ReSilence / The designing of the soundscape of our cities

ReSilence is an EU-funded R&D project to design the soundscapes of cities through collaboration between art and science

The soundscape of a city has a great impact on the well-being and health of the people who live and work in it. It is closely interrelated with the social behavior, mobility and communication of city dwellers. Technological developments are also changing the sound of cities and creating new scope for active sound design. An interdisciplinary task for researchers, engineers, urban planners, architects and artists.

The main goal of ReSilence is to develop tools for actively designing soundscapes of the cities of the future. This includes multimodal analyses of soundscapes and their effect on human behavior using virtual experience spaces and physiological measurement tools, as well as the development of interactive tools for the design and simulation of urban soundscapes. The soundscape approach includes all sound sources – from vehicle and construction site noise, to street music and human conversation, to nature sounds and silence.

WESOUND’s tasks include the development of tools for soundscape design as well as the joint implementation of use case scenarios with artists. With AIM (Audiovisual Immersive Maps), WESOUND has already created a basis for the audiovisual experience of urban soundscapes.

Partner network

Research institutes:
Center for research and technology Hellas (CERTS), Greece
Max-Planck-Institute for empiric aesthetics (MPIEA), Germany

Universities:
Maastricht University, Netherlands
Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy
Aristoteles University Thessaloniki, Greece
Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Technology companies:
WESOUND GmbH, Germany

Music halls:
Thessaloniki Music Hall, Greece

Artists:
Maurice Benayoun, France