Urban Roar

Urban Roar offers compelling critical and practical approaches to sonic encounters with urban spaces, atmospheres and ambiances—intriguingly adding Félix Guattari, Carl Jung, and Indigenous knowledges to the theoretical mix. Considering how sound artists can work with more-than-human affective intensities to help us hear the urban roar, Lacey vitally re-imagines and transforms cities’ soundings.

“Through a series of engaging, incisive reflections, Jordan Lacey presents a multifaceted theoretical and practice-led approach to sonic ambiance and affective atmospheres. With a unique combination of affect theory, environmental philosophy and Jungian psychology, the book generates a versatile theoretical toolbox for reconsidering our relationships with the sonic environment that will be inspirational for theorists and practitioners alike – and for their future collaborations.”

“Urban agglomerations shift and transform, supposedly without cease. What is your and my role within these transformations, being dwellers and thinkers, dreamers and vulnerable groups of society? Jordan Lacey investigates these truly uncomfortable and unusual questions through the medium of sound, our felt affects, and manifold contemporary artistic practices. He arrives at a radical and very hands-on proposal that joins this ongoing transformation instead of resisting it: Lacey proposes an artistic process of translating ambiance as a way to escort and to design the ruptures cutting through our lives. A rare and surprising vision for future lives within the human habitat.”

In this inspired work, Lacey follows up on his book Sonic Rupture by making a powerful case for feeling and intuition in urban transformation. Fueled by passionate readings of the philosophy of Guattari and Jung (among other sources), and drawing on Indigenous practices and contemporary sound arts, Lacey helps give shape the recent upheaval of thought around the issue of ambiance, turning that upheaval into an applied research project meant to activate wild autonomous affectivities. This book is an essential text for the revitalization of sound studies, and offers a vivid challenge to artists, designers and planners.

Jordan Lacey is a transdisciplinary creative practice researcher and research fellow in the School of Design at RMIT University, Australia, teaching creative practice research methods and sound studies. He is author of Sonic Rupture: a practice-led approach to urban soundscape design (Bloomsbury, 2016).