In Deep Mapping the Media City Mattern (2015) draws attention to myriad sensory modes—whether it be aural, graphic, textural, electroacoustic, digital, or haptic. Mattern says that clues in any one of these sensory modes might offer insights into other registers (Mattern, 2015, p. 23). Of these sensory modes, the aural, the sounds, echoes with me profoundly.
Sounds in the city tell stories and feed imaginations. I have fond memories of the time I spent at my granny’s place back in the city of Taipei. Every night, around mid-night time, from the room where we slept, my sister and I would hear a deep buurrroooom sound followed by more and rapid buurrroooom. The volume of the sound was very erratic, sometimes at full power and sometimes whispering. The poor engine of the scooter clearly had suffered and it always took a well couple minutes before we finally heard the buurrroooom-boom boom boom sound—the engine had started and off the scooter went. The quiet midnight alley amplified the sound of the scooter—and the laughter from my sister and me. At the first sound of the buurrroooom, we looked at each other and started giggling and with every failed buurrroooom our laughter grew louder. This sound took and had a role. After a couple of months our midnight sound-venture vanished. We wondered what might have happened to the rider; we hoped s/he was okay. We wondered if the scooter had served her time; we wondered if the rider had got a new scooter. And we also missed the mixed soundtrack of the buurrrooooms with the loud ha-ha-has that echoed across the quiet midnight alley in the city.
Figure 1. Typical ‘old’ scooter seen in Taipei city. Image source: Judy Chen. Taipei, 2017.
Mattern notes that there’s necessarily some speculation involved in piecing together the sensory dimensions of urban history. The speculative aspect of the urban sounds tells stories and feeds imaginations. I am drawn by how a single sound—or a combination of sounds—alone can lead to many possible, speculated scenarios. Speculative models allow urban dwellers to imagine what the city they inhabit looks, sounds, and feels like. Speculative models also bring joy and excitement.
Mattern points out that the representation of the city in, for example, photographs, cinemas, and other digitalised work, continues to be a prominent theme and the emphasis on imaging technologies has reinforced an ocularcentric approach (using historian Martin Jay’s term). In my personal experience I believe seeing is believing does not always hold true. I am fascinated by manual transmissions. One beauty of driving a manual car is that the ocularcentric approach does not prevail. Much driving relies on both hearing and feeling. One can tell a missed shift, poor control of the clutch, or grinding gears by, and only by, hearing the different and distinct sounds produced by the vehicle. These issues are not visually presented on the dashboard; one can only tell and acknowledge through analysing the sounds and the vibrations of the vehicle.
To understand the city we inhabit and to understand how humans and the city evolve together, a deep map could provide valuable insights. Archaeologists Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks (2001) explain that a deep map “attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual; the conflation of oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, natural history and everything you might ever want to say about a place” (as cited in Mattern, 2015, p.33).
The urban environment is filled with myriad sensory modes, each telling its stories and together feed the urban imaginations. Each urban dweller is capable of producing his/her own deep map(s) and together these maps tell the history and the development of the city.