I am part of the AMBIENT project at RITMO, where we explore how audiovisual background rhythms influence bodily behaviors and perception in everyday indoor environments. The project draws on musicology, psychology, and informatics, and I’ve carved out my own niche through a mix of curiosity and mischief. Building interactive objects, tinkering with ventilation systems, and even sneaking bird sounds into the office to see how colleagues react. Today, however, I want to share something simpler: how to listen to the spaces around us.
We spend our days immersed in sound, though most of the time we do not notice it. At least not deliberately. Imagine this: you sit on a park bench, close your eyes, and allow your ears to do the work your eyes so often dominate. Without sight, what picture of your surroundings takes shape? Perhaps you imagine a bird passing by, only to open your eyes and find it was a squeaky bicycle chain. The differences can be startling.
If you are inclined toward drawing, take the challenge further: sketch the place around you, but only include those things that make a sound. A rustling tree counts; a parked bicycle does not. What emerges is not a conventional image of a place but a cartography of its sonic life. Such exercises sharpen our ability to distinguish, categorize, and appreciate the impulsive, sustained, and iterative sounds [1] that compose our auditory landscapes. In this act of listening, the mundane becomes newly vivid.
Yet our built environments are not always designed with the ear in mind. Architects and engineers carefully calculate airflow, temperature, and spatial geometry, but rarely do they account for the auditory consequences of their choices. The hum of a ventilation system, the drone of refrigeration units in a grocery store, or the metallic hiss of a speaker left on but unused. These incidental sounds shape our experience of space as much as lighting or furniture.
In workplaces, the consequences are more than aesthetic. Noise from conversations, printers, or even the grinding churn of a coffee machine contributes to a low-level cacophony that might disrupt the concentration of some. The body registers these sounds in subtle but profound ways: a sudden bang provokes the startle reflex; persistent noise accelerates the heart and taxes respiration [2, 3]. Chronic exposure leaves its mark in elevated cardiovascular stress, leaving us restless without knowing why.
The next time you enter a library, office, or café, pause and listen. Which sounds come from people? Which from machines? Which from the building itself? Notice whether they are cyclical, like a fan’s endless whir, or sporadic, like a slammed door. And here’s the unsettling part: once you notice them, some will be impossible to ignore.
Such questions remind us that noise is not simply a mere backdrop; it is part of the texture of life. It shapes our bodies, our moods, and even our capacity to think clearly. To listen, then, is more than a sensory exercise: it is an inquiry into the quality of our environments and, by extension, our well-being.
Sometimes, to truly understand the world we inhabit, all we must do is dare to listen. It sometimes tells us more about the world than any amount of looking.
References:
- Schaeffer, P. (1998). Solfege de l'objet Sonore (1966). Paris: Ina/GRM, réédition.
- Münzel, T., Gori, T., Babisch, W., & Basner, M. (2014). Cardiovascular effects of environmental noise exposure. European heart journal, 35(13), 829-836.
- Basner, M., Babisch, W., Davis, A., Brink, M., Clark, C., Janssen, S., & Stansfeld, S. (2014). Auditory and non-auditory effects of noise on health. The lancet, 383(9925), 1325-1332.