Sven Anderson | Research

I am currently writing my doctoral dissertation (with the working title Site-Specific Sound Installation in Public Space) within the Telecommunications Research Group CTVR at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland under the supervision of Dr. Linda Doyle*.

My research explores how the practice of sound installation can be integrated within architectural, landscape, and urbanist design methodologies, with a strong focus on how site-specific sound installations function within public spaces. My dissertation develops an understanding of such installations as a front-end to various locations, an interface that connects the public to a back-end comprised of locational input mapped into the installations via real-time ambient intelligence (input from various sources such as microphones and sensor networks). The forms that emerge from these methods of urban sound design and aural intervention are dynamic, responsive urban elements that can serve many functions in relation to the sites of their construction, ranging from subtle alterations within the urban atmosphere to more perceptible demarcations of social, psychological, and spatial boundaries that enforce various spatial and architectonic functions.

As this is an interdisciplinary project that seeks to position such design methodologies within an architectural, urbanist, artistic, sociological, and theoretical context, my dissertation draws from a wide range of sources, as well as from my practical work as an artist / designer (ie. Temporary and permanent sound installations that I have constructed in public spaces).

* My core research group at Trinity has included other artists and researchers such as Ralph Borland, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Fionnuala Conway, Katherine Moriwaki, and Nathaniel Stern.