Angela YT Chan 
I have now joined the interdisciplinary SOUNDSCALE team to undertake citizen-centric, responsible research and development of the emerging technology of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS), in the context of the recently awarded UKRI grant ‘SOUNDSCALE: Sensing On Urban Noise: Distributed Sensing for Collaborative and Sustainable Cityscapes and Living Environments’.
In my role as the Senior Research Assistant in Artistic Research (Artist in Residence), for the next year and a half, I will be based in the Department of Art & Media Technology in Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, and within the Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics research group (CIIP).
I will conduct independent artistic research that continues to develop my research-art practice with critical approaches to this emerging technology, and contribute to the SOUNDSCALE methodology, research processes and outcomes. Working with the team of data, physical and social sciences, we will be collaborating together with citizens on topics that consider the emergence of DAS technology in terms of infrastructure, data and governance, environmental impacts, civic life and more.
“SOUNDSCALE capitalises on the exceptional capabilities of legacy optical fibre cables, housed within the National Dark Fibre Facility (NDFF), an EPSRC National Research Facility, to unlock physical sensing capabilities through DAS, an emergent technology that detects ambient vibrations. These technologies hold enormous potential to address urban issues, from traffic and environmental problems to infrastructure monitoring and sound pollution, as well as environmental issues in coastal cities, like in-flooding.”
Find out more about SOUNDSCALE and CIIP.