DEAFNOTES010: Aural Topographies
Adapting to Urban Noise Pollution
The new year 2025 begins with a visit to my trusted audiologist to take stock of the state of my hearing - an audiogram. The last one was a while ago (October 2019) and a lot has happened since then. These include working on the D E A F D R O N E S, which have now been in development for several years. They are a series of sound studies, attempts to encounter my impairment with new input and, in a way, to rediscover myself, or to use a favourite term of anthropologists: to renegotiate.
This work has undoubtedly made me more attentive when it comes to dealing with noises, sounds and tones. On the one hand, I have noticed over the years that my perception of low frequencies has experienced a positive shift. However, I don't know whether it is the very unlikely case that the performance of my hearing has improved or whether I have simply become more attentive. On the other hand, I am finding it increasingly difficult to localise the sources of sounds and noises in my environment. In most cases, I incorrectly localise the direction of the sounds.
For example, if I look ahead and see the blue light of an ambulance siren, I don't have the impression that the wailing of the siren is coming from the front - but from somewhere else. For me, birdsong is never where the bird is. That is probably because my perception in the high frequency range has deteriorated.
I am now sitting in this comfortable synthetic leather chair at the audiologist's, everything in this small shop is bathed in a warm colour that is only interrupted by the bright light of the screen, which now occupies my entire field of vision. The current audiogram on the screen clearly shows the changes and largely confirms my considerations. Overall, my hearing has continued to deteriorate. However, I have been living with the certainty that this is a progressive deterioration since I was a child, which is why I was not surprised by the results. The conclusion of the new assessment is that I am almost deaf in the conventional medical sense. After discussing the result and the consequences in detail with my audiologist, my hearing aids were adapted to the new assessment. And so it was back out into the bracing new world.
As soon as I got outside, I immediately noticed the change in the high frequency range after the ‘update’ of my hearing aids. I can now hear more through the new adjustments, more of those uncontrolled, unwanted noises of Hamburg's urban environment that are generated by all kinds of human activity: the omnipresent traffic noise, industrial machinery, stoplights, construction sites or other electronic devices. This chaotic soundscape has a special effect on my perception, something I share with everyone who lives in urban areas, because we are constantly aware of it: it is omnipresent, unavoidable and unconsciously embedded in our civilised, acoustic reality. Incidentally, there is also a term for this: noise pollution.
This refers to those noises that exceed the human or animal tolerance limit with a high volume or duration (permanence) and also have health effects. Noise pollution undoubtedly refers to an effect or symptom of the Anthropocene - an era defined by the fundamental and often destructive interventions of humans in the environment. It is therefore part of the acoustic signature of the Anthropocene, a ‘ sound pollution’ created and driven by the expansion of industry, technology and urbanisation. What makes noise pollution so insidious is that it invades our everyday lives and is quickly forgotten - because you can't see it, taste it, smell it or touch it. This is because this presence in our lives conditions us to either block it out or, if we do notice it, to perceive it as a burden.
In the midst of the evening traffic, which I battle my way through to the next bus stop, I notice a few birdsong in a kind of momentary acoustic hypersensitivity, which seems very loud and driven. I stop and devote my attention to this bird's voice. Far from knowing immediately what kind of bird it is - because I can't see the bird - the energetic effort spreads out before me like a billowing thundercloud, which is responsible for the melodic tones that arise deep in the throat of this bird just above the lungs. Dark branches emerge from the storm cloud, the trachea, which forks into two main bronchi. In it, the membranes resonate strainedly in the stream of breath under the over-acidic manipulation of the muscles and produce that hypersaturated sound that reaches my ears and then abruptly breaks off. That shook me for a moment.
The jam-packed bus arrives, silently. One of the new electric buses. For a brief moment, everything seems quiet again, but that's just an illusion. A hissing sound, the doors open and I squeeze between the people. The effects of noise pollution on wildlife and natural ecosystems are serious. Animals, like this bird, use sound to communicate, find mates or recognise predators. Noise, especially in urban or industrial areas, disrupts this communication. Therefore, birds in cities have to sing their songs louder or at higher frequencies to ‘compete’ against traffic noise. This can cost them a considerable amount of energy and therefore affect their breeding.
The bus stops at the main station, I walk through the large foyer towards the tracks and everywhere I look I see pigeons, individually, in groups, their pressed nests above the power lines and between the steel beams, amidst all this terrible noise of rail whistles, engines and loud, echoing voices.
Somehow it's different with pigeons, I think to myself. You come across them in urban areas, where they are often labelled derogatorily as ‘rats of the air’. While many bird species struggle to survive in the city, the pigeon seems to move effortlessly through the urban soundscape. While songbirds communicate with high-frequency melodies that are drowned out by dense traffic and construction site noise, the pigeon relies on deeper, resonant sounds that cut through the acoustic chaos better -
or have you ever heard a pigeon chirping?
All I know of their sounds is a coo, a short grunt or a hoo or hum. But their communication is not only auditory: body language, eye contact and movement patterns make them independent of purely acoustic communication.
Pigeons are often the centre of my attention during waiting times and breaks in everyday working life, as they are (along with seagulls in Hamburg) the bird species that you find most frequently and often in masses in places where I often think to myself ‘Why are you doing this to yourselves?’. It is striking that the behaviour of pigeons is really very different from that of seagulls, sparrows or chickadees. They generally seem more sluggish, more sedate and don't get out of the way so quickly - which makes them easy to observe.
Songbirds (e.g. blackbirds, chickadees) usually sing in the high frequency range (between 2 and 8 kHz). These frequencies are often melodic and variable to mark territorial claims or attract mates. In noisy cities, however, these high-pitched sounds are masked by traffic noise (e.g. engine noise or construction site noise in the range of 100 Hz to 2 kHz). City pigeons, on the other hand, coo in a lower frequency range (approx. 0.2 to 1 kHz). Low frequencies penetrate urban noise better as they are less absorbed by buildings or other noise sources. Songbirds mainly rely on acoustic signals and only use body movements as a supplement, for example when males fluff up their feathers or flap their wings trembling during courtship. Pigeons, however, communicate strongly via body language: a male pigeon puffs out his chest during courtship, nods his head and walks in small circles around the female. They also display threatening behaviour during territorial disputes by rearing up, stretching their heads forwards or flapping their wings. While songbirds are often shyer and tend to call their conspecifics from a distance, pigeons are social birds that use direct eye contact to communicate. In flocks of pigeons, hierarchy is often determined by subtle head movements or mutual staring.
This adaptive flexibility could explain why pigeons thrive in cities while more sensitive bird species disappear. For them, noise pollution is not a threat, but a background noise that does not unbalance them. But it's not just their way of communicating that makes them resilient. Originally from rocky cliffs, it has found a second home in the city - a concrete landscape that is surprisingly similar to its original environment. Steel and wooden bridges become cliffs, railway stations become breeding grounds, window sills become safe vantage points. This ability to intuitively utilise urban structures makes it one of the most successful city dwellers.
The pigeon is a fascinating creature in the Anthropocene. The pigeon coexists with noise, adapts to it, utilises it, ignores it. Its cooing echoes through street canyons, not as a sign of resignation, but as proof of its adaptability. At a time when many species are threatened by growing acoustic overload, the pigeon shows that it is possible to flow with the noise - and find its own order amidst the chaos. It may sound bizarre, but the pigeon shows us an alternative strategy for dealing with noise pollution: adaptation instead of resistance, integration instead of avoidance. While many species are stressed or driven away by noise, the pigeon stays, adapts and finds ways to exist within this new acoustic reality.
Even if it seems like it now, it is not my intention to relativise or accept the harmful aspects of noise pollution. But I do wonder whether we need to rethink our approach to it. There is a growing awareness of the negative health and environmental consequences of noise. At the same time, many of the strategies have more of a ‘palliative character’ rather than a radical approach. After all, humans are also creatures of transition. Many governments, cities and companies are increasingly investing in quieter technologies, modernising transport systems - for example through the use of electric vehicles - and integrating noise protection concepts into urban planning. Such measures in certain regions help to reduce the increase in noise pollution or even achieve an improvement in some areas, in short: to keep the damage to a minimum or to have a palliative effect (at the moment, I can't think of any scenario that would stop the noise that doesn't involve a collapse of civilisation). At present, we can see that the future of noise pollution is ambivalent: On the one hand, it will increase in many areas due to economic and infrastructural growth; on the other hand, the pressure to create quieter, healthier living spaces and technological advancements will also reveal ways to specifically reduce this pollution. Ultimately, it will depend on how well progress and sustainability can be harmonised.
We learn to decode noise, restructure our perception and navigate it more consciously.
Perhaps we need a kind of ‘deconditioning’ - a weaning from certain listening habits and a re-evaluation of what we perceive as disturbing or meaningless? And even if many people rightly perceive noise pollution as a stressor, the question arises: How can we - like the pigeon - learn to live with it? Perhaps we need a kind of ‘cultural evolution of hearing’ in which we develop new strategies to not only endure sound, but to deal with it consciously?
I reach the platform with my tram, above my head I hear the flapping wings of a frightened pigeon. I board the tram and my hearing is lulled by the constant whirring of a neon light. At the next station there is a beep, the doors open, a murmur of voices enters. And now everything blurs for me again in an endless tapestry of noise.
I watch the people passing by outside, a child covers his ears. This makes me realise something: my own impairment fundamentally changes how I perceive noise pollution - or whether I perceive it as ‘pollution’ at all. While many people try to protect themselves against noise or avoid it, my perception has a different starting point from the outset: certain frequencies and sound spectrums are less present for me or can be experienced differently. This means that, due to my impairment, I have already adapted to a noisy world in a way that others have yet to learn. Others are 3 steps ahead of me, I am 5 steps behind and in the end we meet in the middle. While people with a full hearing spectrum are often overwhelmed by noise pollution, I may be able to perceive acoustic spaces more selectively, filter them or interact with them differently. This could be a kind of ‘natural deconditioning practice’ - not as a limitation, but as an alternative way of listening that is less dependent on a stimulus-response pattern.
Could my situation mean that I don't simply perceive noise pollution as an omnipresent burden, but as something that I can consciously include or ignore depending on the situation? Perhaps this is an artistic lesson for me? Perhaps this is a discovery for others? Instead of viewing noise merely as a disturbance, we can learn to consciously perceive it, modulate it and integrate it into our own acoustic cosmos.
In urbe sum, ergo gurrio?
(In the city I am, therefore I coo?)