is to create a dialectic of spatial and acousticstructures (Illustration 6). Similar to Bosshard, he laments theneglect of the soundscape in today’s urban practice. With hiswork, he wants to draw the attention of his audience to therichness of surrounding sounds and tones. »My projects are reallyexperiments in perception to break down people’s non-listening. I thinkour culture is in many ways acoustically illiterate, in that people don’tgrow up learning and recognising or even paying attention to soundpatterns in what they would call noise« (Wyse, 2010).

The last work to be discussed is the installation/performancecalled ‘Biographical Landscape of New Zagreb’, which wasshown in June–July 2012 in the Museum of Contemporary ArtZagreb. The installation/performance explored what everydaypractices of inhabitants of New Zagreb look like. Together withten inhabitants of the area, artist Claudia Bosse and soundartist Günther Auer developed the choreographies thatvisualised and acoustised the living space and living culture ofNew Zagreb.

ly, the study is virtually unknown today (Bosshard, 2010, p.177). Andreas Bosshard points out that sound designs arealmost never considered in public space. One of the feworganisations that deal with the acoustics of a city is NoiseProtection / Control Administration. »It is plausible that we protectourselves, but it is utterly inexplicable to me that we have ever come tohaving to protect us from ourselves«18 (Bosshard, 2010, p. 171).

Bosshard is of the opinion that our behaviour towards a city canbe understood from city sound. City sound is an essentialcomponent of our city and must not be ignored. Bosshardproposes, among others, to plan and design sound gardens incities (Illustration 5) and to integrate them as an active module ofcity sound (Bosshard, 2010, p. 179). »To plan, build and entertain asound garden is entirely new, unfamiliar task that can not be solved in theconventional recording studio or in the instrumental interplay«19 (Bosshard,2010, p. 179). A connection between botany, city planning, land-scape architecture and sound art could create not yet heard calmanchors and sound spaces (Bosshard, 2010, p. 180).

Another example that we would like to describe here is thework ‘Sounding River’ by Bill Fontana, which was shown in 2010

Illustration 5: Andres Bosshard’s ‘Soundsee in Soundpark’ for the World NewMusik Festival in Stuttgart, 2006Source: Bosshard, 2010

18 Original text: »Es ist verständlich, dass wir uns schützen, aber es ist mir ganzund gar unverständlich, dass wir überhaupt dazu gekommen sind, uns voruns selber schützen zu müssen«.

19 Original text: »Einen Klanggarten zu planen, zu bauen und zu unterhalten,stellt ganz neue unbekannte Aufgaben, die weder im herkömmlichenTonstudio noch im instrumentalen Zusammenspiel gelöst werden können.«

Illustration 6: Bill Fontana’s ‘River Sounding’Source: Fontana, 2010


performance ‘Biographical Landscape of New Zagreb’ allowsthe audience to perceive the soundscapes of New Zagreb and tohave a look at its interaction with movement and visual forms.

Conclusion

These and other here not mentioned examples show that thecooperation between sound artists and architects as well as cityand landscape planners can enrich the urban practice – which ismarked by complex space-sound relationships – opening it upand thinking of it in new ways.

Especially in today’s cities, in which acoustics are dominatedby traffic noise and the visual, phatic and olfactory perception,the experience of the city in its aesthetic and social significanceis neglected. The experience of the city must not be reduced tothe fulfilment of defined functions (e.g. passing from point A topoint B), but it is important to consider the multimodal,synthetic dimension of the city into the planning, designing anddevelopment of the urban landscape.

By explaining the chain of our keywords and strengthening thecorner points of our research concept, we intended to findopportunities to learn new tendencies for future directions inurbanism – one of which could mean (sound) art in publicspace as applied intervention in public planning, just asexperienced urbanity is essential to the ideas and practices ofthe Situationist International and their followers.

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New Zagreb – a part of the city of Zagreb, was built duringthe Socialist era (1945–1990) – is located south of the riverSava. It mostly represents residential area and is formed by twoadministrative city districts: New Zagreb East and New ZagrebWest. Here is situated the new building of the Museum ofContemporary Art built by Igor Franić, which was opened inDecember 2009.

In order to investigate this part of the city, the director andthe sound artist spoke with the inhabitants of differentgenerations and invited them to be a part of an artistic instal-lation. The live models were the product of common researchand work of artists and inhabitants. Six apartments wereoutlined in the museum in their original size and arranged withmultiple documents of their lives and history. Also theprojection of the interviews was shown there. At the same timethe apartments of the inhabitants who participated wereequipped with the art works from the museum and one workfrom the collection was projected on a façade (Museum ofContemporary Art Zagreb, 2012).

Part of the process was as well as the reflection of routine andritualised actions as the engagement of two different livingspheres: intimate, private space with an institutional, educativespace. The invitation to the inhabitants to participate in theprocess of representation of everyday life practices in the livingspaces and its orchestration means a creation of a space, inwhich the artistic production and its formats are used as animpulse, as well as an instrument, for the examination of the cityarea, their architectural solutions as their impact on theformation of social space (Illustration 7). The inhabitants arenot just interview partners; they are an active part of the inves-tigation process and of the subsequent performance. Despitethe focus on visual perception the performance also documentsthe sound topologies as essential part of living space and theliving condition. A large issue of the built spaces is its acousticquality. On the one hand it is considered by the architecture, onthe other by the dynamic of living and sounding actions. The

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Illustration 7: Claudia Bosse and Günther Auer’s ‘Biographical Landscape of NewZagreb’ (installation/performance, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 2012)Source: Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 2012


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