METOPO (WP8)

The few but significant researches conducted in other areas of the globe have stressed the fact that the sounds of the preindustrial cities constituted semiotic systems of orientation in the urban space and time, with important social and ideological functions. In an earlier research on "Time and the mechanical means of its measurement", Andreas Lyberatos has detected a first notable corpus of evidence about the soundscape of the Ottoman Balkan city and the normative framework that structured it (e.g. prohibition of bells in the Christian churches). 

The objectives of the research are the examination of the framework within which the sound experiences were produced and made meaningful in the Balkan and Mediterranean cities from the 18th to the beginnings of the 20th c., the study of the way the urban sounds were perceived and experienced before and after the transition to the modern city, as well the intervention of the authorities and the dwellers in the production of the city soundscape. 

The soundscape will be approached as a dimension of the urban space that is produced in three interwoven fields: of "sound practices", of the representations, discourses and rules regarding the public sounds, and finally in the field of experiencing the public sound -in which the issue of the soundscape as a field of social negotiation and conflict will be dealt with.

Scientific responsible: Andreas Lyberatos
Research team: Anna Krinaki, Giorgos Manios, Thanos Aggelopoulos