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Istanbul Sound Diary
Get PDFThis is an account of Sonic Postcards from Istanbul, a sound project conducted in Istanbul in April 2003, as part of the City of Sings project cityofsigns). The project explores, in an artistic context, the capacity of sound design to intervene at the conceptual fringes where the materiality of sound and semantics meet, and new possibilities of meaning emerge in the form of ambiguous, multi-layered sonic texts. These sonic texts, in turn, become the object of a semiological reflection about language, meanings and their various manifestations, between sound and other media. Working in combination with photography and text, this sound project explores the capacity of sound to mediate between self and self, self and others, people and places: through its own medium specificity (the richness of the human voice and the infinite possibilities of its acoustic and acousmatic re-presentation), its staging as performance—in an acoustically rich and significant location [the sound of architecture]—and as an art installation, in which sound remain the primary vehicle for communication and artistic expression
Spatial and Sonic Evaluation of Urban Ambiances
Get PDFIn order to propose a study of sonic ambiances, it appears essential to consider sound through its temporal character. Jean-François Augoyard (1991) argued that sound should be understood primarily as temporality. But the existence of a sound is revealed only if it is heard, perceived. It is this sonic perception and especially its specificities in urban public spaces that will be investigated in this article
Soundwalking: Bridging Disciplines and Cultures?
No full textA soundwalk opened this symposium, not a keynote address. Listening, not talking. Around 60-65 partici- pants walked between the Victoria College of the Arts (VCA) where the symposium was held, and the bridge leading across the Yarra River to Melbourne’s downtown core—not a quiet environment and yet full of contrasts and stimulating details (see map 1). One participant commented:
I lived in the area where we walked. I thought I knew it well. During the soundwalk, I heard new sounds, new layers of sounds. Some sounds were aggressive, others reassuring. Some sounds masked others... I had no idea how much I had closed my ears.
In this way, the city where we had all gathered for the symposium had a chance to introduce itself to all of us first. The environment ‘spoke’, we listened and remained silent during the one-hour dura- tion of the walk. Our presentations, our words, during the following days, occurred inevitably out of an experienced, listened-to con- text of this place, no matter whether we had come from far away or whether we lived in Melbourne itself. I believe that this had a significant influence in setting what I perceived to be a generously open-minded ‘tone’ for the symposium as a whole
Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape
Get PDFThe concept, the word, silence, is itself a metaphor: “Of silence, paradoxically, one can only speak” (Tacussel, 16). Ultimately, a word like “silence” is underdetermined and ambiguous outside of a sentence. The sentence locates the meaning of the word. Silence, as a concept to be discussed, is only understandable as the turning point of a sentence, the specific relation of an expression to its fundament. This work has in part traced the way in which the word has become overdetermined with respect to discourse, and ideologically obscured with respect to the soundscape.
Silence as soundlessness doesn’t exist, in any absolute sense, as far as we are able to ascertain. Silence as soundlessness relative to audibility and measurability does exist, however. That is, silence in a particular area or communicative portion of the soundscape can exist as soundlessness, which implies that we are not referring to our heart beating, etc., but reducing our hearing or measurement to specific tasks: silence is that which we cannot hear or measure in a situation. Similarly, silence exists as reference to the ambience of a soundscape, so that “quiet” and “silence” become nearly synonymous. With this movement of the concept away from the purely physical to the relational perspective of a listener, ‘silence’ refers to communication, or rather, non-communication, irrelevance, a non-message. This allows silence to be used to refer to metaphorical situations in discourse, where silence can be construed as an absence of input, reticence, tacit communication, and the like. The silence of omission, the unsaid, and silence as a gag are metaphors which ex- tend from this. As a consequence of silence extending metaphorically to refer to a gap in communication, it becomes an ambiguous condition within discourse (the effects of which, however, may not be so ambiguous)
Photo Essay: Orthopteroid Insects in the Muller Range, Papua New Guinea
Get PDFIn mid-September 2009 I had the privilege of accompanying a group from Conservation International into the Muller Range, Western Province, Papua New Guinea. This is located in the “Karst District”, a region of karst topography, which of course, would mean a limestone substrate topped with about a foot of topsoil. The fauna was fantastic but not easy to see. One had to wander about at night with a torch and be very alert. None of these katydids or crickets were heard or recorded in the field. But there are some things we can say about them based on related species and our knowledge of the behaviour of rainforest orthopterans
Snap, Crackle & Pop: On Listening, Memory & Amnesia
Get PDF Broadcast media, recording and communiations technologies have developed at an alarming pace since Edison proposed the phonograph as an acoustic Ars Memoria. A series of rapid iterations have overlaid and overwritten previous systems and modus operandi making it easy to forget the central role that radio has played within Australian communities ~ both rural and urban. The broadcast medium functioned as a form of entertainment, a mechanism for nation building and as a vital link able to transcend the “tyranny of distance”, be it real or imagined. My inter- est is focussed, not so much upon a technological trajectory but primarily upon the role that listening plays in establishing memory, situated within a geophysical site, to form identity and place. The corollary of this interest also lies in its inverse – the realisation that individual memory, as well as cultural histories, is extremely fragile and fugitive, evaporating under the pressures of technological and social change driven by the massive acceleration and saturation of media information
Biophilic Soundscape Design in the Second Order of Nature
Get PDFExploring links between disciplinary approaches is fundamental to acoustic ecology, which since its inception has been discussed in interdisciplinary modes. In this paper I will attempt to illustrate links between soundscape studies, biophilia and biophilic design, the eco-philosophy of Henri Lefebvre and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of striated and smooth space. Exploration of links between these conceptualizations forms part of my research at SIAL Sound Studios at RMIT University, and expresses an attempt to re-imagine the urban environment and the role acoustic ecologists have to play in this re-imagining. It is the conceptual point at which these actual and potential listening paths intersect that creative opportunities for soundscape design can be imagined
Towards a Theory of Museological Soundscape Design: Museology as a ‘Listening Path’
Get PDFThe traditional image of museum as a peaceful, monumental institute, where cultural heritage is preserved and presented in an uncontested way to be worshipped, is being challenged little by little in many parts of the Western world. The fulfillment of the educational and entertaining role of a new museum may be achieved through active and interactive ways of learning so that the visitor can be ‘touched’ and eventually acquire a complete museological experience. However, with the exception of certain innovative projects, there seems to be little awareness in the museological community at large of the communicational potential for methodically designed soundscapes. This essay underlines the necessity for the existing knowledge and experience around the fields of Soundscape and Museology to be gathered and combined in order to form a theory of Museological Soundscape Design along with an expanded model of methodology which would be incorporated in museum studies. Such a theory may be outlined in a framework of certain principles derived from various scientific fields such as museology, acoustic communication, education theory, music aesthetics, acoustics, psychoacoustics, architectural theory etc. Finally, a new field of expertise is proposed, that of soundscape designer–museologist by analogy to architect–museologist, archaeologist- museologist or educator-museologist
Acoustic Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University
Get PDFWith a nearly 30 year history, the teaching program in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University (SFU), at both the undergraduate and graduate level, may well be the oldest, continuous running curriculum related to soundscape studies and acoustic ecology. It was initiated by R. Murray Schafer and grew out of his work in music education, noise pollution, and soundscape studies in the 1960s and early 70s. Its current form began with the establishment of Communication Studies as a department in the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies at SFU in 1973 with Schafer as a Professor until his departure in 1975, the period that saw the seminal research work of the World Soundscape Project (WSP). Since 1974 the courses have been expanded, taught and supervised by Barry Truax with the assistance of instructors Hildegard Westerkamp, Susan Frykberg, Norbert Ruebsaat and Robert MacNevin
Bringing Soundscapes Into the Everyday Classroom
Get PDFEvery day the twenty-first century student is bombarded with noise—from the media, the environment, technology and far beyond that of even the later twentieth century. In the small-town Canadian classroom where I currently teach music to 300 middle-school students I see these societal trends resulting in poor listening skills. Students, and indeed all of us, need help in deepening our ability to listen and to hear. In my own classroom I accomplish this using soundscape education, sound ecology and the teachings of R. Murray Schafer. It should be noted that although this paper focuses on experiences with the eleven to fourteen year-old age groups, these methods have been used with success from early elementary years to later high-school age years