Marcus Leadley
Sound Research



My practice-led research explores perceptual, cognitive and attitudinal phenomena associated with soundscape listening, awareness and engagement. I am currently using short-range broadcast technology, a wireless headphone system and a software controlled montage of field recording to create mediated soundscapes. Recordings are made at the site in advance of the installation and then superimposed over the location – replacing the quotidian acoustic environment. While many of the spatial, contextual and content elements remain intact, temporal relationships and the direct link between sound and source are subverted.  This creates a schizophonic, ambiguous and apparently non-diegetic interaction between audio, event and place which presents the listener with a number of perceptual and intellectual challenges. Steven Connor (1997, p. 211) observes that the experience of listening to music while on the move using headphones does not remove the user from the environment. He suggests it deepens the experience of the body in relation to a new inner soundtrack and promotes a mode of attention focused towards the non-auditory aspects of the environments one passes through. Having conducted a number of installations in different locations (such as university campuses, coastal locations, art events and public gardens) I believe listening to environmental recordings in situ reverses this paradigm: it heightens the awareness of the environment’s auditory aspects and promotes a new form of focussed listening. Participant interviews, recorded comments and questionnaires are used as primary research materials.         
 
My enquiry provides corroborating evidence for, and unifies, a disparate group of previously documented phenomena concerning the interaction between cognition and soundscape: the ability to identify sounds when separated from the source; the construction of meaning through the combination of perceptual information and learned experience; an ability to locate sounds in space as an aid to navigation; the role played by rhythm and repetition in aural perception and the identification of different utterance patterns for establishing relationships to place. In addition, emerging evidence concerning disorientation, uncanny sensations and the awareness of coincidence, proposes new knowledge concerning perceptual awareness and learning and a direction for future research.
 
I am also very interested in the relationship between utterance and soundscape. I am currently considering new ways to explore the role of sound – both environmental and human made – as a mediating agent in an extended conversation between people and place. This potentially leads towards issues that encompass the development of language, concepts of being, self and community.

 


World Forum For Acoustic Ecology conference, Corfu
October 3 – 7, 2011
Headphone installation in the Garden of the People, Palaia Anaktora. All field recordings made on and around the site. Participant experience sampled using questionnaires.

 

SPR Phonography Colloquium, Goldsmiths College, University of London
July 5 – 7 2011
Headphone installation for College Green. All field recordings made on and around the site. Participant experience sampled using questionnaires.

 

AudioLab 11.1: The Language of Place 2011 symposium
March 3 – 6 2011
Headphone installation using site-specific field recordings recorded in West Bay, Dorset. I also gave a presentation on the artistic content and research direction of my work.  
 

Sounding Out 5
September 8 - 10 2010
Installation and conference paper
Visit Sounding Out website


Space: the Real and the Abstract
July 5, 6 2010
Presentation of installation audio (De Montfort and Whitstable) in non-site specific context during conference at the University of Wolverhampton. Audience experience of mediated soundscapes was sampled using questionnaires.

Installation, Whitstable Biennale
June 2010
I ran another iteration of the headphone installation, this time focused on the sounds of the coast, on the beach at Whitstable during the biennale’s opening weekend. This time the target audience was the general public and questionnaires were again used for data collection.
Further information




AudioLab10.01: The Language of Place
June 2010
I coordinated and chairing a second Language of Place symposium as part of the Whitstable Biennale programme. This was a condensed one-day event with sound walks and discussion in the morning and artist/academic talks in the afternoon. Peter Cusack, Jennie Savage, Duncan Whitely and I presented.
Download poster
Download programme
Visit PVA AudioLab web pages

Installation, De Montfort University, Leicester
June 2010
I coordinated a version of my headphone installation – focussing on the sound of the urban environment – for the Sound, Site, Space and Play conference. Using the conference environment ensured a target audience of approximately 40 PhD students and academics. The experience of a range of mediated soundscapes – interventions into the sound of the site as well as sounds transplanted from other location – were sampled using questionnaires.



AudioLab10: The Language of Place 2010 symposium
March 2010
A two day event coordinated as a joint venture with Labculture Limited/PVA MediaLab, an Arts Council RFO based in Bridport in Dorset.
Further information



Workshop and installation trial, Walsall Campus, University of Wolverhampton
February 2010
A group of students took part in a sound observation, collection and processing exercise, which led to an informal trial of installation protocols in the sport hall on Walsall campus. This enabled me to demonstrate a primary aspect of research methodology and ‘road test’ the Max/MSP patches and wireless headphone system I have been developing. The results were encouraging, with much positive student feedback and technical comments that have fed back into the development of my process.


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