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SEA Annual Conference

Noise Fields

Prasad Khanolkar
The SEA Annual Conference-2022 was structured around the theme of “Noise Fields.” Its primary focus was to approach and mediate on the relationship between noise and space from different angles: What kinds of spaces are produced through noise? What kind of space is noise? What makes space noisy? How do we engage with space through the heuristic device of noise? How do we represent and analyze representations of space, while holding noise as its integral part? The conference explored these questions through four panels: [1] Noises of Freedom, [2] Architectures of Amplification, [3] Of Densities, Intensities, Entanglements and Cacophonies, and [4] Drawing Babble. Each panel comprised of an internal faculty from SEA and two invited panelists. The latter included architects, artists, and academics from different disciplinary fields and geographies (For panel details see: https://sea-city.in/Noise-Fields). Three broad themes emerged in these presentations and preceding conversations.

Noise and Urban Space
‘Urban space as noise fields’ was a common theme that ran across the four panels. Different speakers conceived this theme using different spatial concepts: ‘mahol’—the atmosphere that we inhabit (Shamsher Ali); ‘life-space’—a space composed of multiple desires and claims (Solomon Benjamin); ‘labyrinthine space’—a space without a beginning or an end ( Prasad Shetty); ‘live space’—a space beyond fixities and statistics ( Chitra Venkatramani); ‘liminal space’—a threshold space, both inside and outside, past and present, here and there  (Munem Wasef); ‘continuum’—a space of multiple extensions, incremental moves, and claims (Rupali Gupte).

But what makes urban space noisy or a noise field? Different panelists highlighted that urban space is burdened with demands, which we place on ourselves and others. As a result, it is routinized, commoditized, surveyed, divided, segregated, possessed, and objectified. Alongside, urban space is also composed of millions of myths, stories, desires, histories, tenancies, claims, logics, vibrations, speculations, colors, textures,  and smells. These multiple acts, rhythms, and their densities make urban space noisy, that is, demanding, tiresome, constraining, and hopeful.

How do we engage with the complexities and entanglements of urban noise? How do we sense and listen to it? What kinds of spatial imaginations might open up a poetic, non-teleological, and experimentative engagement? How do we engage with the clarifying, routinizing, and objectifying gaze of the State, whose aim is to fix, silence, and capture noise? The conference brought forth these theoretical and methodological questions.



Noise, Sovereignty, Power, and Publics
Noise, as many presentations highlighted, is a tool of power and noise fields are charged with power relations. When amplified and routinized in a calculated fashion, noise produces a soundscape that can interpellate us, possesses us, produce violence, and a sense of fear. For instance, in Lebanon, noise-fields are weapons of violence and dispossession—what Lawrence Abu Hamdan conceptualized as “Air Pressure.” This atmospheric violence is produced through calculated noise of fighter jets that violate and circulate through Lebanon’s air space. This calculated amplification of power through noise draws on atmospheric conditions, sound technologies, aesthetics of popular music, technologies of war, law, bureaucratic methods, and hegemonic ideologies of sovereigns.

When interpellated, an ideological sensorium of noise possesses its audience and dissolves acoustic publics–that is the autonomous space for listening, questioning, deliberating, and critiquing sovereign power (Bramha Singh). In possession, however, one could also emerge with a sense of sovereign self through noise. Possessed by loud rhythmic beats of drums in the Dhamal Court of Sehwan Sharif-Pakistan, Shundana Yusaf’s presentation showed how women dance, weep, laugh, and enter into a dizzying ecstatic state and achieve a form of higher consciousness. Here, noise, beats, and rhythms mediate the relationship between space, body, and the sovereign self and open up an extended space of spirituality.

What remains unexplored here is the notion of “noise” itself (Rohit Mujumdar)? “Noise,” is not something given a priori, but produced through hegemonic cultural and legal discourses and practices, which at the same time are spatialized in terms of spaces that get identified as polluted, nuisance, and unlawful. Its manifestations are everywhere, but require a more detailed and methodological investigation. What is at stake, as different panelists highlighted, is the question of sovereignty and freedom at both, the individual and collective scale?


Noise, Sovereignty, Power, and Publics
Noise, as many presentations highlighted, is a tool of power and noise fields are charged with power relations. When amplified and routinized in a calculated fashion, noise produces a soundscape that can interpellate us, possesses us, produce violence, and a sense of fear. For instance, in Lebanon, noise-fields are weapons of violence and dispossession—what Lawrence Abu Hamdan conceptualized as “Air Pressure.” This atmospheric violence is produced through calculated noise of fighter jets that violate and circulate through Lebanon’s air space. This calculated amplification of power through noise draws on atmospheric conditions, sound technologies, aesthetics of popular music, technologies of war, law, bureaucratic methods, and hegemonic ideologies of sovereigns.

When interpellated, an ideological sensorium of noise possesses its audience and dissolves acoustic publics–that is the autonomous space for listening, questioning, deliberating, and critiquing sovereign power (Bramha Singh).


In possession, however, one could also emerge with a sense of sovereign self through noise. Possessed by loud rhythmic beats of drums in the Dhamal Court of Sehwan Sharif-Pakistan, Shundana Yusaf’s presentation showed how women dance, weep, laugh, and enter into a dizzying ecstatic state and achieve a form of higher consciousness. Here, noise, beats, and rhythms mediate the relationship between space, body, and the sovereign self and open up an extended space of spirituality.

What remains unexplored here is the notion of “noise” itself (Rohit Mujumdar)? “Noise,” is not something given a priori, but produced through hegemonic cultural and legal discourses and practices, which at the same time are spatialized in terms of spaces that get identified as polluted, nuisance, and unlawful. Its manifestations are everywhere, but require a more detailed and methodological investigation. What is at stake, as different panelists highlighted, is the question of sovereignty and freedom at both, the individual and collective scale?