Stahl, Heiner: Acoustic Lanes and Auditory Leads. Spatio-Temporalities of Social Acoustics and Public Address Systems in Late Weimar Germany, in: Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine Vol. 13 (2024), No. 13, S. 71-82

Soundscape Studies are rooted in a compositional approach to space and spatiotemporal constellations (Schafer 1973). It is about notation and measurement. In this respect, doing space and sound is linked to practices, knowledge and compounds of acoustic (physical) and auditory (physiological) information. Following this perspective, noise or sound, both socially or culturally constructed, are subfunctions of what frequencies, incident energies, loudness or threshold values. Spatiality and temporality are calculable conditions. This contribution highlights another approach. It refers to two concepts, acoustic lanes (RosenstockHuessy 1956) and auditory leads (Anders 1992), that are derived from practical philosophy and its connections to analysis of media and interpersonal communication and to the shaping of noise and sound. Both concepts are gauging acoustic material and its information value along the lines of being ‘useful’ or ‘applicable’ or ‘common’ or whether it can be labelled as a ‘nuisance.’ Taking these designations on board, I explore the social acoustics of noise and sound in Interwar Germany when decoding public addressing systems and the evaluation of ‘good’ sound in urban spaces. Thereby, I challenge the polyvalent concept of acoustic branding as it has evolved since the time when instruments of signaling and alarming began competing with the polyphonies of urban streets and spaces in 1920 and 1930s Europe especially. In addition, I shed light on the modes of how the politics of acoustic management of spaces, temporal situations, moods, and masses has been conducted and professionalized. Diagnosing those relations and its contents, I do, secondly, follow the echoes that sound and noise disposed in scholarly reflections and how émigrés like Rosenstock-Huessy and Anders emphasized the enticing and misleading capacities of phasing audiences and publics. My notion of social acoustics is therefore shaped by the interconnectedness of behaviour, self-convergence of individuals with groups andtechnologies.