Socioplastics 11962 The Soundscape Is Unequally Shared
Urban acoustic plans often represent sound as a distribution of measured exposure. Such maps are essential for identifying environmental conditions, yet equivalent readings can require very different forms of adjustment from the people who live with them. NoiseBurden names the labour of accommodating unwanted sound: interrupted sleep, fragmented concentration, altered routes, closed windows and the social effort of making a complaint. The marker connects acoustic conditions to the time, resources and bodily work through which their effects are managed. Emily Thompson’s history of architectural acoustics shows that soundscapes are designed and culturally interpreted. Jonathan Sterne places listening within the technical histories of sound reproduction. Brian Larkin examines how infrastructure makes particular relations perceptible, while Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s work on disability questions assumptions about a universal, normate body. Together, these approaches help distinguish measured sound from its situated consequences while keeping both in view. Decibel levels matter; so do patterns of work, health, housing and access to relief. Imagine two apartments beside the same late-night delivery route. Exterior readings are similar, yet one resident sleeps during delivery hours, another cares for a child disturbed by the noise, and a third can afford effective glazing. A NoiseBurden dossier could place timed measurements beside activity diaries, dwelling sections and records of requests for mitigation. These forms of evidence would remain distinct while clarifying how one acoustic environment distributes adjustment. The analysis could also attend to valued sound, such as street music or religious gatherings, whose public presence carries meanings beyond nuisance. NoiseBurden frames acoustic justice as a question of relationships: whose activities can produce sound, whose rest is repeatedly interrupted, and who has the means to change the conditions? A just response may involve insulation, schedule changes, route redesign, protected quiet or negotiated use. The appropriate measure depends on the setting and the people affected. By joining sound measurement to accounts of daily adaptation, the marker makes acoustic exposure legible as a spatial organisation of unequal obligations and available remedies.
REFERENCES
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997) Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Larkin, B. (2013) “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, pp. 327–343.
Sterne, J. (2003) The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Thompson, E. (2002) The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/p/socioplastics-project-index.html