Sound is inextricably bound with spatial as well as temporal experience; a means of designating and reinforcing social meanings and functions of spaces (Hendy, 2015). We understand this when we enter a place of worship, for example, or a busy pub. There are various sensory and visual prompts too, but architectural detail is bent to the purpose of generating particular social experience and meaning (Blesser and Salter, 2009). This aspect of life was more pronounced in a space marked by the relative dearth of sensory stimuli, and limited ability to curate sensory experience. Visual peripheries are both more limited and controllable; we lack earlids with which to exclude unwanted sound (Simmel, 1903; Carpenter and McLuhan, 1960).

Listening lent an audible quality to the metrics of time passing and stagnating through different zones. Even in a space marked by its particular purpose and consequent elision of personal and private distinctions, prison spaces hummed with the social purposes assigned to them. Shifting soundscapes signposted and inflected the emotional geographies of Midtown's spaces. Its occupants asserted their identities and purposes, sometimes to the metric of the broader prison concerto, at others demonstrating opposition and resistance to its rhythms (Labelle, 2018). Attuning to the prison soundscape revealed distinctions between the tune of the wider social organism and individual agents whether working through the everyday or seeking sanctuary from the punishing sensorium.

Emotional geography

I was often encouraged to listen to different prison spaces. These frequently corresponded to areas of particular interest among the prisoners (Boyd, having landed a prestigious kitchen orderly position was most keen for me to hear how different it was there), but was also born of the recognition that: “Different places sound different” (Officer Stillman). As with time, spatial experience was bound up with power relations – nowhere more starkly illustrated than by entrance and exit rituals: for example, “Coming/Going through” and “Let me through?” The former was a ritualistic expression of intent to follow, uttered by most staff and operating as both a greeting, a sign of movement and a direction not to lock the gate. The latter was frequently expressed in growing volume and levels of agitation as a prisoner waited for someone to let them through in order that they might move around on the wing, perform work tasks and get on with their day.