Semiotic Interpretation of a City Soundscape

Abstract

This work presents a semiotic perspective of aspects of a soundscape evaluation of the city, Supino located in the Province of Frosinone in the Italian region of Lazio. The data and sound sample collection was accomplished through the soundwalk technique undertaken by students of Cankaya University, School of Architecture during the 'Third International Summer School in Supino' 17-24 August 2014. For the soundscape evaluation, three zones were identified in Supino as urban, suburban, and intersection. A total of nine samples across three zones were collected during three different times in a day by soundwalks from the areas located in the identified zones. A theoretical model of semiotic interpretations of soundscapes has been proposed and applied for the analysis of Supino's soundscape. The results showed that the soundscape of Supino differs according to its cultural, habitual, and anthropological tendencies. In addition, the semantic analysis shows that the soundscape composition of the sound sources in the three zones varies by the change of time, sound composition and sources, topography, and settlement of the city.