The history of sound mapping and a guide to trying it yourself

Maps have long been produced across different cultures to help humans better navigate the world. Predominantly, they’ve relied on visual aspects of the environment, such as landmarks or changes in topography, but a different kind of map exists that relies on another sensory experience – that of sound. Such maps subvert the visual aspects of a location and instead require a listening ear to uncover aspects of an environment that are often invisible to a visually centric society.

Sonic research

In the late 1960s, researcher R Murray Schafer founded the World Soundscape Project – aresearch group based at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia, Canada, focused on studying, balancing and improving the sonic environment. Employing a variety of sonic research methods and acoustic ecology theories, its work was instrumental in the development of sound mapping – using sound as the primary orientation to map an environment. This process allowed researchers to connect to the sonic markers (or soundmarks) of a space and to understand ecological and cultural changes over time.

Sound maps can be executed in various ways. For example, each sounding object in a sonic environment can be drawn on a piece of paper or mapped out using only onomatopoeic words. Watercolour paints or sonic artefacts, such as crunchy, dry leaves, can be used to outline various sound types (human, natural, motorised). Perhaps the most common form of sound mapping, however, is done digitally, using a mapping software such as Google Maps and overlaying the digital platform with audio recordings.