“Sounds of the Night ” is a sound installation to create awareness of urban women’s fears. This sound installation uses the sounds of the night and various female voices as essential elements to illustrate their stifled inner feelings that are often masked and overlooked. The sound installation includes visual elements to depict their trepidations and the need to be responsible for their safety. This installation results from extensive research done with women from various ethnicities, generations and economic backgrounds.
For this sound installation, we recreated a dark room which simulates the illusion of a street by night. We used various sounds from the city, including footsteps, street sounds and heartbeats, to recreate the sensation of a street by night from a woman’s perspective. Using these sounds as a backdrop, we intend to showcase how the women perceive these noises as an existential threat to their safety. Due to this experience and feeling, women are extremely cautious of their surroundings.
Apart from creating awareness, another key theme explored in this installation is to remind women that they are not alone and allow them to acknowledge that they shouldn’t be solely responsible for their safety. Through the sound installation, we would like to invite the visitors to enter the room of inflexion to experience the world from various women’s perspectives for 2 to 20 minutes. Through this experience, we want to showcase to the world the spatial inequalities that still exist in cities for women in urban areas, as these spaces have not been designed with a woman’s perspective in mind.
