Lecture 10 - Soundscape Studies

keywords

sound, listening, silence (sound waves are still present in silence), noise, body (feel the waves even if you cant hear it), hearing (being able to catch the soundwaves), deafness (recognizing hearing loss as deaf gain) and language

guiding questions

what is the value of attending soundscapes? how do we organize, interpret and engage in soundscape?

soundscapes

a total appreciation of the acoustic environment, similarities with landscape, concerns about noise pollution (noise represented as the enemy of sound), now a world issue where the world soundscape has reached an apex of vulgarity in our time and many experts have predicted universal deafness as the ultimate consequence unless the problem can be brought quickly under control

acoustic ecology

the study of sounds in relationship to life and society

positive study program

instead of noise abatement or banning of noise beyond a certain decibel, it should be about preserving, multiplying, encouraging the sounds we want

what are the features of a soundscape

keynote sounds, signals and soundmarks

keynote sounds

always there, suggests a deep influence on behaviour and mood, do not have to be listened to consciously, the keynote sounds of a landscape are those created by its geography and climate, water, wind, forests, plains, birds, insects and animals

signals

foreground sounds, listened to consciously, constitute acoustic warning devices (whistles, horns and sirens), denote time, send out greetings, alarms, gives community its character and defines its limits

soundmarks

community sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in that community

hi-fi soundscape

favorable signal to noise ratio, discrete sounds heard clearly because of low ambient noise level

lo-fi soundscape

individua acoustic signals are obscured in an over-dense population of sounds

sound in film

dialogue, bacrkground sound, music, foley, diegetic and non digetic sound

digetic sound

everyone is hearing the same sound

non diegetic sound

the background noise, only the audience watching the film would hear it not the characters in the movie (enhances audience experience

acoustemology

sound as a way of knowing,

lift up over sounding

means that the kauli hear their rainforest world as overlapping, dense, layered and they apply the same principle to their own music, people’s voices layer like the trees of the forest canopy, sounds of drums or axes arch up and out like tumbling waterfalls into swirling waterpools, no single sounds but rather mixed up, interlocking soundscapes

listening with your feet

a way to perform listening in the dump using not just one’s feet but one’s whole body

listening and sound studies

organizing sound in real time, listening and performing with whistle cadences and tones of voice, listening with your feet, listening (and songwriting) as memory and shared history