Kuuluma is a sound art project that combines practices and methods of communal art and artistic research. Our aim is to open a space for culture of listening and to study and chart Finnish soundscapes with different methods.
As a communal art project we hope to recruit local communities to start observing and recording sounds and soundscapes of their own life-world. Our tools of engagement include recording workshops, soundwalks, web-based listening maps and sound art workshops. Besides different installations and sound works we plan to publish our results as a series of listening maps that hopefully continue to evolve after the project is over. An additional feature we bring into sound/listening maps is a temporal dimension that gives users the opportunity to compare the developement of certain soundscapes over the years. The prototype of this map is currently online http://www.turkukuuntelee.fi
As artistic research project we hope to study how to foreground the implicit knowledge inhbitants have of their acoustic life-worlds. How to empower citzens to communicate their understanding and concerns about their acoustic surroundings with each others.
The Finnish translation of a soundscape is “äänimaisema” which literally means sound landscape. Although this term has some important implicit meanings like the senses of space and foreground, middle ground and background it falls short in some important aspects. It implicitely brings forth ideas related to landscape painting and aesthetics which we find problematic. Therefore we hope coin a term into Finnish language: “kuuluma”. It was introduced in 1928 by ornithologist Jussi Seppä in his book Luonnon löytöjä. We think that kuuluma as something that is given to sense of hearing is more neutral than current term “äänimaisema”.
Simo Alitalo tells about the project in YLE interview (in Finnish)
http://areena.yle.fi/audio/1336997540443
Simo Alitalo 