Designing Sound in Public Space in Australia: a comparative study based on the Australian Sound Design Project's online gallery and database

The purpose of this paper is to articulate some of the ways in which Australian sound practitioners are already designing sound in the public domain so that current trends and practices can be examined, compared and contrasted. This paper interrogates the new hybrid art form, Public Sound Art, and the design processes associated with it as it occurs in public space in Australia. The right to quiet has been defined as a public commons (Franklin 1993). Public space in Australia is becoming increasingly sound designed. This article investigates the variety of approaches by sound artists and practitioners who have installed in public space through a representative sample of works drawn from the Australian Sound Design Project's online gallery and article, http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au, a site dedicated to the multimedia publishing of diverse sound designs installed in public space in Australia, as well as its international outreach Hearing Place. Works include permanent public and ephemeral sculptures, time-dense computerised sound installations, museum designs, exhibits in airports, art galleries, car parks, digital and interactive media exhibitions, and real-time virtual habitats on and off the Web. The degree of interactivity in the sound-designed artworks varies greatly from work to work. Stylistic features and design processes are identified in each work and compared and contrasted as a basis for examining the characteristics of the genre as a whole and its impact on the soundscape now and in the future.