“The objective of sound maps”, Wikipedia declares, “is to represent a specific environment using its soundscape as primary references as opposed to visual cues. Sound maps are in many ways the most effective auditory archive of an environment”. The articles in this new issue of Sound Studies, the sound mapping issue, complicate this notion of the primacy and effectiveness of the auditory in representing environments. Peter McMurray opens the issue with a series of reflections on the history of sound mapping, offering a media archaeology and taxonomy to elucidate the relationships between sound and its visual representation. Samuel Llano trains his ears and eyes on Madrid’s soundscape, thereby not only enriching the growing body of soundscape studies of major world cities but arguing that mapping technologies determined the way maps were meant to be read. Writing about a less heard of region, architectural scholar Anna Karapostoli and biologist Nefta-Eleftheria Votsi show how sonic architecture and sonic identity combine in Greece’s second-largest city Thessaloniki without any visual clues being available. Arguing in the opposite direction, architectural historian, architect and writer Sabine von Fischer takes issue with Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that the modern obsession with visual space resembles a state of paranoia. With the help of an “acoustic camera”, she shows that sound practices such as sound walks or sound installations are never only about the acoustic, but about the media transfers we employ to make sense of the world. Finally, Amy Cimini’s essay is about Sondra Perry’s installation “It’s in the Game” and how an “intermedial attention” to the “acoustic “likeness” explored in Perry’s work reveals the complex historical and architectural geography of some of San Diego’s neighbourhoods.
