Outlining Sound Graffiti

1 Political Aspects, Question of Public Space

While sound graffiti might carry resemblance to sound sculptures or installations, its attitude
towards public space is similar to the one of visual graffiti. Our auditory space is as much ours to
own as is the public architectural space. While many struggle either aesthetically or
philosophically for the public space against the commercialization, the auditory space is often
hijacked by elements such as traffic noise, radio or audio commercials. An artist dedicated to
sound graffiti has the task of fighting against the assaults in the auditory space.

The public audible space should not be made to serve any social hierarchies — even though
sound systems in the shopping malls and underground tunnels are used to control people in
many subtle ways. The problem and blessing of architectural sound design is that it hasn’t
reached its saturation point: on one hand we still have free space to use as we like, but on the
other hand many people are not yet capable of repelling the subliminal auditory messages that
are played to control their behaviour.

While graffiti is often understood as political behaviour or anarchist activism, its purpose and
means might reside completely in aesthetics. Beauty is political.

2 Physical Sound Graffiti

We might approach sound graffiti either acoustically or electronically. Acoustic sound graffiti are
objects capable of producing sound without any electricity. Electronic sound graffiti needs some
understanding of electronics — or at least some kind of entrance to sound systems used in public
spaces.

An archetypal example of acoustic sound graffiti would be a windbell, while electronic sound
graffiti would be a cheap and solid playback system, that could be easily attached to any kind of
surface with no fear of loss or destruction of expensive equipment. Nowadays it’s not difficult to
find cheap components to build a weather-protected, solar-powered sound system, that would
play any prerecorded audio message as long as the sun shines.

Sound graffiti is also open to any kind of guerrilla tactics from hijacking an existing sound system
or installing a new system for aesthetic means. Also, reducing or muting existing sounds might
work as a piece of negative sound graffiti.

3 Attitude Towards Sound Art

Even though sound graffiti is the rebelling cousin of sound art, it is not necessarily viewed or
approached as sound art. A good sound graffiti piece will surprise its audience and break their
psychological mode of passive listening. Hearing and listening is reinvented through exceptional
use of sound in a space, where active, mindful listening was not expected (or supposed) to
happen.

John Cage might have opened our ears, but it doesn’t mean everything we hear now is music or
art. Actually, it doesn’t mean anything at all. The future of sound graffiti will surely be intertwined
with the history of sound art, but its origin will be closer to anarchy than the echoing past.