About
LA Listens is a collaboration between a sound ethnographer, acoustic ecologist, and a composer/music technologist. Our project takes an analytic-praxis approach to listen to the interrelationships between the sensory, social, and ecological aspects of streets...
Audio
The LA Listens team has collected field recordings of Los Angeles neighborhoods. Some of these recordings were captured during soundwalks, an ambulatory exercise with the intention to listen to the sonic textures of a place....
Our Team
The LA Listens team is comprised of sound researchers and practitioners with a commitment to the communities and ecology of Los Angeles. We have worked together since 2015. WF Umi Hsu (pronouns: they/them) is a...

A sound-based initiative that explores urban life in Los Angeles.

Listening to the City Conference and Handbook – A collaboration with MIT Colab
Listening to the City Conference and Handbook – A collaboration with MIT Colab
A while ago, we collaborated with MIT Colab on the Listening to the City initiative. A couple of projects came out of this collaboration. One...
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Sonifying Traffic Data
Sonifying Traffic Data
Listening to our field recordings, we immediately heard how much the sound of traffic dominated our Boyle Heights site. We may assume that traffic is a...
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A sound walk through the changing street economy of Boyle Heights
A sound walk through the changing street economy of Boyle Heights
A repost from the our 3-part blog series that we published on Colab Radio through a collaboration with MIT Community Innovators Lab. This final post...
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Listening to the Streets: What sounds do vehicular traffic mask?
Listening to the Streets: What sounds do vehicular traffic mask?
A repost from the our 3-part blog series that we published on Colab Radio through a collaboration with MIT Community Innovators Lab. This post #2...
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We listen to the interrelationships between the sensory, social, and ecological aspects of streets in Los Angeles. We transform our research into a creative and engagement platform for community-oriented artists, planners, and organizers. Collectively, we ascertain the meanings of vibrancy and question the impact of motorized vehicles, pedestrians, conversations, helicopters, and street vendors in the multivalent soundscape of LA’s neighborhoods.

Read more about LA Listens.