Paranoia, from the icon to the ear: a reflection on soundscape, landscape and cityscape

“Clinging to the remnants of visual space in this new acoustic age has become a kind of a paranoiac state”, Marshall McLuhan wrote to R. Murray Schafer in 1974. In an analysis of twentieth century transformations of spatial concepts and specifically, of 1960s and 1970s ideas of soundscape, this essay tackles the multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of ideas relating to soundscape. The text is accompanied by recordings from an acoustic camera, where the sounds of hands, voice and piano were traced on the walls, floors and ceilings of different spaces, in an attempt to explore the anxiety and relief inherent in images of soundscape.