This project, part of the World Congress of Psychgeography and to be held on October 11 2025, invites you to practice deep listening at various locations in central Swansea. You can try it out at any time this website is 'live', but to get the full effect you must be in Swansea and able to visit the locations we name.
We hear a lot, but to how much do we listen? Sound artist Pauline Oliveros (1) pointed to the 'difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening'. You have to decide to what you want to listen, and in a busy environment, or if you are preoccupied with something else, you censor out a lot of sound. Really stopping to listen to a place is psychogeographically important.
What Chion (2) calls 'casual listening' happens with sounds which don't interest us. We hear enough to decide if we need to notice a sound, and often we make assumptions, based on what we see, that rationalise what we think we hear. Lindstrom (3) points out that vision dominates our senses; if we see it we may hear what we expect to hear. ('Visualism')
Deep listening involves a conscious attempt to listen carefully to everything we hear. This quiz is an opportuity to try it out.
We have recorded, in the listed locations, all the sounds you hear on this site. They should still be audible today.
How to take part:
1. Oliveros, P, "Deep Listening", 2005
2. Chion, M, "Audiovisual - Sound on Screen", 1994
3. Lindstrom, T, MSc dissertation, 2012/3, University of Plymouth
stuff about swansea project for 4WCOP 2025. Page under construction.
For more details, email codedwalls@gmail.com!.
You will need a smartphone with internet access.