A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science. An important distinction is to separate soundscape from the broader acoustic environment. The acoustic environment is the combination of all the acoustic resources, natural and artificial, within a given area as modified by the environment. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standardized these definitions in 2014.
Raymond Murray Schafer was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977). He was the first recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 1978.
Barry Truax is a Canadian composer who specializes in real-time implementations of granular synthesis, often of sampled sounds, and soundscapes.
Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art as a practice "harnesses, describes, analyzes, performs, and interrogates the condition of sound and the process by which it operates."
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside a recording studio, and the term applies to recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds. It also applies to sound recordings like electromagnetic fields or vibrations using different microphones like a passive magnetic antenna for electromagnetic recordings or contact microphones. For underwater field recordings, a field recordist uses hydrophones to capture the sounds and/or movements of whales, or other aquatic organisms. These recordings are very useful for sound designers.
Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment. Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer a musician, composer and former professor of communication studies at Simon Fraser University with the help of his team there as part of the World Soundscape Project. The original WSP team included Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, Bruce Davies and Peter Huse, among others. The first study produced by the WSP was titled The Vancouver Soundscape. This innovative study raised the interest of researchers and artists worldwide, creating enormous growth in the field of acoustic ecology. In 1993, the members of the by now large and active international acoustic ecology community formed the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.
Sound studies is an interdisciplinary field that to date has focused largely on the emergence of the concept of "sound" in Western modernity, with an emphasis on the development of sound reproduction technologies. The field first emerged in venues like the journal Social Studies of Science by scholars working in science and technology studies and communication studies; it has however greatly expanded and now includes a broad array of scholars working in music, anthropology, sound art, deaf studies, architecture, and many other fields besides. Important studies have focused on the idea of a "soundscape", architectural acoustics, nature sounds, the history of aurality in Western philosophy and nineteenth-century Colombia, Islamic approaches to listening, the voice, studies of deafness, loudness, and related topics. A foundational text is Jonathan Sterne's 2003 book "The Audible Past", though the field has retroactively taken as foundational two texts, Jacques Attali's Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985) and R. Murray Schafer's The Tuning of the World (1977).
Hildegard Westerkamp is a Canadian composer, radio artist, teacher and sound ecologist of German origin. She studied flute and piano at the Conservatory of Music in Freiburg, West Germany from 1966 to 1968 and moved to Canada in 1975. She received a Bachelor of Music from the University of British Columbia in 1972 and a Master of Arts from Simon Fraser University in 1988. She taught acoustic communication at Simon Fraser University from 1982 to 1991.
Steven Feld is an American ethnomusicologist, anthropologist, and linguist, who worked for many years with the Kaluli (Bosavi) people of Papua New Guinea. He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.
Darren Copeland is an electroacoustic music composer born June 18, 1968, in Bramalea, Ontario, Canada, and currently living in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.
British Library Sounds is a British Library service providing free online access to a diverse range of spoken word, music and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive. Anyone with web access can use the service to search, browse and listen to 50,000 digitised recordings. Playback and download of an additional 22,000 recordings is available to Athens or Shibboleth users in UK higher and further education. The service was originally launched with funding by the Jisc.
Schizophonia is a term coined by R. Murray Schafer to describe the splitting of an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction. This concept comes from the invention of electroacoustic equipment for the transmission of sound, which meant that any sound could be recorded and sent anywhere around the world. Originally, that was not possible, as every sound was an original and could only be heard once. Schizophonia is the separation of this native sound and the recording of it; and the term focusses on the detrimental effects of this for individuals and societies at large.
The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was an international research project founded by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer in the late 1960s at Simon Fraser University. The project initiated the modern study of acoustic ecology. Its ultimate goal is "to find solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape where the relationship between the human community and its sonic environment is in harmony." The practical manifestations of this goal include education about the soundscape and noise pollution, in addition to the recording and cataloguing of international soundscapes with a focus on preservation of soundmarks and dying sounds and sound environments. Publications which emerged from the project include The Book of Noise (1968) and The Tuning of the World (1977), both by Schafer, as well as the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (1978) by Barry Truax. The project has thus far resulted in two major tours, in Canada and Europe, the results of which comprise the World Soundscape Library. Notable members included John Oswald, Howard Broomfield, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp.
Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology edited by Barry Truax, in 1978, the term has occasionally been used, sometimes interchangeably, with the term acoustic ecology. Soundscape ecologists also study the relationships between the three basic sources of sound that comprise the soundscape: those generated by organisms are referred to as the biophony; those from non-biological natural categories are classified as the geophony, and those produced by humans, the anthropophony.
Ecomusicology is an area of study that explores the relationships between music or sound, and the natural environment. It is a study which encompasses a variety of academic disciplines including musicology, biology, ecology and anthropology. Ecomusicology combines these disciplines to explore how sound is produced by natural environments and, more broadly how cultural values and concerns about nature are expressed through sonic mediums. Ecomusicology explores the ways that music is composed to replicate natural imagery, as well as how sounds produced within the natural environment are used within musical composition. Ecological studies of sounds produced by animals within their habitat are also considered to be part of the field of ecomusicology. In the 21st century, studies within the field the ecomusicology have also become increasingly interested in the sustainability of music production and performance.
A soundwalk is a walk with a focus on listening to the environment. The term was first used by members of the World Soundscape Project under the leadership of composer R. Murray Schafer in Vancouver in the 1970s. Hildegard Westerkamp, from the same group of artists and founder of the World Forum of Acoustic Ecology, defines soundwalking as "... any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment. It is exposing our ears to every sound around us no matter where we are."
David Monacchi is an Italian sound artist, researcher and eco-acoustic composer, best known for his multidisciplinary project Fragments of Extinction, patented periphonic device, the Eco-Acoustic Theatre, and award-winning music and sound-art installations.
Leah Barclay is an Australian sound artist, composer and researcher known for acoustic ecology, environmental field recording, sound walks. She is the president of the Australian Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and is currently a research fellow at the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre. She is a multi-talented sound artist, sound activist and composer, raising environmental awareness through sound.
Sensobiographic walking is an ethnographic research method. It provides a possibility for the study of rich, embodied and site-specific emergence of sensory remembering and experiences.
Sound scenography is the process of staging spaces and environments through sound. It combines expertise from the fields of architecture, acoustics, communication, sound design and interaction design to convey artistic, historical, scientific, or commercial content or to establish atmospheres and moods.
