John L Drever
Operating at the intersection of acoustics, audiology, urban design, sound art, soundscape studies, and experimental music, Drever’s practice represents an ongoing inquiry into the perception, design and practice of everyday environmental sound. He has a special interest in soundscape methods, in particular field recording and soundwalking. Resulting from the findings of his study on the noise impact of high-speed hand dryers, Drever has been attempting to reconceptualize hearing in sound practice that diverges from a paradigm predicated on a singular, idealized, symmetrical model of hearing (i.e. the auraltypical) that has predominated.
Drever is Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he co-leads the Unit for Sound Practice Research (SPR). He is Goldsmiths’ academic lead for the PhD consortium, CHASE.
In 1998 he co-founded and chaired the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (a regional affiliate of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology) for whom he chaired Sound Practice: the 1st UKISC Conference on sound, culture and environments in 2001 at Dartington College of Arts.
Drever is an avid collaborator and has devised work in many different configurations and contexts. Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, France (1999), WDR Studio Akustische Kunst, Germany (2011), Shiga National Museum, Japan (2012). As a core member of arts collective Blind Ditch, he is currently working on the Common Line project (https://thecommonline.uk/), Britain’s first linear forest.
Drever is an Academician of The Academy of Urbanism, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Member of the Institute of Acoustics and Audio Engineering Society and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at Seian University of Art and Design, Japan. In the summer of 2017 he was a Guest Professor in The Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark and in the autumn of 2007, he was a Visiting Scholar, at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. In June this year, Drever was a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Loughborough University, to contribute to their Sound Summit.
Phone: +44 (0)20 7919 7652
Drever is Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he co-leads the Unit for Sound Practice Research (SPR). He is Goldsmiths’ academic lead for the PhD consortium, CHASE.
In 1998 he co-founded and chaired the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (a regional affiliate of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology) for whom he chaired Sound Practice: the 1st UKISC Conference on sound, culture and environments in 2001 at Dartington College of Arts.
Drever is an avid collaborator and has devised work in many different configurations and contexts. Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, France (1999), WDR Studio Akustische Kunst, Germany (2011), Shiga National Museum, Japan (2012). As a core member of arts collective Blind Ditch, he is currently working on the Common Line project (https://thecommonline.uk/), Britain’s first linear forest.
Drever is an Academician of The Academy of Urbanism, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Member of the Institute of Acoustics and Audio Engineering Society and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at Seian University of Art and Design, Japan. In the summer of 2017 he was a Guest Professor in The Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark and in the autumn of 2007, he was a Visiting Scholar, at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. In June this year, Drever was a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Loughborough University, to contribute to their Sound Summit.
Phone: +44 (0)20 7919 7652
less
InterestsView All (65)
Uploads
Papers by John L Drever
March 2015
Drever will discuss recent work on soundscapes and urbanism in London and Hong Kong, including an exploration of his term ochlophonics (i.e. the crowded soundscape and the feeling of being crowded by the soundscape), latest findings from his ongoing study on hyperacusis and hyper-acute hearing in the built environment. In conclusion he will assert the crucial role that composition can play in urbanism.
June 2006
"Sanitary Soundscapes: the noise effects of high-speed hand dryers
Drever proselytises ‘sound-conscious’ design and management of the urban soundscapes as proposed in the Sounder City: The Mayor’s Ambient Noise Strategy (2004). Much of the sound of the city that we are daily exposed to are a haphazard by-product of noise policy predicated on hearing damage thresholds but have little to do with the subtleties of everyday listening habits and the auditory needs of specific user. As a case study Drever will discuss his creative research into public toilet soundscapes a socially awkward space that on the one hand demands a certain amount of background noise for privacy but has recently become a site of terror and exclusion to various subgroups due to the excess of noise from high-speed efficient hand dryers. Drever learnt of mothers who are unable to use dedicated breast-feeding provisions due to the loud noise affecting both themselves and their infants; of the terror of elderly dementia sufferers; of erstwhile able visually impaired people struggling with navigation; of hearing aid users who are forced to turn off their auditory devices as they enter the toilet; the pain and discomfort of those with and hyperacusis and hyperacute hearing a condition common to those with autistic spectrum disorders; and most importantly children, who are particularly disturbed and scared due to their sensitive hearing and are not easily reassured due to the impact on speech intelligibility. Seguing sonic art techniques and traditions including field recording, installation and composition, with accredited acoustic methods of measurement, analysis and social survey within the strictures of British Standards, and redoubled by psycho-sociological discourse, the study advocates new models of soundscape design, placing the auditory experience of the user in the centre of the process.
""
Led by Dr John Levack Drever, Senior Lecturer in Composition and Head of the Unit for Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, this project consists of a range of studies including product acoustic testing, environmental acoustics and noise assessment, and sociological discourse.
Testing the sound
Field studies indicate that acoustic readings of high speed hand dryers can be akin to the noise of a road drill at close range. The results produced during studies conducted on location and in spaces resembling the typical box-like public toilet, are in stark contrast to the advertised sound levels of the hand dryers. This discrepancy can be explained by the statutory testing of such hand dryers conducted in the ultra-absorbent acoustic laboratory of the anechoic chamber. It is suggested that the decibels reached by hand dryers within the highly reflective environs of the public toilet can reach 11 times that recorded in the product testing lab.
With these results in mind, it is no surprise the high speed hand dryer is increasingly perceived as an annoyance and invasive within such personal and sensitive spaces. The World Health Organisation regards annoyance as generally relating to, “the direct effects of noise on various activities, such as interference with conversation, mental concentration, rest, or recreation”. (‘Guidelines for Community Noise', WHO, Geneva, 1999)
The sound of exclusion
Beyond the immediate annoyance of these devices, Dr John Levack Drever has recorded stories of exclusion: that of elderly dementia sufferers; of visually impaired people struggling with navigation; of hearing aid users who may have to turn off their auditory devices as they enter the toilet; and the pain and discomfort of those with misophonia and hyperacusis – a condition characterised by an over sensitivity to certain frequency ranges of sound and common for those on the autistic spectrum. And mothers have reported a reluctance to use dedicated breast feeding or baby changing provisions due to the loud noise affecting both themselves and their infants.
“It's not totally just volume per se that I'm hypersensitive to, but certain frequencies, types of sound and some other issues I can't quite explain.”
“It's very painful for me. I won't go in restrooms that have them (high speed hand dryers) unless it's absolutely necessary and if someone uses the dryer while I'm in there, I plug my ears.”
(People speaking about high speed hand dryers and hypersensitive hearing from an autism and hyperacusis forum)
Children, one of the vulnerable groups affected, can be particularly disturbed and scared by these powerful hand dryers as children’s hearing is more acute than adults’ particularly at the higher region of the audible spectrum.
Improving the local soundscape
In the long term, this project proposes an interdisciplinary approach, whereby innovative engineering engages with the acoustic treatment of space and the subjective experience of its users. Such engagement should be creative and involve sound artists to enhance the listening experience. Products need to be acutely tuned, beckoning a new breed of designer who is also a listener.
The next phase of this project will see the commissioning of a wide range of users to compose and thus propose new favorable sound design possibilities.
Led by Dr John Levack Drever, Senior Lecturer in Composition and Head of the Unit for Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths, University of London, this project consists of a range of studies including product acoustic testing, environmental acoustics and noise assessment, and sociological discourse.
Testing the sound
Field studies indicate that acoustic readings of high speed hand dryers can be akin to the noise of a road drill at close range. The results produced during studies conducted on location and in spaces resembling the typical box-like public toilet, are in stark contrast to the advertised sound levels of the hand dryers. This discrepancy can be explained by the statutory testing of such hand dryers conducted in the ultra-absorbent acoustic laboratory of the anechoic chamber. It is suggested that the decibels reached by hand dryers within the highly reflective environs of the public toilet can reach 11 times that recorded in the product testing lab.
With these results in mind, it is no surprise the high speed hand dryer is increasingly perceived as an annoyance and invasive within such personal and sensitive spaces. The World Health Organisation regards annoyance as generally relating to, “the direct effects of noise on various activities, such as interference with conversation, mental concentration, rest, or recreation”. (‘Guidelines for Community Noise', WHO, Geneva, 1999)
The sound of exclusion
Beyond the immediate annoyance of these devices, Dr John Levack Drever has recorded stories of exclusion: that of elderly dementia sufferers; of visually impaired people struggling with navigation; of hearing aid users who may have to turn off their auditory devices as they enter the toilet; and the pain and discomfort of those with misophonia and hyperacusis – a condition characterised by an over sensitivity to certain frequency ranges of sound and common for those on the autistic spectrum. And mothers have reported a reluctance to use dedicated breast feeding or baby changing provisions due to the loud noise affecting both themselves and their infants.
“It's not totally just volume per se that I'm hypersensitive to, but certain frequencies, types of sound and some other issues I can't quite explain.”
“It's very painful for me. I won't go in restrooms that have them (high speed hand dryers) unless it's absolutely necessary and if someone uses the dryer while I'm in there, I plug my ears.”
(People speaking about high speed hand dryers and hypersensitive hearing from an autism and hyperacusis forum)
Children, one of the vulnerable groups affected, can be particularly disturbed and scared by these powerful hand dryers as children’s hearing is more acute than adults’ particularly at the higher region of the audible spectrum.
Improving the local soundscape
In the long term, this project proposes an interdisciplinary approach, whereby innovative engineering engages with the acoustic treatment of space and the subjective experience of its users. Such engagement should be creative and involve sound artists to enhance the listening experience. Products need to be acutely tuned, beckoning a new breed of designer who is also a listener.
The next phase of this project will see the commissioning of a wide range of users to compose and thus propose new favorable sound design possibilities."
Those of us who research and practice everyday soundscapes tend to tacitly extol the positive attributes of sound and hearing with relation to space and place, where listening is prioritised over hearing. We talk of how through sound we connect, locate, embody, discern and immerse. From the findings of my more recent research I am obliged to propose that the contrary is also a reality for many: sound isolates, excludes, disconnects, disembodies and dislocates from the material and social world. Sound hurts!
Bringing audiology into the fore, in this talk I will propose a new paradigm for situating hearing that extends from an idealized clinical model of hearing, the otologically normal (BS ISO 226:2003), to a socio-cultural concept of the auraltypical. In conclusion I will call for a new agenda of auraldiversity and aural relativism within sound studies, sound practice and acoustics.
Those of us who research and practice soundscapes, tacitly extol the positive attributes of sound and hearing with relation to space and place. We talk of how through sound we connect, locate, embody, discern and immerse. Through my recent research I am urged to propose that the opposite is also a reality: sound isolates, excludes, disconnects, disembodies and dislocates from the material and social world.
Through a study of the impact of noise from high-speed hand dryers, my research uncovered a wide range of vulnerable groups that due to the sensitivity of their hearing or particular hearing requirements led to elevated anxiety, fear, pain and confusion and were in some cases exacerbating their social avoidance. These groups included infants; the elderly; partially sighted people; hearing aid users; and people with dementia, cerebral palsy, Ménière's disease, phonophobia, hyperacusis, or hyperacute hearing in the context of autism and Asperger's syndrome. In the case of autism exposure to noise can even lead to a shutdown. Following on from this study I came across an extensive range of environmental sounds that are causing suffering to these groups: bird scarers, mosquito alarm, classroom noise, traffic noise, waves on a beach and even the dawn chorus.
With reference to Beethoven, Grandin, Canetti, Kafka and Noël Coward as well as new interview material, this paper will explore the sensory threshold shift of the sensitive hearer, and the sensitising of hearing, including the use of sonic thresholds to control subgroups. In conclusion, I propose a new paradigm for understanding hearing that extends from a medical classification of the otologically normal to a socio-cultural conception of the auraltypical. Within what I see as the hegemony of the auraltypical, I call for a new agenda of auraldiversity within acoustics and sound studies.
This paper seeks to explore the tacit everyday sociocultural and psychospatial (i.e. proxemics (Hall 1966, Coyne 2010)) manner in which Hong Kongese use auditory technologies to mediate, enable and inhibit interaction between individuals and environments, both present and telepresent, including a split binaural hybrid mode of listening characterised by Ronell (1991) as periscopic listening. This mode of periscopic or split listening requires the skills involved in what is known as the ‘cocktail party effect’ (Cherry 1953) - the ability to focus one’s auditory attention on (or to have ones attention attracted by) a single sound source among a mixture of background noises. The capacity to select certain streams of auditory information and suppress others is hence essential for effective private acoustic communication and safe navigation through urban public spaces in Hong Kong. A specific concern throughout, however, has been to situate these auditory proclivities within the intense and crowded soundscape (i.e. aspects of the environment that are sounding and audible) which Hong Kong manifests and how it maps onto traditional cultural practices of the Hong Kong Chinese people.
This paper represents part of an ongoing fieldwork based research enquiry into ochlology, with an ear to the ground vis-à-vis auditory culture of crowds, crowded spaces and the feeling of being crowded – which the author calls ‘ochlophonia’.
duration - 60mins
The first étude in a suite of hand dryer sound energy studies, in this case inspecting the Dyson Airblade™.
An airblade with circa 2 years of use was recorded in BRE’s large anechoic chamber, over a reflecting plane, with a measurement microphone. Ex-situ recording allows us to capture the inherent sound energy of the device independent of an acoustic environment, such as the highly reflective public washroom.
The work unfolds shards of frequency band extracted from the densely compacted, turbulent white noise generated from the 10 second cycle of interfering parallel air sheets traveling at 400 mph. Punctuating the study are dramatic fluctuation in the spectrum due to the interjection of the hands shortening the journey of the air sheets, reflecting the air back at the casing, causing further mutual interference.
The sanitary tones suite forms a creative response to a larger project investigating the noise effects of high-speed hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and special auditory needs.
by
Prof. John Levack Drever
Three soundscape collages presenting some of the prevailing sound signals and ambiances of the shortlisted locations for The Great Place Award 2015, Academy of Urbanism
- Bishops Square (Spitalfields, London, England)
- Christmas Steps (Bristol, England)
- St Pancras Station (London, England)
Following up the summer assessment visits by the academicians, Drever returned to these places to explore their acoustic ecology.
What is the role of acoustic ecology and its relation to urbanism and place? Rather than getting fixated on noise mitigation, the field of acoustic ecology has developed the perspicacity for the soundscape, with an ear towards it as a positive resource, something to be interpreted, studied, creatively designed and cherished. The soundscape is a complex dimension of the urban environment that is both culturally and socially determined and in return helps to determine culture and society, and in its own way through the auditory modality impacts on a sense of place. As well as the psychological, physiological, even pathological ramifications that the soundscape may have to bear on us, of which we are seldom conscious, acoustic ecology cares very much for our everyday practice of the urban soundscape; the values, associations, memories and projections that we imbue the sounds around us with. The soundscape is a work-in-progress, as the physical environment is always in flux, and our perception of our surroundings is constantly being formed, rendering it ephemeral. Through careful field recording and editing we can endeavour to fix and frame some moments of the flowing soundscape, allowing for a chance of focused listening again.
Through these soundscape collages of Bishops Square, Christmas Steps and St Pancras Station we can hear the range of acoustic architecture on offer, and how these unique acoustics mediate the sound signals within these environments. Sound signals to listen out for: ping pong and the water feature in Bishops Square; amateur piano impromptus and the arrival of a eurostar in St Pancras Station; the contrasting footsteps on Christmas Steps punctuated by the traditional school bell summoning the school kids in from their break.
You can hear the works at:
https://soundcloud.com/john-levack-drever/sets/place
Biography
Operating at the intersection of acoustics, sonic arts, sound design and urbanism, John Levack Drever’s practice represents an ongoing inquiry into the affect, perception, design and practice of everyday environmental sound and human utterance. Projects are often derived from extensive fieldwork, such as the exploration of the crowded soundscape of Hong Kong in 'Ochlophonics Hong Kong' (2001-2010). Current project include a study on the noise effects of ultra-fast hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and an acoustic study of the poltergeist’s sonic footprint for NHK (Japan).
Drever is Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he leads the Unit for Sound Practice Research. Since 1998 he has been on the board of the World forum for Acoustic Ecology. He has a BMus from University of Bangor, MMus for the University of East Anglia, a PhD from Dartington College of Arts and a Diploma from the Institute of Acoustics. In 2013 he became an Academician of The Academy of Urbanism and a Member of the Institute of Acoustics. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at Seian University of Art and Design, Japan. In tandem with his academic research Drever works as an independent soundscape consultant providing advice for practice and policy.
Collaboration is fundamental to Drever’s practice. Collaborators include: Rachel Gomme, Alice Oswald, Tony Thatcher, Tony Whitehead (RSPB), Louise K. Wilson, Suiji Okada and comedian Mark Kelly. He is a member of Blind Ditch and has worked on many projects with poet, Lawrence Upton. Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (1999), Arts Council England (2002 & 2007), WDR Studio Akustische Kunst (2011) to the RSPB (2002). His work has twice been awarded a prize in the annual Musica Nova competition, Prague (1997 & 1998). He has discussed his research on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now, BBC Radio 4's Today and BBC World Service’s Discovery.
Contact: j.drever@gold.ac.uk
The interview was carried out in The Savile Club, London, 14th April 2005.
This chapter provides a historical perspective and theoretical context on the trajectory from peripatetic composer to soundwalking as a mode of participatory experimental music in its own right. Moreover, as walking is the means and the physical action of soundwalking, the chapter also expounds on artistic forays in the 1960s into pedestrial behaviour, a trope that crosses over with experimental music culture of the day, and helped give soundwalking credence.
This technology affords a historically unparalleled level of mobile hearing enhancement and capture: a veritable bionic auditory prosthesis with “interchangeable capsules and patterns.” Reference? At will, my earshot can telescopically extend or shrink from microscopic auscultation to panaural envelopment; it can amplify or attenuate the sonic environment; dilate or contract the spatial image of the pattern. I can hear with greater or lesser detail and richness, and can pinpoint features of the soundscape erstwhile crowded: aiding my localization of sound source and augmenting the binaural skill of the cocktail party effect – the capacity to simultaneously select and suppress certain streams of auditory information (Cherry 1953). What is more, as solid-state recorder is petite, if I opt for my earbud styled binaural set, I appear as just another detached pedestrian plugged into his “’individualized soundworld” (Bull 2000: 3), personifying Elias Canetti’s surreptitious Der Ohrenzeuge (Earwitness):
He comes, halts, huddles unnoticed in a corner, peers into a book or a display, hears whatever is to be heard, and moves away untouched and absent. (Canetti 1979: 43)
This modern day scenario is in marked contrast to the era of the open reel devices of the legendary workhorse brands such as the Nagra and Uher – revolutionary devices whose proportions were liberating in their day. John Gray, who cut his teeth at the dawn of sound for [the] documentary with the GPO Film Unit in the 1930s, working with the likes of Humphrey Jennings and Alberto Cavalcanti, and accustomed to working with a mobile recording van, proudly recounted to me (London 2005 not in the references) his adventures on making a sound recording of the first ascent of a buttress in Glen Coe led by Hamish MacInnes, where the lugging of the Uher was a herculean and yet integral part of the location recordist’s role and identity.
[I]ts essence is the artistic, sonic transmission of meanings about place, time, environment and listening perception. (Westerkamp, 2002, p. 52)
It goes without saying that such all-encompassing themes have great resonance with commercial sound design; however, soundscape composers are permitted to dedicate all their efforts to their exploration, not subservient to an external narrative or the strictures of fi lm sound clichés etc. Westerkamp leads by example: soundscape compositions such as the stereo acousmatic works, Talking Rain (1997) and Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) and the eight-channel Into the Labyrinth (2000), each address and activate these themes in a continuously creative and context responsive manner. These works don’t just present edited, juxtaposed and superimposed fi eld recordings, but they enquire into the methods and modes of their construction, and most importantly they are not exclusively framed through Westerkamp’s highly attuned listening. They involve, include and inform the listener in their practices of listening and sonic ways of knowing.
This chapter will explore the amalgams of orthodoxies and orthopraxis of those salient soundscape concepts that are exercised in manifold configurations in soundscape compositions and related practices. Naming, attending to and more deeply examining these aural vicissitudes, it is hoped, will inform future expressions of sound design practice in a deeper manner, as habitually experienced by our everyday listening and encountered in our everyday soundscape, a discussion that should provoke the sound designer’s ever-increasing dependency on tried and tested stock sound effects.
Approaching soundwalking as an emergent rather than a transplantable fixed practice with an ossified methodology, this chapter will feed off historical precedence and draw from the author’s direct experience as a soundwalk facilitator in multiple situations, catering for participants with disciplinarily specialisms including acoustic engineering, architecture, ornithology, city planning, accessibility, social science, and arts practice, and extending out to school children and the general public at large – all stakeholders and individuals with diverse general and specific needs, concerns and understandings. Attentive concentration on listening is an engrossing experience where one can becomes absorbed in the flow of the enveloping soundscape. As it is beholden on the soundwalk leader to guide and to plan ahead to the safe and sound completion of the walk, whilst poised to attend to any pressing pragmatic issues that may transpire midst-walk, the actual emphasis on their listening tends not to be prioritized. But this in turn permits the participants to dedicate their entire attention to the task in hand. So, reversing roles, the author will also reflect on his various soundwalking experiences as participant – experience which encompasses dogmatic and more idiosyncratic approaches, in formal and performative, intimate and extrovert configurations. The chapter will critically reflect and evaluate on this multitudinous data-set that endeavors to incorporate and verbalize sensuous experience and behavior, whilst surfacing the practical, logistical, and ethical vagaries. It will unashamedly concentrate on soundwalks that do not incorporate audio playback via headphone or aspects of telepresent or augmented reality (beyond participants’ regular use of audio prosthetics) such as audio walks by e.g. Janet Cardiff, Christina Kubisch, and Duncan Speakman; it is contended that soundwalking with the “naked ear” is an already highly sophisticated and infinitely practicable and malleable methodology suitable for multiple research, training and artistic needs.