Appreciating Sounds of Silence

UNLIKE RESTFUL PASTURES surrounding most of the Irish cemeteries I've visited, the space immediately surrounding our home is awash with 21st century noise. We wish we could dial it down because we really appreciate the sound of silence, especially at night. I've started exploring these audible cues. A sound mapping experiment, made easy with Audioboo, shows an audio heatmap of the morning. Some mornings you can hear the hot water tank circulating. Most mornings, heavy goods vehicles shift their loads when dropping two inches into a tank trap just outside our front door. Two boy racers parade with signature exhaust boxes precisely three hours before sunrise, giving us a big clue that REM sleep is best snatched by changing our sleep cycles. All these familiar sounds might be marked on an Irish Sound Map, a form of locative media that could link our place and its sonic representations to a community of sounds. Personalized map content has become one of my favourite activities, starting with gold stars for places I'd recommend to blue points of interest on Ovi Maps that surprise me on back roads throughout Ireland. An Irish soundmap could convey our local soundscape, often by offering soundmarks soundmarks of distinct community sounds. So when I'm in Dublin, I try to record the Luas passing by and when I'm walking the Irish coast, I capture the call of seagulls overhead. I think these sounds, when given a cartographic representation, can help me explain to friends why I like the sound of Ireland.

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