Urbanist School #1 Tokyo Rhythm Analysis
How can cities be observed, analyzed, and described?
In a collection of essays called “Rhythmanalysis,” a French urbanist philosopher Henri Lefebvre outlines a method of analyzing the rhythms of urban spaces and the effects of those rhythms on the everyday lives of the urban dwellers.
Through the concepts of “rhythm,” “body,” “space” and “time,” one can start reading the cities and space as a production of social practices from multiple perspectives. Here, “Rhythm” is more than just audio information. Our bodies, including visual information, physical sensations, and the state of our bodies and minds, act as a metronome, guiding us to the “rhythm” of a city.
The Urbanist School, organized by a Tokyo-based design studio for Cities, is an education program for urbanists of the next generation. As the first school of 2022, we’ve collaborated with an “urban composer” Kenda Tanaka and worked on the Rhythm Analysis in Tokyo from 20th to 28th February 2022.
Program
In the school, the participants learned both theories and practical techniques for analyzing rhythms in the city of Tokyo, especially in the Ikebukuro area, around the maker space 11–1 Studio as our venue. In addition to classroom lectures, practical exercises, discussions, and performances were followed so that everyone at the school knows how to apply rhythm analysis to various activities at the end of the program.
Day1: Lecture & Fieldwork (2022 February 20th, 13:00–16:00, @11–1 studio)
- What is Soundscape? What does it mean to capture the audio environment of a city?
- What does it mean to analyze a city through rhythm?
- Case studies of various rhythms that surround our city
- How to collect and record rhythms
- Field Recording with Study Kit
Day2: Discussion and performances (2022 February 23th~28th, 19:00–20:00, @11–1 studio)
- Share the homework and collected data from fieldwork
- Discussion
- Participatory performances
Study kit
To guide the participants, we have created an original study kit as an introduction to the rhythm analysis. The study kit includes step-by-step exercises and references, an audio guide, and some space for the participants to fill in. The kit will be avaiable for purchase in spring 2022.
Fieldwork and discussion
By using the study kit, the participants went out to the streets and collected audio and visual data, including some sketches. After coming back to the venue, they have exchanged their discoveries and discussed their findings.
Performance
Based on the rhythms collected by the participants, Kenta Tanaka did performances. Then, by mixing audio and visual images, participants improvised the performance in a participatory manner. Through this experience, our goal was to encourage people to be actively involved in (re)designing the urban soundscape.
The soundscape and Rthysoms of cities can not only be observed and analyzed but also progressively designed and re-designed to improve our experience in cities. What if the citizens could also have a say in it? What if there was a department of urban sound design, just like architecture and urban planning, in every municipality?
Text: for Cities
Photo: Daisuke Murakami
About the Urbanist School
The Urbanist School, organized by a Tokyo-based design studio for Cities, is an education program to learn and acquire the skills necessary to become an urbanist of the next generation. Cities are becoming more and more diverse and complex, and urban actors who can work across disciplines with an innovative set of minds are needed to co-create the future of cities. The Urbanist School provides various programs in multidisciplinary fields, both practical and theoretical, that are from 3 days workshops to 6 weeks of intense courses. It is offered not only for urban professionals and practitioners, but we also welcome people who are new to the subject.
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for Cities
for Cities is an urban experience design studio, as well as an international collective of urban practitioners and thinkers working in Asian cities and beyond. We provide an urban “repository” — an online idea bank — where emerging practitioners in the field of urbanism can showcase their practices and ideas. for Cities week is an annual global exhibition where we select the finest ideas from the platform and introduce them to a wider audience to co-learn how we can share actionable ideas globally while respecting local contexts. Our goal is to cultivate better, more just, more playable cities.
Collaborator: Kenta Tanaka
Kenta Tanaka (°1993, Japan) is an urban composer, transdisciplinary sound artist, and guitarist. His work attempts to explore the possibilities of urban-themed compositions under the word “Urban Composition” by applying urban theories or phenomena in the fields of sound arts and experimental music. He focuses on demystifying the relationships between human beings and urban soundscapes through the approach of phenomenological listening. After completing his postgraduate in Sound Arts with European Postgraduate in Arts in Sound in Ghent, Belgium, he held “Urban Reminiscence — Sound, Object, and Rhythm” (2020), a sound installation recomposing memories of the city, at Sta., Tokyo. Recent works include “Fictional Soundscapes” (2021) for Encounter in Resonance at KIOSK Zwarte Zaal — Belgium, “Algorithmic Urban Composition” (2019) for Linux Audio Conference at Listening Room CCRMA Stanford — the United States.
Visual design: Slogan
Slogan is a creative collective run by Sonoka, Yoshiko and Deby based mostly in Tokyo. They specialise in a wide range of production services including graphic design, branding, creative shooting and printing practices. In the spring of 2022, Slogan is launching Slogan Studio: a dedicated craft studio & workspace in Sangenjaya, Tokyo.
