What is HS2?
↪️“Britain’s biggest environment project”
What is Deep Listening?
↪️Gathering Qualitative Data
Who We Are
↪️Join the Deep Listening Team
What We Have Found
↪️Browse the Sound Library
“The level of awareness of soundscape brought about by Deep Listening can lead to
the possibility of shaping the sound of technology and of urban environments. Deep
Listening designers, engineers and city planners could enhance ... quality of life” Pauline Oliveros
“Listening with care is an active process of intervening ... it affects the representation of things, adding mediation to mediations” María Puig de La Bellacasa
explanation from the designer
Welcome to
HS2 Phase 1f: Deep Listening
The High-Speed 2 (HS2) Deep Listening team is gathering rich audio recordings all along the Phase One route of the new railway.
Equipped with the latest technology and extensively trained in focused listening techniques, our team is documenting the previously uncaptured sonic stories of the landscape before, during, and after it undergoes transformation.
Equipped with the latest technology and extensively trained in focused listening techniques, our team is documenting the previously uncaptured sonic stories of the landscape before, during, and after it undergoes transformation.
“Expanding our understanding of regional interconnectivity is the chief goal of both public transportation and ecologists who seek to foster a thriving relationship with nature. Here we align these missions by investing in a qualitative data-finding method: deep listening.”
(HS2 Phase 1f Directive)
Denham Country Park,
Uxbridge, UK
December, 2020
December, 2020
“The level of awareness of soundscape brought about by Deep Listening can lead to
the possibility of shaping the sound of technology and of urban environments. Deep
Listening designers, engineers and city planners could enhance ... quality of life”
(Pauline Oliveros)
(Pauline Oliveros)
ProsperBetterTM
Capacity |
Connectivity
| Carbon
“HS2 is a state-of-the-art, high-speed line critical for the UK’s low carbon transport future.”
“It will provide much-needed rail capacity across the country, and is integral to rail projects in the North and Midlands – helping rebalance the UK economy.”1
Transportation accounts for 28% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Britain: its largest emitting sector2. In order to align itself with the UK government’s goals, HS2 declares that its system will achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 by aleviating road congestion and providing an alternative to air travel.
Since the government-funded transportation project received another round of parliamentary approval to move forward with the planned route in 2017, Phase One (to link London and the West Midlands) has begun. HS2 was first put though UK government in 2012 with an estimated cost around £33 billion, a projection that has risen to £106 billion in 20203. Some calculations projct that even at its 120-year lifespan mark, the complex network’s construction and operation will not have been carbon neutral2.
HS2 has invested millions of pounds into environmental surveys and impact mitigation along its intended routes. Teams of ecological specialists have been hired to deliver a tree planting program, create species-specific replacement habitats, salvage ancient woodland soils, grow saplings from specific culturally significant trees, and conduct ongoing surveys of ecosystem health2. HS2 Phase 1f will supplement these equally critical surveys.
HS2 Phase 1f will take complex audio surveys before, during and after landscape-altering construction and habitat rebuilding.
What is Deep
Listening?
︎ rooted in deep ecology ︎
The practice of deep listening explores the differences between a more passive hearing and participatory listening. At its most basic, focused listening is a way to give attention to the other.
When taking part in deep listening on our many sites of study, our team of both newly trained and seasoned listeners focus on not only on noises that are immediately audible, but also layers of more underlying sonic indicators, patterns, and messages, which may take more concentration, technological help, and creativity to pick up.
Gathering Qualitative Data
Important information and perspectives get left out of environmental assessments when we begin with a bias towards hard data. It may take years and hundreds of millions of pounds to organize the sonic information we gather at each site, but what makes recordings made with deep listening complicated also makes them unique.
