Soundscapes of Bryn Mawr
By Ella Allan-Rahill
What is this project?
We gather much of our information based on visual observations. This physicalization focuses on auditory information, specifically the types of sounds present on Bryn Mawr’s campus. These “soundscapes” were inspired by the 100 Soundscapes of Japan. To collect this data, I chose five “culturally significant” places and times on campus. I sat at each of these places for 20 minutes and recorded the types of sounds I heard, how loud they were, and how long they lasted. The categories of sound I observed were natural human sounds (talking, laughing, coughing), noises made by individuals (dropping a plastic water bottle on the ground), plant sounds (a leaf falling off a tree), vehicles and large mechanical (cars), personal technology (phones), and white noise and small mechanical (weedwhacker). Natural human sounds and plant sounds are the only two of these categories that are not energy afterlife sounds. This means that they are not made by something that requires energy. I organized all of this data into streamgraphs and color-coded each category. Yellow corresponds with natural human sounds, brown with noises made by individuals, black with vehicles and large mechanical, grey with white noise and small mechanical, orange with personal technology, and green with plant sounds. After making these streamgraphs digitally, I painted each of them using pigments found around the Bryn Mawr Campus and on our cluster’s field trip to a coal mine and Acid Mine Drainage site.
See the five soundscapes below!
Where are these soundscapes from?
The map below shows the location where each of these soundscapes were recorded, marking the location with a red star. Uncommon Grounds student cafe is in the top right, then Merion Green (where Lantern Night takes place), Carpenter Library, Pembroke Arch, and Erdman Dining Hall in the lower right.
See other soundscapes from Pennsylvania and Alaska here!
