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What is sound violence and how to counter it - News - IQ Research and Education Portal - National Research University Higher School of Economics

Life in the city is always full of sounds and noises. But the sound effect on people is too aggressive. The roar of transport, loud advertising, the noise of the crowd, the shouting of barkers at the shops, the deafening music in a passing car - all this irritates, depresses, and makes the townspeople uncomfortable. This situation can be called sound violence. What this phenomenon is and how to avoid it, IQ.HSE tells with the help of a study by Ksenia Mayorova, teacher of the Higher School of Urban Studies named after A.A. Vysokovsky NRU HSE.

What is sound abuse?

Unwanted, harmful acoustic exposure to which a person is subjected against their will. In the extreme version, these are military technologies for suppressing the enemy - sonic guns such as LRAD or "Sirin" or other special-purpose acoustic devices that are used to protect borders, water areas, in military conflicts, etc. However, we will consider sound violence in an everyday context, in an urban environment . Its soundscape includes noises that physically and psychologically affect people, worsening their well-being. The noise of city traffic or 24-hour construction, intrusive audio advertising, loud conversations on a mobile phone in a public place - all this can be perceived as audio violence. People unwittingly fall under the influence of these acoustic "attacks" and may suffer because of them. Either way, noise pollution is not harmless. The vibratory power of sound cannot be underestimated.

Why is noise harmful?

Noise exposure can cause hearing loss, high blood pressure, headaches, etc. Even in the background it can be unsafe. For example, factory workers who worked on machine tools and conveyors often suffered from hearing loss and headaches. In a similar situation - constant noise - builders and employees of transport enterprises work. Although now cars, buses (electric buses) and subway cars are trying to make noiseless, background sound effects on people remain. And in offices, shopping malls and social service centers, workers and visitors also suffer from noise.

Do acoustic “attacks” also happen in everyday life?

Yes, everyday sounds can also overload our perception system. The sound is invisible, but this does not mean that it is imperceptible to health. Is it comfortable to ride, for example, in the subway at rush hour, when the noise of cars and escalators is superimposed by the sound of the movement of the crowd and the tramp of feet? Meanwhile, this is a given, the usual realities of urban life.

And there is a sound violence that could have been avoided. For example, when a car alarm constantly goes off in the courtyard of a residential building at night and wakes up residents. Or young people arrange loud night gatherings right under the windows of the house. It happens that someone turns on deafening music late in the evening, drills a wall, contrary to the Sanitary and Epidemiological Requirements for Living Conditions in Residential Buildings and Premises.

In the case of an apartment building, we are confronted with another aspect of sonic violence in the city: the auditory and visual boundaries of privacy do not match. The audibility of events taking place in neighboring apartments and in the yard convinces us that the privacy of personal housing in the city is, first of all, the privacy of visibility.

Can other people's conversations be a light version of sound violence?

If we hear something we don't want to hear and our auditory privacy is violated, then yes. For example, in public transport, someone is talking loudly on the phone, or you involuntarily hear an overly emotional conversation between passengers. In this case, the distance that is customary to maintain in relation to strangers who are nearby is not respected. Such an invasion of someone else's privacy can be annoying and annoying. Without wanting it, we begin to mentally reason on the topic of what we have heard, to evaluate it. Such random situations in the city can become a "sound worm" and haunt the person who heard them for a long time.

Like the obsessive motives of audio advertising?

Exactly. Not only audio clips, but also barkers with a megaphone at the entrance to the store can unnerve people and even cause retaliatory aggression. The role of the “sound worm” can also be played by loud music in a passing car. The driver deafeningly announces his presence to the people around him, and they feel that their space has been rudely invaded. Such noise pollution speaks of auditory illiteracy.

Auditory illiteracy? What it is?

This is immunity to noises and insensitivity to the discomfort they cause to others. For example, we bring sounds from an apartment into a public space. We make noise, sing loudly, argue in raised tones, etc. This is a neglect of a comfortable sound environment, although all citizens have the right to it. And in general, the right to the city is the right to a happy life in it, and it is closely related to physical and emotional well-being.

By the way, there is an interactive noise map of Moscow, which allows you to judge how comfortable the residents of different districts live.

We often perceive the city only visually. Perhaps this is also the cause of auditory illiteracy?

Indeed, oculocentrism (the primacy of visual perception) can suppress other forms of sensibility, reduce reflexivity in relation to non-visual data. We tend to respond bodily rather than rationally to sound, and therefore tend to underestimate its effects. But by doing so, we find ourselves in a situation of insecurity from sensory attacks, with which we can do nothing. The absence of devices like eyelids that could allow us to “squint our eyes” when hearing an unpleasant sound sometimes dooms us to situations where the sound comes “out of nowhere”. The absence of visual reinforcement and an actor to whom the sound can be blamed leaves the listener helpless. In such a situation, nothing can be done. The vulnerability of urban residents to non-visual sensory stimuli, in fact, determines the interpretation of such sounds in terms of violence.

What about physical abuse with sound?

Although marketed as non-lethal weapons, sonic cannons are extremely dangerous. Sound as vibration can have a devastating effect. Its technological reproducibility is significant, creating, for example, the effect of presence in the physical absence of objects: to intimidate the enemy, a wild noise is generated, the footsteps of approaching soldiers, etc. Such situations of psychological deception using sound technologies demonstrate our vulnerability to sound exposure.

Another example of sound-assisted physical abuse is the music torture practiced at Guantanamo Bay. Played at maximum volume, musical compositions ranging from death metal to songs from the children's television series Sesame Street overload the prisoner's perception system and provoke physical and mental illness.

But in an urban environment there may not be obvious sound "aggressors"?

When the city is noisy, there is usually no evil Other. But we ourselves often act as aggressors, contributing to the production of noise (for example, from a car). The mobility of the roles of aggressor and victim is a common feature for all situations of sound violence in the city.

When we experience the negative effects of noise, we understand that everyday life in the city often forces us to produce such sounds.

Can sound violence be targeted in everyday life?

Yes, but not in the sense that the person producing the sound is aware of the violence of his actions (it just often escapes the actor), but in the sense of the intentional auditory nature of the action. Such cases are, for example, the croaking of the horns of a wedding cortege, the chanting of slogans at a rally, the cursing of a friend on the street, a cry for help. In these situations, we want to be heard. From a political point of view, it is in this type of sound action that the right to the city in its classical sense is realized - as the right to express one's position. But the realization of someone's right to sound manifestation always presupposes the presence of a listener - a person who is exposed to sound effects, and often against his will. Thus, sound violence against the audience is initially built into the acoustic reinforcement of one's own existence.

Are street musicians also sound violence?

Partly. On the one hand, the soundscape of the city is unthinkable without them. Buskers use the scientifically proven ability of music to evoke bodily reactions in people. They turn towards the sound, approach, stop, sing along and dance. On the other hand, there are people who do not want to participate in this action. Loud speeches make them uncomfortable. They have to stop talking with the interlocutor, change the trajectory of movement, and then cope with the same "sound worms".

But is noise always that bad? After all, this is part of the life of the city!

Indeed, silence is not inherent in the city. The sounding city is alive, supporting all key processes. Through acoustic effects, the urban environment reveals itself to us. There are sound signals that organize the temporal rhythms of urban life, streamlining them: a bell at an enterprise, the whistle of a sailing ship, the sound of a church bell.

The sound manifestation of industrial and transport development until the beginning of the 20th century was associated with progress. However, by 19In the 1920s, urban noise attracted the attention of doctors. In the second half of the 20th century, urban sounds began to be more often interpreted negatively. By this point, the industrial age had reached its peak and a certain crisis. It was then, in the wake of the emerging environmental movement, that a new language for describing the sounds inherent in the city was formed. The understanding came that the "urban symphony" is, among other things, a threat to people's health.

However, we note that today, in the era of the "auditory renaissance", we can no longer reduce the discussion of sound in the city to noise alone. The soundscape of the city is diverse and deserves a clearer conceptual vocabulary.

How to block sound violence?

There are a number of solutions that people often use.

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