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Dissonance and urban discord

Dissonance and urban discord While addressing a class of painting students, Lebanese conceptual artist Walid Sadek recounted a personal experience of experimenting with photographic manipulation. The experiment involved photocopying a photograph, then photocopying the photocopy, and repeating the process numerous times until the resulting image was entirely dissimilar to the original image, despite its merely being a copy of it. Through this simple process of mechanical manipulation, the image had been reduced to a dispersion of shapes and tones, which in turn presented themselves as a unique composition. This new image, however, although unique in its appearance, was in essence derived from a singularly unique photographic image of a specific moment in time. But is the manipulation of history and the transformation of information primarily a visual act, or can sound undergo the same morphology? KEYWORDS noise pollution post-war Lebanon urban soundscape listening sonic territory As part of its reconstruction agenda in early 1990s post-war Lebanon, the construction company Solidere devised a plan to extend the coastline of Beirut through the process of `land reclamation'. This new piece of land soon became known as the `Normandy Dump'. By systematically collecting debris and rubble (resulting mostly from war wreckage and the demolition of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The New Soundtrack Edinburgh University Press

Dissonance and urban discord

Mishlawi, Nadim
The New Soundtrack , Volume 2 (2): 159 – Sep 1, 2012
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
Subject
Articles; Film, Media and Cultural Studies
ISSN
2042-8855
eISSN
2042-8863
DOI
10.3366/sound.2012.0036
Publisher site
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Abstract

While addressing a class of painting students, Lebanese conceptual artist Walid Sadek recounted a personal experience of experimenting with photographic manipulation. The experiment involved photocopying a photograph, then photocopying the photocopy, and repeating the process numerous times until the resulting image was entirely dissimilar to the original image, despite its merely being a copy of it. Through this simple process of mechanical manipulation, the image had been reduced to a dispersion of shapes and tones, which in turn presented themselves as a unique composition. This new image, however, although unique in its appearance, was in essence derived from a singularly unique photographic image of a specific moment in time. But is the manipulation of history and the transformation of information primarily a visual act, or can sound undergo the same morphology? KEYWORDS noise pollution post-war Lebanon urban soundscape listening sonic territory As part of its reconstruction agenda in early 1990s post-war Lebanon, the construction company Solidere devised a plan to extend the coastline of Beirut through the process of `land reclamation'. This new piece of land soon became known as the `Normandy Dump'. By systematically collecting debris and rubble (resulting mostly from war wreckage and the demolition of

Journal

The New Soundtrack – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2012

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