Public art is generally associated with the visual arts. We think spontaneously of the many sculptures that are present in our parks and public buildings due to application of the Government of Quebec’s Politique d’intégration des arts à l’architecture et à l’environnement. Photography also comes to mind: for a number of years, through its Plan large project, Quartier éphémère presented works by contemporary photographers on unoccupied billboards. The fiercely emotional confrontation among dogs in Carlos and Jason Sanchez’s Natural Selection (2005) must have surprised more than one driver entering Montreal via the Bonaventure Expressway in the fall of 2006. Nevertheless, public art – or maybe we should call it art in the public space to avoid the constraints of the institutionalized definition – may take a myriad of forms. Previously in this column, my colleague Aseman Sabet has evoked the rich potential of performative and ephemeral art to stimulate innovation in public art practices. Here, I propose a reflection on sound material. Could perceiving artworks in the public space through sounds help to refresh how we regard the city and enrich the language of public art?

In 1977, R. Murray Schafer defined the notion of soundscape in his book The Soundscape: “The sonic environment…. The term may refer to actual environments, or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an environment.”¹ Schafer’s soundscape includes a wide variety of sounds, from nature – wind, rain, snow – humans – shouting, breathing,

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