Page 38 - Winter2014

Figure 5: Soundwalk with local experts, Berlin (2013)
tating people’s comments gains access to the experiences and expectations of the listening and observing attendee (Figure 5).
For example, the interview ques-
tions may relate to the people’s agreement with a series of descriptions, on a verbal scale from “not-at-all” to “extremely.”
Experiences include comparisons of similar and oppositional situations and show the time-grown development of the peoples’ individual and collective mind (Voigt, 2013). They also refer to results of shifted strategies elaborated by previous decisions of acceptance and rejection of different soundscapes. This process of adjusting is described as “Passung” (Shulte- Fortkamp, 2010). That process considers all conscious and unconscious influences to the peoples’ mind as they judge the appropriateness of sounds to sources, places, or situations.
Expectations of a known place imply a bandwidth of accepted occurrences which are often indicated by noticing the devi- ances. Descriptions and ratings of the situation, the loca- tion, occurrence, and sound sources, are the most common comments in the non-hierarchical, multiple layers of written reflections. Expanding the evaluation through situational dis- course to an ad-hoc interview on the noted perception reveals additional layers of description.
In essence, data mining in the analysis of soundwalks goes beyond combining graphs vs. time with the notes of the attendees, and is already in process during data acquisition. The feedback given by the soundwalk participants after the original questioning enhances the analyst’s insight into the meaning of sound to those local experts, and identifies how a particular sound may be perceived as a positive feature, or as noise.
Considering moderators
Obviously, the soundscape approach and its methods enable us to learn about the process of perception and evaluation sufficiently as they take into account the context, ambience, the usual interaction between listener and sound, as well as the multidimensionality of sound perception. By contrast, conventional methods often reduce the complexity of real-
ity to controllable variables, which supposedly represent the scrutinized object. Furthermore, traditional tests (2-AFC- method, A/B-comparison etc.) frequently neglect the context- dependency of human perception; they only provide artificial realities and diminish the complexity of perception to merely predetermined values, which do not completely correspond with perceptual authenticity. However, perception and evalu- ations entirely depend on the respective influences of the acoustic and non-acoustic moderators, as for example vegeta- tion, neighborhood, and life-style.
Application of soundscape analysis
of local expertise to an outdoor
public space
The development of the Nauener Platz in Berlin, a public place, is a pioneering example of how to collaborate in a soundscape approach with all project-relevant parties, or stakeholders. The Project “Nauener Platz - Remodelling for Young and Old” was conducted within the framework of the German government sponsored research program “Experi- mental Housing and Urban Development (ExWoSt)” of the “Federal Ministry of Transport, Building, and Urban Affairs (BMVBS)” by the “Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR)”.
36 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2014