SONCITIES PI Gascia Ouzounian will visit the MA Cities course at Central Saint Martins, as part of Unit 1: Voices from the City. The unit is co-lead by Dr Fani Kostourou and Dr Elahe Karimnia, and part of the larger MA Cities course ed by Dr Diana Ibáñez López. We will together explore ideas of polyphony, polyvocality, and counterpoint in the city. The unit leaders write:

‘Unit 1 addresses the challenges facing cities through transcultural and cross-cultural social experiences and encounters. The studio invites different practitioners to explore the tension between the local, city wide and global scales, to consider the different forms of mobility of the voice. We seek to map out how they use their voices, what infrastructures and networks they use to speak, and what effects their voices have. How are architecture and urban space used to amplify or even silence different voices?’

Professor Ouzounian will take part in a ‘Duet’ on the theme of Polyphony and Counterpoint:

Duet 3: Polyphony and Counterpoint

This transnational duet will focus on the themes of polyphony and counterpoint whilst sonically navigating through different neighbourhoods, cities and nations. When we talk about diversity, complexity, and mixity in a city we think of it in polyphonic terms. This is because in urban space, multiple, dissonant, and dynamic voices from humans and other species can be heard simultaneously (space relation) and sequentially (time relation). Yet both relations can become equally political acts. When does polyphony develops into counterpoint and the other way round? What does it mean for discordant voices to harmonise? Whose identities dominate in the process and whose messages resonate at different scales? How does architecture help organise voices in this space-time continuum?