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... Schafer's music education goal can be understood as the development of a "sonological competence". Wrightson (2000) describes Schafer's realisation of the incredible dominance of the visual modality in society, or "eye culture", as the starting point of his teaching process. He believed that children were losing the ability to listen and he argued for the development of listening skills to become an integral part of the national curriculum. ...
... 1) The Omnipresence of Sounds/The Acoustic Ecology For Schafer, the acoustic ecology is of primary importance. Acoustic ecology can be understood as a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment (Wrightson, 2000). It also implies that one tries to hear the acoustic environment as a musical composition (Schafer, 1977: p. 205). ...
... 1) Exploration in My Own Teaching/Development of the Sonological Competence According to Schafer, the sonological competence, or the ability to listen, should be developed in children as an integral part of the national curriculum (Wrightson, 2000). To foster this ability, he created practical teaching activities called "ear cleaning", among which: the creation of a list of any five environmental sounds (not music) that you remember hearing today; and a list of five sounds (not music) you like and five you do not; "sound walks" a walking meditation where the object is to maintain a high level of sonic awareness (Schafer, 1969). ...
... The soundscapes LO_FI (low fidelity) are marked by an immense superposition of sound information, which causes the disappearance of individual sound signals in the general noise (Schafer and Gleize 1979) and influences our ability to understand, reconstruct mental images, and identify spaces from what we hear (Bouzir, Berkouk, and Zemmouri, 2019;Péneau et al. 1998;Wrightson 2000), as it can also be a sign of life, movement and security in some urban places. This type of soundscape has become, among other features, one of the main features of the modern city today. ...
... These two notions represent, according to Schafer, the contrast between pre-industrial and postindustrial sound landscapes (Wrightson 2000). Figure 11.4 shows the contrasted soundscape Lo_Fi and Hi_Fi. ...
In this chapter, we have summarized the definitions of fundamental concepts and notions related to the study of urban acoustics in order to present an introduction to this field of research to urban planners, landscapers, and specialists who work on cities. We focus in this work on the concept of soundscape, on its types (Hi_Fi, Lo_Fi), its components (anthrophony, geophony, biophony), as well as its structure, in order to define it in its broadest sense by associating the definition of sound environments and that of urban atmospheres. Then, we will focus in the second part of this article on the concept of noise pollution by focusing on its definition, its sources, and its effects on human health and the environment. In addition, we will define the main operations in the fight against this phenomenon. Finally, we will devote the last part of this chapter to identify and analyze the main recent methods of study and analysis of the urban sound environment such as in-situ measurements, questionnaires, recordings, and sound mapping, while addressing the pros and cons of each research methodology.
... El interés por la ecología acústica ha ido in crescendo desde la creación del Foro Internacional de Ecología Acústica, cuya I Conferencia Internacional tuvo lugar en Banff, Alberta, Canadá, en el verano de 1993(Wrightson, 2000. Hoy en día se constata que son cada vez más las voces que se alzan en todo el mundo reclamando respeto, conservación y preservación de las realidades sonoras. ...
... El interés por la ecología acústica ha ido in crescendo desde la creación del Foro Internacional de Ecología Acústica, cuya I Conferencia Internacional tuvo lugar en Banff, Alberta, Canadá, en el verano de 1993 (Wrightson, 2000). Hoy en día se constata que son cada vez más las voces que se alzan en todo el mundo reclamando respeto, conservación y preservación de las realidades sonoras. ...
La puesta en práctica del proyecto Aproximación a los paisajes sonoros de la ciudad de Murcia se enmarca en el enfoque metodológico que tiene a la experimentación sonora y el descubrimiento de sonidos como puntos de referencia para la actividad musical. Este tipo de propuestas tienen una presencia tímida en las aulas de música pese a que se expusieron hace ya más de medio siglo. Uno de los principales impulsores de este planteamiento es el compositor, educador musical, escritor, académico y artista visual Raymond Murray Schafer.
Las propuestas metodológicas de Schafer abrieron el camino de la experimentación sonora en el campo de la pedagogía musical. Si bien el enfoque vanguardista de esta autoridad canadiense está teóricamente asumido como un gran avance metodológico, en la práctica sus ideas de lo que debe ser la educación musical aún no se han generalizado. No obstante, la moderna tecnología al servicio de la enseñanza de la música nos abre nuevas posibilidades didácticas que facilitan enormemente el trabajo de experimentación sonora.
En el presente proyecto, los alumnos de Secundaria realizan un aprendizaje por descubrimiento. Bajo la temática de los paisajes sonoros de la ciudad de Murcia, el profesor de música conduce a sus alumnos a obtener información de forma autónoma así como a experimentar procedimientos nuevos de expresión como componer fragmentos de música contemporánea. Igualmente, los alumnos son conducidos a reflexionar sobre su futuro como ciudadanos responsables de su entorno sonoro.
... The concept of soundscape has a rather short history, which means that it may still have flaws and weaknesses. It has a background in acoustic ecology [21,22], but research within the field of musicology is rare and to some extent still lacking. There are some contributions from ecomusicology-a discipline at the intersection of music, sound, culture, society, nature and environment [23,24]-and ethnomusicological research [25]. ...
The sound environment and music intersect in several ways and the same holds true for the soundscape and our internal response to listening to music. Music may be part of a sound environment or take on some aspects of environmental sound, and therefore some of the soundscape response may be experienced alongside the response to the music. At a deeper level, coping with music, spoken language, and the sound environment may all have influenced our evolution, and the cognitive-emotional structures and responses evoked by all three sources of acoustic information may be, to some extent, the same. This paper distinguishes and defines the extent of our understanding about the interplay of external sound and our internal response to it in both musical and real-world environments. It takes a naturalistic approach to music/sound and music-listening/soundscapes to describe in objective terms some mechanisms of sense-making and interactions with the sounds. It starts from a definition of sound as vibrational and transferable energy that impinges on our body and our senses, with a dynamic tension between lower-level coping mechanisms and higher-level affective and cognitive functioning. In this way, we establish both commonalities and differences between musical responses and soundscapes. Future research will allow this understanding to grow and be refined further.
... Creating an immersive audio work with the women was underpinned by the principles of acoustic ecology and Indigenist research. Acoustic ecology (Wrightson, 2000) formed the bedrock for producing the audio work and understanding the connections between listening to environmental soundscapes and the wellbeing of individuals and communities. In Australia, acoustic ecology has emerged as a socially engaged, dynamic and interdisciplinary field concerned with the ecological, social, and cultural contexts of our sonic environments. ...
... The term "Soundscape composition" refers to a sound-based art form that concerns the creation of sonic environments (Westerkamp 2002;Drever 2002;Truax 2008). This art form has grown from acoustic ecology (Wrightson 2000) and soundscape studies (Westerkamp 2002). ...
The intersection between sound and music computing and Virtual Reality (VR) has grown significantly over the past decades, amounting to an established area of research today. However, still scarce research has been conducted on the development of specific tools for sound design and composition. In this paper, we investigate a new way of exploring online sound repositories to retrieve sounds to be used in soundscape composition, which leverages the VR medium. Specifically, we created a VR system that allows users to search, download, and explore Freesound content in an immersive manner, as well as to use it for soundscape composition practices via a virtual digital audio workstation (DAW). The tags associated to a sound in the repository were converted into virtual objects and environments, which the user could navigate while listening to the sound. We conducted a user study with 16 composers where the developed system was compared against a conventional counterpart comprising the Freesound web version and the Audacity DAW. Overall, quantitative and qualitative results did not indicate a clear and generalized preference for a system over the other. The usability of the two systems along with their offered creativity support, cognitive workload and emotional impact were deemed to be at a comparable level. Nevertheless, the full potential of VR in creating novel compositional experiences also clearly emerged. Our study shows that VR is an effective medium to support users’ creativity during the process of exploring and selecting sounds from an online repository as well as for composing a soundscape.
... Schafer's concept of the soundscape is the centre point of a movement to restore our modern existence to a more natural, less noise-polluted state (Kelman 2010). Acoustic ecology, or ecoacoustics, was a term coined by Schafer (2006: 11) to describe this concerted act of listening to the acoustic environments around us (Wrightson 2000;Schafer 1977), and even 'restoring the balance between living creatures and the natural environment' (Schafer 2006: 11). Now a growing international practice, it involves monitoring the environment for both healthful and 'destructive' sounds (Schafer 1994: 4)-a fantastic example being the Australian Frog ID project 18 (Weaver et al. 2020). ...
The divergent use of digital technologies provides an important opportunity for students to develop critical and postdigital approaches to learning. Despite the rising accessibility of music technology, creatively composed sound is a relatively underexplored educational tool compared to the musical elements of melody, rhythm, and lyrics. Sound’s ability to transfer spatial and temporal information renders it a transformative tool for teaching and learning. Embracing an interdisciplinary approach, our research explores the possibility of supplementing secondary science education with a sound-based learning tool which creatively interprets scientific concepts to increase comprehension and engagement. Building on the existing ways in which science is communicated through music and sound, we have developed the Sonaphor (abbreviated from ‘sonic metaphor’). This article will outline the capacity for experimental electronic sound design to increase engagement in contexts ranging from classrooms through to informal learning environments. We see potential for the Sonaphor as a learning tool that reignites wonder and curiosity in science; it combines learning and creativity in sound design and science, allowing learners to interact with, and create their own Sonaphors . Through exemplar Sonaphors , we highlight a proposed structure and discuss the importance of harmonious script, dialogue, and sound design. The flexibility of the digital medium and increasing ubiquity of sound recording and editing software presents an opportunity for Sonaphors to become ‘living’ digital objects that could be adapted by different narrators, sound designers, and artists for different cultures, languages, syllabi, and purposes that build inclusivity in science education and communication.
... The ISO 12913-1:2014 Acoustics -Soundscape -Part 1: Definition and Conceptual Framework defines a soundscape as the "acoustic environment as perceived, experienced, and/or understood by people, in context". The study of how we interact with a soundscape is a liminal field often frequented by transdisciplinary academics and enthusiasts, with the common aim to progress our understanding of the area of study that can be termed "Acoustic Ecology" (Wrightson 2000). One method employed to capture and investigate soundscapes is termed "Soundwalking", where people walk through their neighborhood specifically to listen, often recording their journey with a portable recorder. ...
The idea of quiet varies between cultures and individuals. Quiet is a commodity in the remote New Zealand wilderness, it is therapeutic in a busy frantic world or it is torture in the form of sensory deprivation. These differences in perception are not just related to the small space inside the ear of the listener, they are also dependent on the prior experiences of the listener and the feelings and physiological responses associated with noise. With a surge of global interest in soundscapes, we evaluate the accepted approach to planning for noise and examine the impact that sounds have on our lives to see if these approaches are fit for purpose. We probe the tenuous link between acoustic quality and noise level to provide an overview of current moves towards an alternative approach to ensuring acoustic amenity. Finally, we investigate the scientific, artistic and perhaps voyeuristic aspects of field recording and explore the aspirations of on-line communities of academics, historians, scientists and hobbyists (all passionate listeners) to progress our understanding of how deeply we interact with our soundscapes.
... Such embodied lived experiences are part of a multisensory immersion of individuals in their socio-environmental interactions (Rodaway, 1994;Thrift, 2008). This sub-field was developed by scholars such as Wrightson (2000) who further discussed terminologies such as 'sound signals' or 'foreground sounds' and 'soundmark' (analogy for landmark). ...
With the growth of children's population in cities, research on children's views about their urban lives has gained traction in the literature. Contributing to such a research agenda, this study examines the perception of slum-dwelling Filipino children of their sonic environment, which is an under-researched topic. Analysis focuses on how children's experiences both create and are shaped by the soundscape of their slum spaces. Drawing from unstructured interviews with Filipino children (aged 9-12 years) in San Jose del Monte City, this study articulates what comprises children's sonic environment in slums and how they make sense of their soundscapes. Findings suggest that children have a complex sonic relationship with their spaces beyond physical aspects, offering another dimension to thinking about children's auditory encounters. This work hopes to spark conversations on how soundscapes can inform thinking about and conducting regional studies.
... With this in mind, we follow Gillings (2012) in employing the concept of affordances as a heuristic when exploring whether sound might have contributed to the relative prominence of a place in the past. In doing so, we recognise that ephemeral zones of acoustic activity and isolation emerge and recede as a product of mutual relations between the sources of sounds, the abilities of the perceiver, and the physical, biophysical and material properties of the environment at a given moment (Pijanowski et al, 2011;Reed et al, 2012Wrightson, 2000. Such zones might afford individuals, endowed with different levels of abilities (e.g. ...
Prominent places were powerful places. The persistence and stability of prominent places typically depends upon the prioritisation of their physical and visual attributes. Yet if we are interested in the expression of prominence and power, then we should take account of the potential ways that places reached acoustically into the landscape. Acoustics complement visibility since sound like sight helps shape human experiences, memories and emotions. In this paper, we employ a geospatial framework where patterns of sound propagation are modelled and brought into conversation with visibility and mobility-based analyses often applied in geospatial studies of prominence. We apply our approach to a study of the Bryn-y-Castell hillfort in North West Wales. Geospatial studies, employing viewshed and least-cost modelling, examine how topographic and visual exposure might have accentuated the presence of hillforts. We demonstrate the analytical value of combining acoustic, visibility and mobility approaches in mapping zones in which a trade-off in visual and acoustic messages may have been a feature of how landscape prominence was expressed. The contribution of this study lies in challenging us to think, conceptually and methodologically, of prominence as something that varied, was ephemeral, and that lost and gained potency with intensities of inhabitation and landscape dynamics.
... Acoustic Ecology, introduced by Schafer and his team in the late 1960s under the frame of the World Soundscape Project (https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html), investigates the structure, the characteristics, and the dynamics of the acoustic environment in accordance with the behavioural patterns of human and other organism communities (Schafer 1994;Wrightson 2000;Truax and Barrett 2011). According to Acoustic Ecology outcomes, noise is one of the most imperative environmental problems threatening over 40 million citizens of urban areas and 25 millions of rural areas (EEA 2014). ...
We investigated whether green urban areas (GUA) improve the urban
environment. Field measurements were conducted to record noise
and light pollution as well as other environmental characteristics in
four GUA in Athens. The biodiversity status of the examined areas
was derived from the existing data. Not all GUA represent ecological
refuges, mostly depending on their configuration. Special attention
should be drawn to planning and designing GUA so that human
pressures could not penetrate. Soundscape assessment combined
with artificial lighting, environmental and biodiversity status
investigation of a site clarifies the edge effect of ecosystems leading
to an alternative, integrated, multidimensional management
approach.
... Consequently, children's ability to listen was, in his experience, deteriorating. Because of this problematic, he argued passionately for listening skills to become an integral part of the national curriculum (Schafer, 1977;Wrightson, 2000). Schafer also proposed a program, Ear Cleaning, designed to train the ear to listen with more discernment to sounds, particularly those of the environment (1969). ...
This paper describes a sound installation designed to increase our aural awareness of animal sounds, aiming to reinstate our natural connection to our own habitat. Based on casual, semantic and reduced listening modes, we developed a sound installation that presents creative aural experiences to enhance our connection to the natural soundscapes by recreating lost or forgotten environments, thus contributing to the preservation of sound memory in the contemporary world. This paper explains the concept and implementation of the installation and offers a discussion of the role of listening in our society and strategies to make it a more conscious act.
... Schafer introduced the term "acoustic ecology" which generally means the effects of soundscape on life and society (Schafer, /1994Wrightson, 2000). Truax (2012) defined "acoustic ecology" as a "system of relationships between organisms and their sonic environments with particular emphasis on a functional balance or an attention to dysfunctional behaviour" (p. ...
... Τα τελευταία χρόνια, η ηχητική διάσταση των τοπίων ή αλλιώς το «ηχοτοπίο» -όπως το ονοματίζει ο Schafer (Schafer, 1977;1994)-μιας περιοχής έχει αρχίσει να απασχολεί πληθώρα επιστημόνων που δραστηριοποιούνται στον κλάδο της Ακουστικής Οικολογίας (Matsinos, et al., 2008;Velasco, 2000;Wrightson, 2000). Στο σύνολό τους, οι σχετικές με το «ηχοτοπίο» μελέτες αντιμετωπίζουν τον ήχο ως ένα ακόμη εκ των χαρακτηριστικών ενός σημείου του ευρύτερου χώρου (Coates, 2005;Doornbusch & Kenderdine, 2004;Matless, 2005). ...
Η παρούσα μελέτη συνδυάζει ακουστική οικολογία και χωρική ανάλυση με στόχο την χαρτογράφηση του ηχοτοπίου ενός εκ των χώρων αναψυχής της Μυτιλήνης (νήσος Λέσβος, Βόρειο Αιγαίο) και την παρατήρηση και αξιολόγηση του ήχου σε αυτόν με την βοήθεια συγκεκριμένων ακουστικών δεικτών.
... Following this sensorial turn, sound studies emerge within the above field investigating the role of sound in human experience. The latter in the contemporary "eye culture" [3] is reduced to visual modality because ears seem not to help to the understanding of society and space [4]. In parallel to this, sound art provides an antidote to the hierarchy of the senses and acts as a tool to attune our ears to listen. ...
Sound art plays a significant role in understanding our sensorial engagement with the world. During the last years it has been discussed that the audience during a visit of sound artwork expect to switch their listening by creating an auditory knowledge of the space. Thus, sound art is closely related to acoustic spatiality, i.e. how space is conceived with sound and listening. Marshall McLuhan was one of the first who proposed the need for education in order to train the senses and provide students with the basic tools of perception. The program that we proposed outlined a method which includes the notion of the above approaches and focused on how the acoustic spatiality of silence unfolds in the empty gallery space of National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens. This program has been designed especially for elementary school students and had three main sections: a) acoustic ecology and its link to the sound art that had been presented where students cultivated their acoustic perception through specific exercises, b) sound artworks presented which invited students to pay attention to their body, to silence and to hidden sounds, c) the visit of the empty and silent gallery space and the research of its hidden soundscape.
During this experiment students of the educational program of EMST also used contact microphones and recording technology in order to listen to vibrations and sounds that are virtually present within the empty gallery space and are masked by other sounds, i.e. the internal sound of handles and of their bodies. This paper introduces new educational methods that cultivate perception through the intersection of body, technology, silence and sound art.
... For instance, initial naming and semantic uncertainty between soundscape ecology (Pijanowski et al. 2011a, b;Farina 2014) and ecoacoustics (Sueur and Farina 2015) has not favoured a unique line of epistemological development. Similarly, the fact that Acoustic Ecology (Schafer 1977;Wrightson 2000) was historically a humanistic endeavour which investigated the relationship between people and environmental sounds, with little attention paid to the role of acoustics in "non-human" ecology, has not encouraged integrated epistemological progress. ...
Biosemiotics to date has focused on the exchange of signals between organisms, in line with bioacoustics; consideration of the wider acoustic environment as a semiotic medium is under-developed. The nascent discipline of ecoacoustics, that investigates the role of environmental sound in ecological processes and dynamics, fills this gap. In this paper we introduce key ecoacoustic terminology and concepts in order to highlight the value of ecoacoustics as a discipline in which to conceptualise and study intra- and interspecies semiosis. We stress the inherently subjective nature of all sensory scapes (vivo-, land-, vibro- and soundscapes) and propose that they should always bear an organismic attribution. Key terms to describe the sources (geophony, biophony, anthropophony, technophony) and scales (sonotopes, soundtopes, sonotones) of soundscapes are described. We introduce epithets for soundscapes to point to the degree to which the global environment is implicated in semiosis (latent, sensed and interpreted soundscapes); terms for describing key ecological structures and processes (acoustic community, acoustic habitat, ecoacoustic events) and examples of ecoacoustic events (choruses and noise) are described. The acoustic eco-field is recognized as the semiotic model that enables soniferous species to intercept core resources like food, safety and roosting places. We note that whilst ecoacoustics to date has focused on the critical task of the development of metrics for application in conservation and biodiversity assessment, these can be enriched by advancing conceptual and theoretical foundations. Finally, the mutual value of integrating ecoacoustic and biosemiotics perspectives is considered.
... First, it will advance the field of biogeography by expanding the spectrum of biological properties studied -demonstrating how the field's fundamental, unifying principles can be applied to a novel component of biological diversity -sound and acoustic assemblages across the principal geographic dimensions (area, isolation, elevation/depth, and latitude). Second, a research program in sonoric geography will, in synergism, advance the fields of soundscape ecology (Pijanowski et al. 2011, Slabbekoorn 2018) and acoustic ecology (Wrightson 2000) by integrating an explicit geographic context into their conceptual foundations, empirical investigations, and applications for conserving biological diversity, sensu lato-again, all this guided by the fundamental unifying principles of biogeography. ...
... "Soundscape composition" refers to a soundbased art form that concerns the creation of sonic environments [10,34,46]. This art form has grown from acoustic ecology [47] and soundscape studies [46]. ...
... The acoustic ecology, also known as soundscape ecology, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and the environment (Wrightson 2014). ...
Auxetic materials are characterized by the uncommon capacity of extending sideways when pulled longitudinally, while contracting laterally under compressive action. This particular property enables auxetic materialsAuxetic materials and metamaterials to have special capabilities such as variable permeability, energy absorption, resistance to fracture, the ability to adapt to a bending force and resistance to failure due to shear load. Thanks to these features, auxetic materials have found promising applications in many performative environments, including crash protection, body armor, fasteners, medical devices, sports equipment and aerospace technologies. The special characteristics of auxetic materials have opened new leads for exploration in many design fields including fashion design, product design and architecture, creating new aesthetic languages and functional standards. The chapter gives an overview of how the auxetic principle works, its current applications in various design disciplines and a vision of what could come next in future scenarios regarding auxetics.
... The scale of an aural space changes with time and place. For example, pre-industrial soundscapes and sounds emanating from a listener's own community may be heard at a considerable distance, reinforcing a sense of space and position and maintaining a relationship with home (Wrightson 2000). Nowadays, it is common that one's aural space is reduced to less than that of human proportions (Truax 2001). ...
... In 1972, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared noise as a pollutant [34]- [36]. In that same period, the World Sound scape Project, developed by Murray Schafer in Canada, declared the locus of improving the excellence of the urban sound scape, due to the undesirable effects of noise pollution on human health [37].Currently, acoustical ecological quality in urban areas is endangered. People move for a variety of reasons and the decision-making process is complex. ...
The goal of the current survey is to grasp how the utilization of the idea of sound scapes can help in considering encompassing sound situations in better places. Sound is a huge attribute of the prominence of the urban open air biological system. Inside the field of ecological acoustics, urban sound scape study implies a respectably current however fundamental hypothesis change, which continues from the perspective that a reasonable acoustic condition may inspiringly affect the prosperity of masses and visitors. With the appearance of novel methodologies and techniques for practical ruralisation of open air zones, and with the utilization of mimicked/expanded authenticity procedures turning out to be increasingly broad, research centrality in the preliminary of forming the acoustic air of urban open spaces has expanded significantly. The motivation behind urban open spots is characteristically accomplished by draftsmen and urban organizers, which regularly just accentuation on the graphical feel of the urban space. However, an outwardly appealing open space made arrangements for mitigating will be underused in the event that it sounds cruel. Ideally, sound-related plan ought to be durable with visual structure, an essential the sound scape methodology responses. The present tendency of co-making the urban space made with all investors, including neighborhood occupants, opens up new possibilities to represent all thanks in the urban plan movement. Deplorably, draftsmen and urban proposers ‗scuffle to join the sound scape technique in the urban plan procedure and use in the circumstance of co-creation. Along these lines, this survey intends to assemble accessible exploration on the sound scape approach versus urban arranging, in explicit.
... Για τον Schafer, το ιδανικό ηχοτοπίο είναι σαφέστατα αυτό των αγροτικών περιοχών, καθώς ο ίδιος του προσδίδει την ονομασία "hi-fi", σε αντίθεση με αυτό των αστικών κέντρων που χαρακτηρίζει "lo-fi" (1977a, σ. 272). Τα hi-fi ηχοτοπία χαρακτηρίζονται από χαμηλότερα επίπεδα περιβαλλοντικού θορύβου σε σχέση με τα lo-fi και επομένως, κατά τον Schafer, ο ακουστικός τους ορίζοντας είναι μεγαλύτερος, επιτρέποντας στον ακροατή να συνδεθεί ακόμη περισσότερο με το περιβάλλον του (Wrightson, 2000). ...
The effects of the continuing exponential growth of the world's population have been extensively studied by various disciplines. However, in recent years, a new, much larger threat seems to be coming storming to the fore: environmental noise. The environmental degradation that environmental noise is causing, has affected the world's diverse ecosystems -and especially at the city level-, in such an enormous level, so there is a need for immediate action, both individually and collectively. This paper focuses on the devastating effects that environmental noise may impose on various urban soundscapes, and more specifically on those that, due to their historicity or significance, are identified as key elements of a city's identity.
By utilizing the opinion of the residents of Thessaloniki themselves -with the use of questionnaires-, three areas of its historic center with characteristic soundscapes are initially highlighted. Following, these soundscapes are evaluated by sound experts, who ultimately capture the sonic identities of the three study areas, through semi-structured interviews. The areas under consideration are of different altitudes, since one of the goals of this thesis is to determine whether the height factor -and depth factor respectively- contribute substantially to the formation of the sonic identity of an area.
This study is proposed as a draft of a new protocol, according to which, the height factor is worth considering, during the process of finding, identifying and utilizing "quiet areas" within urban settings.
... Since then, many countries have actively responded to Schafer's call, and started to investigate, record and preserve those soundscapes worthy of preservation on a national scale. The Finnish Acoustic Ecology Society initiated the poll of ''100 Finnish soundscapes" [6]. Similarly, in the 1990s, the Japanese Ministry of Environment [7] and Korea government [8] conducted the selection of 100 soundscapes that should be preserved nationwide respectively. ...
Optimization of sound environment is an important aspect of the sustainable development of a city, and preservation of the original good soundscapes is as necessary and crucial as noise control in cities. However, there is still a lack of research on the recognition of urban soundscapes worthy of preservation. The aim of this study is to identify the preservation value characteristics of urban soundscapes and its determinants. Focus group interviews were carried out to explore the preservation value characteristics of the urban soundscapes worthy of preservation. Afterwards, data on preservation value evaluation were collected for different soundscapes worthy of preservation through a laboratory experiment and the weight of each preservation value were identified. Meanwhile, the relationship between the physical indicators and the preservation values were established to find the determinants. It is found that there are five preservation values characterizing the urban soundscapes worthy of preservation, i.e. ecological value, comfortable value, affective value, identifiable value, and practical value. The ecological value is the most important value, followed by comfortable value and identifiable value. The category of sound source is proved to determine ecological value, comfortable value and practical value, while the number of people in the picture and whether the location of the soundscape is a landmark or not decide affective value and identifiable value respectively.
... The coexistence of this type of sound has lasted for years, buti ti se vident that at present, some of these anthropic activities should be considered noise pollution and the impact and damage theyc ause on the rest should be estimated. This is due to the progressive extension of traffic noise [11] especially through the construction of new road infrastructure [12]. It seems necessary to takec orrective action to reduce its impact. ...
This article presents a methodological approach to try to respond to some of the protection and management needs against the noise of a peri-urban natural park. The methodology presented is based on the generation of "ad hoc" noise maps. To analyze its possibilities and the limits of use, a coastal park surrounded by a densely populated area in the southwest of Spain is used as a case study. In this study, birds in their diverse ecosystems are the main target noise receiver of the study. The source of noise pollution considered is the traffic noise of the highways and the urbanized areas surrounding the park. However, the methodology can be extrapolated to any source of noise and other protection figures. An adequate diagnosis of the environmental noise would help to overcome the supposed incompatibility between the preservation of nature and the tourist exploitation of natural spaces. With this in mind, it has also been proposed as target noise receivers, the ornithologists and visitors who wish to become bird-watchers and bird-listeners. To this end, it has been proposed to produce noise maps with certain methodological guidelines that fit on a case-by-case basis. Several heights are used in this paper, adapting the map to noise receivers. With the same purpose, noise level maps in octave bands were developed. The tonal frequencies of interest are those that the birds use in their songs (according to the species, normally between 2 and 8 kHz). The maps have been contrasted with noise measurements carried out throughout the park. The study shows that in the areas most exposed to the noise of the Rio San Pedro and the university campus, noise levels at 2 kHz can reach 74 dB during the peak traffic hours. In addition, a large percentage of the area of both areas is affected by noise levels that exceed 50 dB (100% and 44% respectively). We are also concerned that a small population of birds has been counted in these areas based on preliminary observations at peak traffic times. The results can help the decision-makers to evaluate how traffic noise invades different ecosystems and where it can mask the sound of birds.
... • By signal properties -Has the environment (say a concert hall, an opera house, a rehearsal room, etc.) a similar impact on pieces or performances with different characteristics? This question may also recall the acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer and his team at Simon Fraser University in the context of the World Soundscape Project (Wrightson 2000). ...
Multi-layer formats are becoming increasingly important in the field of music description. Thanks to their adoption, it is possible to embed into a unique digital document different representations of music contents, multiple in number and potentially heterogeneous in media type. Moreover, these descriptions can be mutually synchronized, thus providing different views of the same information entity with a customizable level of granularity. Standard use cases of multi-layer formats for music address information structuring and support to advanced fruition. The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how suitable multi-layer formats can foster analytical activities in the field of interpretative modelling and expressiveness investigation, discussing both the pedagogical roots and the educational implications of this approach. A use case focusing on the incipit of G. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 will be presented.
... Fue R. Murray Schafer, músico, compositor, educador e investigador canadiense, quien a finales de la década de 1960 comenzó a hablar como tal de paisaje sonoro y ecología acústica. Al igual que los intereses de los estudios de paisaje por estos años volcaron la mirada hacía la crisis ambiental que se hacía latente, Schafer propuso comenzar a utilizar los dos términos antes mencionados como una respuesta al aumento de lo que él llamó contaminación auditiva y la disminución en la conciencia de nuestro entorno sonoro (Wrightson, 2000;Schafer, 2006). Schafer (2006) define al paisaje sonoro de la siguiente manera: Denomino soundscape (paisaje sonoro) al entorno acústico, y con este término me refiero al campo sonoro total, cualquiera que sea el lugar donde nos encontremos. ...
El siguiente documento es una compilación de los resultados del “II Taller inter-
nacional de creación cartográfica, acciones para la construcción de nuevas narrativas
territoriales”, desarrollado en la ciudad de Morelia, Michoacán México, en el Centro
de Investigaciones Geográficas - CIGA de la UNAM entre el 24 y 27 de octubre de
2018. El principal objetivo de esta segunda edición del Taller de Creación Cartográ-
fica, fue crear un espacio para compartir e intercambiar metodologías, reflexiones,
narrativas territoriales y experiencias en la elaboración de cartografías participativas
(críticas), a través de talleres prácticos, en donde los procesos de base fueran el eje
de las actividades y discusiones.
... birds, chatter, trains) in the soundscape 'mutates' into anti-information, which humans deem as noise. Because this group of noises grow yearly, eventually humans will polarize sounds into loud and quiet (Wrightson, 2000), and block out noise somewhat parallels how music increases in volume and range after each century ( Fig. 1), for instance. On a larger scale, the homogenous sounds of vehicles have dominated over all the other sounds such that traffic sounds the same in almost every city, and the city life has been associated to most people as filled with incessant noise and activities (Newman & Lonsdale, 1996). ...
Traffic noise has been a serious issue in urbanized areas and caused annoyance and health problems. It is thus essential to monitor and reduce traffic noise Traditional approaches focus on the measurement of amplitude or frequency of noise. Nonetheless, these measurements hardly help researchers distinguish unique features of dominant noise at different types of land use. This study adopts the theoretical framework of urban soundscape to examine noise patterns. Amplitude, frequency and time, are three key parameters for the analysis of sound-scape. Sound recordings are made at four urban sites (downtown, one commercial, and two residential areas) in the City of Taipei, Taiwan, during three time periods (8 am, 3 pm, and 8:30 pm). Sound data is processed by seewave and XLSTAT software for the representation of spatiotemporal patterns of urban soundscape. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) approach is introduced to analyze the dominant sources of noise under various types of land use. The analytical results intuitively explain how various types of vehicles play vital roles under different types of land use. For instance, cars or taxis are the dominant sources of noise in residential and commercial areas in the afternoon and evening. The results also specify the dominance of public transport such as buses in the downtown areas during daytime. In summary, the adoption of the descriptive soundscape pattern and computer based statistical analysis in this study helps researchers not only understand the relation between traffic noise and urban landscape but also develop a conceptual framework to reduce impacts of noise and improve the quality of life in cities.
... R. Murray Schafer, while promoting the term "acoustic ecology", passionately discussed the deterioration of listening skills in children. We align ourselves with Schafer's belief of the importance of listening as inspiration to design sound-based toys [19]. We have designed three prototypes to observe how toys may support the child's process of exploring/learning the relationship between sounds and their personal agency, their experience of their environment, and their relationships to people around them. ...
This paper explores how sound-based tangible toys can encourage children to engage with sounds in their environment through active listening and collaboration with their peers. Twenty-eight children, aged 3 to 4.5 years old, explored sound in their environment through three toy prototypes. One toy focused on hearing sounds in relation to their environment; such as traffic and children playing. Another toy explored the recording and playback of their own sounds, being "caught" in a racket and blown out. The third toy explored a combination of shaking in sounds, stirring them to manipulate them, and pouring the mix out. This project uses a mixed-methods approach and is presented as a step towards further studies comparing toys with different approaches to sound.
... The work presented in this paper takes as its context for exploration the acoustic ecology (Wrightson 2000) of a given site, rather than a musical concert hall, theatre of gallery context. The project manifested as a piece of environmental sound art, taking the form of an installation within a group sound art show at the Fieldwork site (Fieldwork 2018) in rural Ontario, dedicated to land art explorations. ...
Every city sound has a great impact on its inhabitants' everyday life. Streets, squares, parks, and even buildings and businesses, present a sonic footprint which characterises every city at a certain period. Despite this, in the field of acoustics these sounds are usually analysed as noises to be measured and reduced, and the sonic characterisation of a city is usually limited to the production of a map depicting the levels of the main acoustic pollution agents. This fact may have caused the study of city sounds to be deemed secondary and may also have led to prioritising the resolution of conflicts brought about by undesired noises.
This sound map aims at creating a practical tool that collects all the most distinctive soundscapes of Malaga so that they can be listened to by people from all over the world, become part of the city's cultural heritage and be archived and catalogued for their conservation. Besides, its contrast with noise maps, a sound map allows for the characterisation of the territory from a different perspective, in which the identity of the depicted area is defined by all its sounds.
All the recordings are being made with binaural microphones, so the sounds produce a more immersive experience when using headphones. These microphones were built for this project, and a series of HRTF measurements was obtained and applied to different audio signals for the realization of a psychoacoustic test, in order to assess the spatiality provided by the system. Another series of audio samples was generated from the MIT’s HRTFs, and both results have been compared.
In a time of ubiquitous availability of diverse musics, in which noise pollution and the silencing of sounds represent simultaneous challenges and make crises audible, a rethinking of hearing, listening and music-making becomes necessary. This builds upon an ongoing discussion on the understanding of the environmental crisis as a failure of culture and the demand to pay increased attention to the protection of the natural environment through music. Current developments in music research give new impetus to discussions about greening processes in and through sound as reactions to environmental and social crises. For example, in the areas of Acoustic Ecology, Ecomusicology, Multispecies Ethnomusicology, Soundscape Ecology, Zoomusicology, and Human-Animal Studies, other-than-human beings are understood as agents also in terms of music-making and receiving. These disciplines call for the openness of musics to dialogue across cultures, species, and academic disciplines. Hence, every sound – whether classifiable as music or not – is a legitimate topic of music research. This in turn questions human exceptionalism, speciesism, anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism, and their effects on the environment. This paper focuses on sustainable examinations of the role of sound and musics regarding the solution or intensification of current problems for which conscious listening is primarily required.
The focus of the compositional approach presented in this folio is the sounding environment. The term sounding environment is used in this context to refer to the whole of our living experience in the world which we might register as relating to sound. It might include everything that is sounding, seemingly sounding, imagined sounding, remembered sounding, sensed as sounding, composed to sound. It includes thus the actual sound environment, all that is sensed or interpreted as sound and imaginary sounds. This dissertation accompanies the seven acousmatic and the two sound installation works included in the folio. It is divided into two parts. In the first part, relevant ideas and theories both from the literature of electroacoustic music composition and soundscape composition are discussed while in the second the compositional approach to the sounding environment is presented as applied to the works. 3
Music is an important element of a destination’s integrated tourism product, especially in rural regions. This fact raises a variety of issues, in particular with regard to the tourism management of rural destinations. Answers are sought to questions on how music can be valorised to help create a distinctive tourism product, making it necessary to analyse the current state of the music offering before objectives can be set and concrete solutions, devised, to accomplish them. This paper explores the music offering of the rural regions of eastern Croatia and presents the results of a survey of the attitudes of destination managers (managers of tourist boards) in rural regions of eastern Croatia, with special emphasis on traditional music that is increasingly present and contributes to creating distinctive rural destinations (the valorisation of sound and music in the offering should also enhance the inclusion of music in promotion). The studied rural destinations of eastern Croatia are not developed in terms of tourism and their tourist accommodation capacities are very small. Music offering management, together with the valorisation and preservation of traditional values, could help them enhance their distinctiveness in the tourism market.
Over the last few decades there has been a proliferation of different fields of study directly derived from what can now be defined as a real discipline: the soundscape. Because of the growing number of new subjects, it becomes really challenging to get out of the multitude of publications, authors and terminologies, in order to create a synthetic and exhaustive bibliography dealing with the primary subject from which the various fields of study branched out. Starting from this difficulty this work was born, a bibliographic research aiming to direct the reader towards a targeted literature in the field of soundscape and music composition.
The flâneur is the urban vagabond in search of experiences and inspirations from serendipitously exploring a city environment. This construct is put beside post-modern stances about the suburban areas built and populated after the Second World War industrialization, along with considerations about ecological psychology, cultural materialism, and sound theory. The main concept is to provide those places with a communication level that would be pleasant to discover while wandering without a destination. Therefore, it is desirable to conceive a meta-design tool able to incorporate creativity, ownership, and conviviality.
In the seventies, M.J. SchaferSchafer identified the first industrial revolutionIndustrial revolution as a watershed that altered not only the soundscapeSoundscape (from lo-fi soundscapeLo-fi soundscape to hi-fi soundscapeHi-fi soundscape) but also the way it is perceived. The outcomes of this above-mentioned first industrial revolution created new soundSound conditions characterized by a continuous overlap that have affected the human being’s perception with negative effects on it, overturning what William GaverGaver, William defined “everyday sounds” (Schafer 1977). Forty-two years later we are experiencing the fourth industrial revolutionFourth industrial revolution that is affecting also the construction world (Schwab 2017). Robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology, IoT, bespoke materials etc. are increasingly embedded within the new design approaches for the construction of sustainable architecturesSustainable architectures. Scientific speculation on this topic is such that we no longer speak of digital but of post-digital architecture. A phase in which the direct link between the digital and material (from bits to atoms) has shifted to the new relationship to neural system of the human being (from bits to neurons) (Carpo 2018). This new paradigm affects the way “objectsObjects” are designed and their way to influence modern soundscape. Base on this cultural background, the chapter intends to point out the framework of the research line “Advanced Acoustic ecology” developed on the base of a new approach of acoustic design: soundSound driven design.
While technology is developing at a fast pace, urban planners and cities are still behind in finding effective ways to use technology to address citizen’s needs. Multiple aspects of sustainable urbanism are brought together in this book along with advanced technologies and their connections to urban planning and management. It integrates urban studies, smart cities, AI, IoT, remote sensing and GIS. Highlights also land use planning, spatial planning, and ecosystem-based information to improve economic opportunities. Urban planners and engineers will understand the use of AI in disaster management and the use of GIS in finding suitable landfill sites for sustainable waste management.
Beirut’s mid-century soundscape was a vibrant one, yet by 1975 the Lebanese civil war denigrated this vibrancy into chaos. A soundscape once resonating with the echoes of biological, natural, and human sounds has been denigrated by decades-long political strife resulting in a drowning-out of biophonic and geophonic sounds in a present day soundscape dominated by anthrophonic noises. This paper is part of an ongoing research endeavor which seeks to examine the acoustic effects of political strife on urban soundscapes. Data collection, evaluation and analysis will be compared in an effort to ascertain the impact of years of political strife on urban centers.
Investigating the complexity of vernacular subjects within the context of intercultural land ownership in Australia, this research examines how site specific performance can activate engagement in the spatial politics of contested Australian landscapes. The paper is centred on a performance event titled Cultural Burn that took place in 2016, on an 8000-hectare property acquired by the Indigenous Land Corporation as part of a land bank established for the dispossession of Aboriginal people. Drawing a comparison between the traditional Aboriginal land management practice of cultural burning, and the burning of a western cultural artefact, the research explores the cultural, ethical and political resonance of burning a piano on Barkanji Country within an ephemeral billabong. Addressing vernacularity in relation to how we are positioned at the interstices between subjects, knowledge systems, histories, traditions and practices, the research explores how vernacular subjects are presented, represented and practiced within an intercultural, cross-disciplinary and post-colonial context.
While scholars have drawn attention to the production of space through sound, there has been less attention given to the interchange between multiple co-existing environments. This paper examines how the sounding of one place informs and produces the sounding of another by focusing on Western art music as it is multiply negotiated by urban residents in Taipei, Taiwan. Building upon Stefan Helmreich’s provocation on the transductive quality underlying immersive soundscapes, this paper looks at how various instantiations of piano playing in apartment buildings, on municipal garbage trucks and on the Taipei Mass Rail Transit System produce expectations for sonic space in a relational, rather than isolated, context. By analysing a grassroots campaign to regulate household piano practice, this paper shows how cultural expectations for the sounding of one place is spatially and ontologically produced in relation to adjacent auditory environments throughout the city. Contributing to discussions for a sounded anthropology, this paper addresses how residents navigate diverse auditory environments and calls for ethnographic attention to the movement between, not only within, sounded spaces.
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