Project Intro

 













What is silence? What is heard? How does the soundscape shape the space? Artist Janis Bowley has created the Silent Spaces experiment for Lincoln, UK - an opportunity to explore selected public soundscapes and find stillness, listen for silence. Enhance your hearing sense and find the Silent Spaces - discover for yourself.

Twelve sites in Lincoln have been chosen for their significance to various ideas of silence. It is an experiment in personal listening experiences in public places.

Silence can be defined as the brightening of our hearing sense - an experience of the physical and mental spaces between things, the action of becoming still to observe what is happening in this place, at this time. Take note, the silence of the place may take time to be heard.

This project expands cultural assumptions of silence as being 'an absence of sound'. The experiment prompts finding silence in places for pause and reflection, spaces of contrasts and changes, places evoking the past and future while anchoring the present moment. There is watery quiet, noise, silence under open sky, beneath trees, and in stone.
This an opportunity to briefly let go of ordinary time through acoustics. And, significantly, to notice nature even in the city.

Silent Spaces is an experiment in listening and how this may enliven our curiosity about what surrounds us. In addition to focusing hearing, you may find your other senses enhanced. Consider the opportunities for creative responses - sketch the noise, record the sound of silence, photograph the acoustics, make a written response.

This project follows 'Sydney Silent Places', Sydney Australia 1997, which Bowley conducted with University of NSW students, and is inspired by 'The Nerima Silent Places Contest', Tokyo

The Map and Sites Details can be downloaded from the links under the 'Map & Key' tab
 
Silent Spaces for Lincoln will be permanently available via this website, and is the work of Janis Bowley, no aspect of the project can be used without permission.

Contact: backlabworks@gmail.com




References:
David Abram, 'The Spell of the Sensuous', Vintage Books, 1996
Jon Kabat-Zinn, 'Coming to Our Senses', Hachette Books, 2006
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstei 'A Pattern Language', Oxford University Press, 1977
Keiko Torigoe, Tokyo (Nerima) Silent Places Contest, Sacred Heart University, 1991
Richard Chambers & Craig Hassed, Health Sciences, Monash University (Melbourne) Australia