Overview
SOUNDSCALE is an interdisciplinary research project exploring how Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and similar emerging distributed sensing technologies may shape, and be shaped by, society, infrastructure, and the environments we live in. Bringing together researchers, artists, policymakers, and citizens, we investigate not only what these technologies can do, but whether and where they should be developed, who they serve, who may be harmed or excluded, and how decisions about them should be made.
DAS uses fibre-optic cables as large-scale environmental sensors. By detecting tiny disturbances in the light travelling through optical fibres, DAS can measure vibrations over long distances and across a wide range of frequencies. In recent years, it has been used to study earthquakes, ocean environments, transport systems, urban activity, and critical infrastructure, with new applications continuing to emerge.
As these possibilities grow, so too do important questions around privacy, governance, sustainability, public trust, equity, and social justice. SOUNDSCALE approaches these issues through a combination of technical research, citizen participation, artistic inquiry, public engagement, and policy dialogue. Our work spans fibre-sensing fieldwork on the National Dark Fibre Facility between Southampton and London, deliberative workshops with citizens, interdisciplinary research projects, artistic investigations, public exhibitions, community activities, and engagement with policymakers and regulators.
The project began by asking citizens what they believed should be investigated. Through a Citizens’ Panel involving participants from Hampshire and London, people explored the opportunities and risks of DAS, debated its implications, and identified priorities relating to the environment, governance, public value, infrastructure, and social impacts. These discussions continue to shape the direction of the project’s interdisciplinary research.
Building on these deliberations, SOUNDSCALE developed a series of interdisciplinary research projects that combine expertise from across the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Technical fieldwork and data analysis are brought into conversation with research into how emerging technologies are governed, experienced, imagined, and contested in everyday life.
Artistic research and public engagement continues through justice-informed artistic research, creative practice, workshops, exhibitions, and speculative methods that explore how technologies are experienced, imagined, contested, and embedded within society. These activities open up new ways of thinking about public infrastructures, technology justice, and collective decision-making.
SOUNDSCALE is an experiment in doing research differently: combining scientific and social research with public deliberation, creative practice, and policy engagement. It asks how emerging technologies can be developed responsibly, democratically, and in ways that reflect the values of the communities they affect.
