Acoustic Ecology Review is an international journal and publication platform for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and the international sound studies community. Acoustic Ecology Review (AER) is the evolution of Soundscape, which has been the leading international journal for acoustic ecology since 2001. Acoustic Ecology Review extends and enhances the work of Soundscape to publish accessible and inclusive research in various digital formats, including audio and video. AER is a place for listening, dialogue, and debate. This international peer-reviewed publishing platform is available to all WFAE members and scholars of the global acoustic ecology community. Acoustic Ecology Review publishes editions of Soundscape: The Journal for Acoustic Ecology, conference proceedings of WFAE and those of WFAE Affiliate Member conferences, special editions, and independent articles. The publication is conceived as a forum for communication and discussion about interdisciplinary research and practice in the field of Acoustic Ecology. It focuses on the interrelationships between sound, nature, and society. The journal seeks to balance its content among scholarly writings, research, and an active engagement in current soundscape issues, both in and beyond academia. It serves as a voice for the WFAE’s diverse and global community. Acoustic Ecology Review is published in partnership with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and Simon Fraser University. The development of Acoustic Ecology Review on OJS (Open Journal Systems) was supported by the World Soundscape Project Educational Fund.
From a musical theater to listening, to ecological activism
The ecological movement and scholarship have criticized human superiority over other species and advocate for a shift towards a more ecological and truly ethical worldview (Kuhn, 2001; Dillard-Wright, 2009). Attentive listening to the human and other-than-human world can be an act that brings awareness of the self, the society, and its varied soundscapes (Westerkamp, 2001). Training individuals to listen emerges as an educational, ecological, and social necessity (Etmektsoglou, 2019). On this basis, a musical theater play was created and performed in 2019 to raise awareness of the local soundscape of the old town on the Greek island of Corfu. During the summer, the Swifts nest in the house roofs and fly in flocks producing a shrill sound, which can be considered as a soundmark (cf Schafer, 1977) of the place. This presentation discusses the results from a study which took place in 2022, two years after the initial play. The researchers investigated whether the co-creators of the performance acknowledged any changes in the ways they listened to their local soundscape before and after the performance. The research question was explored through a focus group interview. Eight individuals out of 12 who were actively involved in the performance participated in the study voluntarily. The thematic analysis of the interview data (Braun & Clarke, 2006) showed that the performance activated participants’ past aural memories, changed the way they listened to their environment, and created identifications between them and the Swifts. For the participants, first-hand experiences with nature are valuable and such opportunities should be provided to younger generations. The musical theater play provided ecological knowledge, which, along with the pre-existing indigenous knowledge, led to aural perceptual specificity. Such skilled listening, reinforced by the emotions which the music and story aroused, appeared to act as a powerful motivator for local ecological activism.
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Thinking Like a Giraffe: Biosemiotics, Ethics, and Soundscape Ecology
Building on the unique intersection of biosemiotics ethical theory and a philosophical exploration of soundscape ecology, this project examines the ethical implications of considering soundscape analysis from a nonhuman perspective. I first outline the problem of the nonhuman listener for soundscape ecology before then tracing the distinction between acoustic ecology and soundscape ecology. I then introduce the biosemiotics as a theoretical model for understanding nonhuman experience, and then use that model to describe a months-long soundscape study in partnership with a local zoological park which examined the potential impact of anthrophonic noise events on a specific set of individuals: a trio of adult giraffes. This soundscape case study of this zoo’s giraffes and their experiential interrelations with their soundscape proposes that if (soundscape) ecology is meant to help us in “thinking like a mountain,” [1] we might then miss out on individual experience through, in this case, listening like a giraffe.
Operator Please: Field Recording Practices Through The Lens Of Agential Realism
The past decade has seen the proliferation of inexpensive long-duration field recording technologies made available to creative practitioners, researchers and amateurs alike. Without the need for continuous attendance of equipment, such technologies have led to the rise of unattended field recording methodologies, considered as objective and minimally impactful on recording sites. The presentation draws on perspectives offered by Karen Barad’s ‘agential realist’ paradigm - which view the ontological and epistemological relationships object/subject, phenomena/apparatus as intra-active and entangled - and interrogates (material-discursive) field recordings practices as related to acoustic ecology and ecoacoustics. The agency of the field recordist as part of the field recording apparatus is given particular consideration, complicating claims of objective observation and offering renewed ideas of acoustic observation and listening.
Listening as a Guest through Artistic Inquiries: Winter Walking
My presentation at the WFAE conference detailed my current research-creation project exploring listening as an artistic methodology, focusing here specifically on walking as a mode of listening. I spent the winter of 2021-22 living in amiskwaciwaskahaikan, also known as Edmonton, Alberta, and during that time I embarked on a daily practice of walking as a way to listen in a place that was new to me, beginning to develop relationships with fellow human and more-than-human inhabitants.
Sounding Singapore: Sound as Cultural Heritage
The paper will present the findings of a small-scale study done to ascertain Singapore’s soundmarks and the place and meaningfulness of sound in Singapore society. I critically evaluate the significance of these findings in relation to Singapore’s cultural and political economy and the population’s lived experiences. The paper will also examine sonic events that reveal how sound’s regard impacts the cultural and political lifeworlds (Lebenswelt) of Singapore/eans. An oft neglected phenomenon in Singaporeans’ lived experience inevitably informs, influences and dictates Singapore’s social, cultural and political identity and beingness.
A Soundscape of Sea Waves and Collaborative Action Research: The Case of the Nami-kozo Folktale of the Enshu-nada Sea, Japan
This study examined rumbling emitted by the Enshu-nada Sea, with a focus on region-specific listening culture. Sea rumbling propagates over long distances in this area, where locals used its direction to predict the weather. Moreover, the connection between people and the sea is symbolized through a regionally transmitted folktale. We clarified the physical and sociocultural characteristics of sea rumbling through collaborative action research, thus demonstrating the significance of this approach in preserving and/or recovering local knowledge.
As a collective, which is specializing in sound scenography, Idee und Klang Audio Design creates auditive environments for exhibitions and the public space. Sometimes we create our own artistic pieces, but in most cases we are hired by a client. Nonetheless, in our 17 years of existence, we have found that more times than not, there is room to align our own beliefs with the ones of the project to some degree. This paper focuses on two aspects: a) the ways in which acoustic ecology informs our work as sound scenographers and b) our experiences with commissioned projects, which feature acoustic ecology as a core topic.
This paper argues for a practice of soundwalking in games as a form of virtual place-making and as a method for examining how sound design in games constructs particular values, realities, and attitudes to listening. Several case studies are discussed including Fortnite, Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Season.
A hybrid listening across totems and talking wires
This article unfolds around the notion of hybrid listening from the perspectives of Hildegard Westerkamp on totemism, and Pauline Oliveros's proposal of embodied technologies to expand our sensorium [1]: Both composers were led by the notions of ecology and utopia [2] and approached soundscape recordings from a long tradition of technologized humanism [3]. Their contribution enlighten a complex relation between soundscape technologies and indigenous listening [4] This encounter is highlighted with themes from the painting “The song of the talking wire”, by Henry Farny (1904). This approach underlines an attentive listening to wind driven soundscapes amplified through the telegraphic infrastructure. Hybrid listening means to combine embodied and technologically mediated listening [5] including diversified and non-extractive approaches to technologies for environmental sound [6]. In accordance with the painting’s theme, this article proposes a diversification of these technologies as an emergent agency raising from the discordance between western technologies and ancient cosmologies.
With sound as a poetics in my art practice, over time I have found a permeable space from which desires and concepts can flow out of imagination into the material world. I don’t set out to make works to sound a specific way, rather I make them and then listen. This creates a more open, conceptual frame in which to work. Considering how an objector assemblage is sounding/could sound or has sounded allows space for silence, for suggestion, for becoming. This poetics, sound as a kind of skeleton key, opens an alchemical space in my practice where surprise awaits me in the studio.
Embodied Listening Practices and Ruderal Ecologies
We propose embodied multisensory listening as a methodology of engaging with, and listening to, the complex multispecies relations of ruderal ecologies via our collaborative project in which we followed the path of the Line 3 petroleum oil sands pipeline from Edmonton, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin in August 2022, enacting close engagement with the ruderal plant species that grow atop the overturned earth of this intercontinental site of colonial extractive infrastructure. Ruderal ecologies refer to the more-than-human constellations of life that form in human modified environments that are not purely conditional to any form of human action: even as certain human groups affect change to the earth both geologically and climatically through networked systems of extraction and exchange that span the Earth through colonialism and capitalism. Working from Nigerian feminist theorist Oyeronke Oyewumi proposal of the term “world-sense,” xwélmexw artist, curator and writer Dylan Robinson’s calls for multi-sensory listening, and Hsuan Hsu’s work on of olfactory art to confront us materially with the realities of environmental risk, we consider, can a methodology of embodied listening allow us to confront the living legacies of the ongoing colonial project of extractivism and imagine shared ruderal futures from a position of listening?
Spaces with Ears: Acoustic Ecology Beyond the Body
Spaces with Ears is an ongoing project that examines the ambiguity between the speaker and the listener in the current age. Today, ownership of body and self is day by day sieged by ultra-sensitive spaces designed to perceive what we are unaware of, creating a feedback loop of redefining reality. This article explores intelligent systems that are made to listen, in which the only sound one hears is a learnt response of the sound one produced, and through which no transfer of energy nor content is initiated except for that which feeds back into itself. Re-examining the processes, function, and meaning of sound in the present age, this paper seeks to discuss a form of acoustic ecology that's closely interfaced with today's complex sonic reality, which often exists in transgressive terms far beyond the boundaries of the body. In recursive processes, the ears invert out as the only sounding instrument and the vocal cord implodes in the attempt of speaking; within the infinite noise of feedback, we become the body without organs of Deleuze and Guatarri's fable. Along with soundscapes of urban and cyberspace reforms, the source and focal point of these longstanding vibrations are analyzed, as well as ways in which we can listen with a better understanding of our sonic agency and the ears in the room.
Distant Murmurs: Gothic Soundscapes in Literature
This paper examines the literary soundscapes of Matthew Lewis’ 1796 Gothic novel, The Monk, with particular attention afforded to instances in which the interpretive ambiguities of listening serve to blur ontological distinctions between bodies and landscapes. In keeping with the genre’s preference for labyrinthine architecture and nocturnal scenes, The Monk unfolds almost entirely within darkness, its characters’ ears straining towards the gloom as they desperately seek to interpret their surroundings. Amongst the novel’s passageways, sepulchres, monasteries, and forests, a procession of low murmurs, faint echoes, and indistinct groans, all serve to dramatise the semiotic ambiguity of the auditory. In doing so, The Monk provides an ideal case study of sound’s entangled status; simultaneously material and interpretive. This paper takes place against the backdrop of literary sound studies; a rapidly evolving discipline advanced by scholars such as Isabela van Elferen, Elena Glotova, and Kristie Ann Schlauraff, whose publications have recast the Gothic genre as a reservoir of historical listening and sounding practices. In dialogue with this emergent discipline, this paper, Distant Murmurs: Gothic Soundscapes in Literature, hazards a departure from historical analysis, and closes with a consideration of the potential for Gothic literature’s sonic tropes to inform contemporary sound-based practices.
How Aircraft Noise is Heard in Okinawa, Japan
This paper presents how nearly meaningless aircraft noise is heard differently according to social/historical backgrounds, taking Okinawa, Japan, where the fierce ground battle was fought during WW2, as an example.
Voicing the Nonhuman: Exploring the Affectual Relationship of Sonification
Sonification can translate ecological and social changes into audible formats, yet little scholarship has explored the ways in which this process stands in place as ‘voice’ in communication. On one hand, sonification grants the listener an ability to understand their ecological environment in ways that may have been previously unable; however, this process relies on data extraction through a largely humanistic lens. I question, what happens affecutally in the process of voicing extracted data? How does this impact our relationship to place, self, and environment? What might a decolonial perspective on listening to the nonhuman offer in conversation with sonification projects? This exploratory paper considers the concept of voice through sonification within three case studies – NASA’s Perseus Black Hole, PlantWave, and Sonic Kayaks.
Situated Listening: Partial Perspectives and Critical Listening Positionality
Critical listening positionality, as theorized by sound studies scholar, Dylan Robinson, points to the way in which our identities and histories shape what and how we hear. In his 2020 publication, “Hungry Listening,” Robinson remarks of Deep Listening, the practice of sonic attunement developed by composer Pauline Oliveros: “in my experience the meditative opening up of listening through the body has also seemed to distance me from the particularity of listening positionality.” In this paper, we explore the tensions between this “opening up of listening through the body” and the prospect of critical listening positionality. Thinking alongside Robinson, Oliveros, and decolonial scholars such as Rolando Vasquez, we propose frameworks for situated listening that acknowledge the partial perspective of our own listening, while allowing for the porous and transformative experience of attunement to the many presences within, and histories of, the places and times we are embedded in.
(under)scoring the commons; Troubling the acoustics of urban renewal
Since the 1990s, working-class regions in Australia’s major cities have undergone urban and socioeconomic development in the form of gentrifying processes that have induced negative social implications such as housing scarcity, rising living costs, and the displacement of low-socioeconomic residents. Informed by broader artistic, activist, and research practices concerned with the sonics of gentrification, ‘(under)scoring the commons’ is a creative research project I established in 2020 that aims to poetically and aurally understand how the changing soundscapes of urban environments, associated with working-class histories and memories, can index shifting social attitudes, perspectives and socialities. UTC’s main output comprises a sonic counter-archive informed by a socially-engaged compositional approach predicated on conversation and collaboration with community-ensembles and residents – alongside adequately contextualised field-recordings. With a focus on a recent iteration entitled UTC:2250 (concerned with Gosford, a low-socioeconomic area in NSW) this paper will discuss the ethical implications and creative outcomes of ‘working’ with sound in a socially situated way - framed by a critical reading of acoustic ecology.
A method for recording continuously, in motion without audible interference by the recording apparatus is proposed. The purpose of this method is the verisimilar reproduction of soundscapes as spatiotemporal continua without any audible traces of the recording procedure, i.e. transparently. This method is the result of an experimental plan to capture spatial variability of a sound field along with its temporal counterpart envisaging audio reproduction of field recordings as spatiotemporal entities. The sound recorded in this manner captures the finest details of the changes of soundscape due to its spatial variability that should be otherwise artificially calculated. For this purpose, the Moving Sound-Receptor (MSR) system was designed and tried in a variety of field recording situations. In this paper, we present an overview of this system and its use in field recording projects. Particularly, we examine its use in recording along vertical trajectories.
Magazzino Brancaccio: Sound, Participatory Performance and Auditory Resistance in Confiscated Properties in Palermo, Sicily
The paper presents and explores a series of sonic activities, maneuvers and approaches, which were co-devised and developed by the author for Magazzino Brancaccio, in Palermo, Sicily. This project, originated and presented by curator Valentina Sansone, aimed at the accessing and appropriation of properties confiscated from organized crime, and the repositioning of these as sites for the curatorial, as well as for community-based and experimental sound and music activations, and other forms of contemporary arts intervention. In 2018, the first of these initiatives took place, within a 2000 square meter confiscated warehouse, located in the Brancaccio area of the city. Through the efforts of the project, the space was opened and ultimately returned to its community. The paper reflects upon the central role that sound played in this process of taking possession and infiltrating the space, and the ways in which the inter-connected practices of listening, sound-making and musicking, were of central importance to encouraging members of the local community to re-discover, interact with and inhabit the space anew. It is therefore suggested that the call to creative action, through sound, and engagement with the local environment and materials to hand, contributes to the social transformations that ensue, not only conceptually, but as a dynamic, embodied and lived condition.
The Silence of Global Oceans: Measuring the Acoustics Impact of the Covid-19 Lockdown
Low-frequency sound from maritime shipping is a major source of ambient underwater noise in oceans and a threat to marine life. Annual increases in global trade, 80% of which occurs through ocean tankers and container ships, means that underwater anthropogenic noise levels are increasing. As seasonal ice disappears because of climate change and new shipping routes open in the Arctic, ambient sound levels are bound to increase.
The fundamental principles underpinning heritage conservation in Australia have long recognised that places may have sensory values that contribute to their significance. As such, acoustic values should be assessed as part of the evaluation process. But there is still no agreed methodology for identifying, describing, or assessing the way places sound as part of the heritage assessment process, and acoustic values are therefore rarely present in heritage citations. Even if sound is not determined to be a significant cultural heritage value, it can be an valuable tool in interpretation. This paper discusses the historic sounds of places valued by the Colonial community during the earliest period of settlement in the far south west forest region of Western Australia. It then examines the acoustic experiences of these places today and their management after two decades during which the concept of 'soundscape' has become more mainstream, and asks whether acoustic values are being recognised and appropriately protected.
This paper outlines a new initiative to establish a community embedded Environmental Listening Network that teaches environmental listening skills and conducts regular listening events free in the community. Using a network of key partnerships, it aims to share this simple yet powerful method of environmental engagement worldwide. An Environmental Listening Field Guide is in development for broad distributed. This approach addresses several challenges. The first is that the time commitment and financial commitment associated with engaging in environmental listening is minimal. All socio-economic groups can engage in these activities equally. Environmental listening can be practice daily, wherever the listener finds themselves. So doing helps develop an awareness of the subtleties of the ecosystem in which we live. As individual action is increasingly amplified by social media, the empowerment of individuals is one of the most powerful ways to achieve climate action, individual behavior must change. Environmental Listening is an effective strategy for bringing about these changes and a key tool in addressing climate impact. The Community Environmental Listening Project envisions a future where, through acoustic ecology, people embrace their presence on the land on which they live to understand and foster a balanced ecosystem.
The book Listening to Places (Void Gallery, 2022) contains exercises designed to encourage self-reflexive listening. These activities are predicated on platial thinking, a philosophy that asserts the importance of places as responsive contexts that shape, and are shaped by, our being-in-the-world. This belief weaves an ontology of being with an ethos that’s literally grounded in the places we occupy. Despite the philosophical foundations, this is a practical handbook that will aid musicians, composers, sound designers, field recordists, producers,... anyone who wishes to enhance their experience of sound. These exercises are designed to facilitate workshops, soundwalks, and other activities.
Place as Potential: queer futurity in the recorded landscape
When thinking about the natural environment in the Anthropocene it can be hard to see beyond the present as we constantly try to defend that which remains. Some days it is hard to feel anything but despair. Informed by my experience of being queer in a straight society, I believe that a psychedelic audiovisual art practice derived from soundscape composition and shaped by queerness can offer a glimpse into a concrete utopian future and beyond a seemingly inevitable climate collapse. Beginning with an analysis of the sonic art of Hildegard Westerkamp and Phil Elverum I will explore two existing approaches to the representation of place through sound. Using examples from my creative practice I will demonstrate how abstraction, contradiction, and failure can come together to create a distinct affective, psychedelic future-facing experience, rooted in lived reality. I will show how these techniques can be deployed to transform field recordings and photographs of space into atmospheric evocations of a future place. These transcendent spaces have the potential to form a part of a wider cultural and political move towards meaningful action on climate change that is more than conservation; action that moves us towards the concrete utopia of a sustainable future.
Political Acoustic Ecology: On the Role of Political Ecology in Soundscape Studies
Which role may Political Ecology play for studies of Acoustic Ecology? As global environmental change is rapidly transforming soundscapes along the frontiers of resource use, important questions arise about who precisely occupies the common sonic environment, how resulting sonic burdens and benefits are distributed among diverse social groups, across the audible and inaudible spectrum, as well as how affected communities, activists and movements may respond to adverse sonic environmental change. This paper delves into some of the intersections of Political Ecology and Acoustic Ecology and explores five points of inquiry for a ”Political Acoustic Ecology” that may offer fresh insights in the socio-political dimensions of sonic environmental change.
Insects are vitally important to the survival of life on earth. Yet, in many western societies, humans have become quite averse to insects, and this is exacerbated by a narrative of fear, avoidance, and elimination. If we are to act on utilitarian evidence alone, insect decline caused by anthropogenic impacts makes it critically important to improve our relations with our insect kin. In this paper, we argue that listening to insects – and speculating as to how they listen – can move us towards relations based in curiosity, respect, and a recognition of their value. We present two works of ecological sound art that focus on cryptic insect sounds beyond the limits of human hearing ability: HVAC (2022) and Formiphony (2020). By foregrounding cryptic sound, we emphasize the vast unknown sound-worlds of insects in our shared environments. Through this expansion of our listening, we can recognize insect agency as expressed through decisions concerning their sonic relations. These works have been presented in performance, exhibits, lectures, radio, and albums, bringing a broad audience into conversation about our relations with insects.
Prehistoric Sites, Indigenous Voices, and Preserving Identities: Using Sound Mapping to Engage with Indigenous Sites in North America
Scattered along the Southeastern United States, thousands of stone wall and mound sites existed in the landscape long before explorers and subsequent settlers came to the area. These structures were formed by prehistoric indigenous people of the area and mark this area's cultural heritage and landscape as holding importance beyond the current development taking place.In this paper, I will explore the cultural landscape of Skeleton Mountain and the surrounding Mountain Longleaf National Wildlife Refuge, Alabama, USA. This site holds regional and national significance to the indigenous population's cultural heritage and the United States heritage. There have been ongoing development efforts with increasing human populations and changes in human development and settlement that pose a challenge to protecting and managing these cultural and historical sites. The use of sound mapping and place provides a way for us to communicate and educate others about the stories and histories of the indigenous peoples of North America and their imprint on the landscapes which still exist.
This presentation concerns my three year postdoctoral research into soundwalking. In my study, I approach the practice in question from the perspective of media arts, environmental humanities and philosophy of technology, putting particular emphasis on its transversal and transformative dimension. It is transversal, because despite its immediacy and situatedness soundwalking always spans broader temporalities, agencies, and locations. It is transformative, because it leaves marks, affects perception and reveals one's positionality within the surrounding environment while shedding light on their privileges and responsibilities. As part of the presentation, I introduce a written narrative from the “Lake that Glimmers like Fire,” one of several soundwalk compositions I have developed as part of my practice-led postdoctoral research.
Emerging directions in acoustic ecology – trends within Canada’s national protected areas system
A survey of ecologists in Parks Canada’s protected area units (PAU) was conducted to understand the breadth of acoustic ecology applications, particularly current emphases, trends over the past 2 decades, and future trajectories. 87 acoustic projects, in 36 PAU, involve detection of species, monitoring of ecosystems, and to a smaller extent documentation of soundscape, anthropogenic noise and cultural sound. On average these PAU have >3 acoustic projects each; the longest project conducted for 18 years. Focus of projects has evolved across years (through birds, bats, marine, soundscape). Described are emerging directions in acoustic ecology evident in Canadian national PAU, including: enhancing research on most taxa (i.e., aquatic species); improving species detection to identify changing spatial-temporal patterns (e.g., climate, noise); documenting anthropogenic noise impact; comparative analysis of biodiversity changes in soundscapes; and increasing technique efficiencies (e.g., automated detection, broad scales). Acoustics could contribute to PAU research priorities (e.g., arthropod inventory, geophysical rate changes, fragmentation restoration, population dynamics), and objectives (e.g., societal wellbeing, cultural landscape). Needed is commitment to document metadata, secure long-term data storage, and contribute to Open Data to ensure future utility of acoustic information. We hope the identification of these emerging directions help formulate momentum and synergies between agencies.
Circularity-driven urban quietness as an indicator of sustainability
The concepts of noise and quietness are multidimensional, contradictive and retain a degree of fuzziness. Their notion expands between the physical dimension of sound to a phenomenological/perceptual construct. The perception of noise as a sound of high-intensity or as an unwanted sound has shaped the concept of quietness as an urban sound design goal overlooking ecological co-benefits. The main purpose of this research is to highlight the symbiotic relationship between urban quietness and sustainability. More specifically, actions of circular urban development, including green walls and electromobility were modeled, to highlight their effect on the sound environment of a Mediterranean coastal medium-sized city. Following the guidelines provided by the CNOSSOS-EU road traffic noise model, the effects of the aforementioned sustainability actions were visualized by means of noise mapping. The results indicate that a noise level reduction of approximately 4 dB(A) could derive with the implementation of circular urban development measures.
“Places for Hearing” in the City of Edo in 18th Century Japan: A Case Study of an Insect Listening Party on Dokan-Hill
In Japan, the introduction of the soundscape concept since the late 1980s has shed new light on various pre-modern practices in the context of soundscape ecology. For example, in Edo City (present-day Tokyo) in 18th century Japan, there were locations known as "places for Hearing”. Hiroshige's ukiyoe "Insect Listening Party on Dokan-Hill" illustrates the situation at that time. We can use these paintings as "ear witnesses" to understand that an urban sensibility that interacted with the natural world existed in Edo period, and that there was a particular land-based aesthetics that transcended modern Western art. Through these considerations, I am trying to make a new framework for our future and creative activity that goes beyond conventional musicking.
Listen-Pair-Share: a template for facilitating inclusive group discussion about active listening
Acoustic ecology has benefited from the way many of its earliest advocates documented their pedagogical techniques. It allowed activities like soundwalking to become mainstays and helped introduce so many students to the practice of active listening. However, these same activities need to be re-evaluated using contemporary standards of inclusion and accessibility. Features like silent movement and visual cues can create barriers for students with visual impairments or mobility challenges. This paper provides a lesson plan for a new activity called "Listen-Pair-Share". The activity begins with students listening to a soundscape for a brief period of time. Next, students are paired up to engage in small group discussions. Finally, each small group chooses a spokesperson and reports out to the entire gathering. The lesson represents an earnest effort to adapt and update common teaching methods used within acoustic ecology so that we can better serve diverse audiences.
In this paper, I will share my experiences in listening to Victory Square, a city square I lived in front of for three years. During this span of time, I recorded the square’s soundscape from my bedroom window, maintained a field recording journal, created art works in response to listening, and grappled with the reality of engaging with a vulnerable location, which was home for many, while I lived 6 stories above it. When I began this listening endeavour, I was worried about how my field recording practice could ethically co-exist with Victory Square. By maintaining a field recording journal, I was able to deepen my connection to the square, and with time, my practice began evolving in conversation with the square. I will take the reader through my creation phases and how I came to certain methodologies. In addition to sharing my work with you, it is my hope to position self-reflexive field recording as a tool that can help us think about and work with vulnerable locations that are often excluded from conversations.
This work takes as its starting point recorded sounds and measurements of water from North America, the Arctic, and Antarctica. Using field recordings, data measurements, and multiple temporalities as a factor for composition, we decode the recordings and measurements to make audible the various forms of ecological memory and story held within water. These include water quality data, sea-ice thickness, glacial weather data, and recordings made underwater and on the land. Sub_Merge is a space and time for active listening consistent with a meditative practice, a mediation on the collective experiences possible within water. The embedded performance creates a boundary for shared listening, while the 6-channel installation is amorphous, unfolding over the 12-hour installation - a timescale allowing for engaged listener participation. Sub_Merge is a speculative soundscape for listeners to emerge with stories and new understandings of water in all its myriad forms. It creates a new collective listening experience built from an historical record of water’s Listening Pasts, and new knowledge for Listening Futures, from the memories held within water.
The Absent Listener - Composing from Continuous Soundscape Recordings
The Absent Listener is a series of pieces derived exclusively from continuous soundscape recordings made at the author’s home in Northern Ontario Canada. The recordings are made continuously and unsupervised. The recording process is done in this way so that the presence of the recordist has as little influence as possible on the behaviour of people, animals and insects while the recordings are taking place. Pieces made in the series are discussed. They include two long-form soundscape works for fixed media, an online installation that generates fixed media compositions according to listener specifications and a new fixed media composition that compresses dawn recordings made over an entire year at the project location.
Secret Reception combines art and bioacoustics to creatively engage the public in questions about sound reception in more-than-human worlds. This sonic art installation offers new paradigms for hearing through the design of haptic objects and tactile interfaces that use vibration to transmit sonic information. Drawing on scientific research that examines how insects detect sound through body parts, we transpose insect hearing to the human listening experience using sonic impulses that emulate the way insects receive them.
Fathom, created as a permanent, site-intended sound installation for Atlantic Center for the Arts, was first made digitally accessible during the 2023 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) Conference, Listening Pasts/Listening Futures. This piece invites the listener to engage with the invisible architecture of the sonic textures and submersive tonal qualities through an incremental atmospheric shift while navigating between the two sculptures (located at at the Welcome Center of on the ACA Campus), “Celebration ’96” by Doris Leeper and The “Great Green Whale: Homage to André Breton” by Giò Pomodoro.
A Sound Map of the Cache la Poudre River
Flowing with the Cache la Poudre River, from the Continental Divide high in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, cascading through diverse biomes and soundscapes and emptying into the South Platte River in the Eastern Plains of Colorado, this sonic archive of the river was recorded in 2020 and debuted as a live sound installation at the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) Conference in 2023 at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Along this journey through water, we are guided by the voices of Northern Arapaho leaders, whose ancestors were stewards and listeners of the Cache la Poudre River Valley before being forced to the Wind River Reservation in 1878 by government militia. This Sound Map is dedicated to honoring those indigenous leaders, who maintain a deep relationship to the land, and a spiritual bond to the water. You too are invited to reignite your own spiritual connection to water. Listening deeply to the natural elements, you may become more aware that they are the same elements that make up your own body. By reconnecting with your true nature, your edges may begin to soften as you glimpse your vibrant interconnectedness to the water around you, and your ancient streams within the Earth. The voices of Northern Arapaho Leaders– Crawford White Eagle, Mark Soldier Wolf, and William Hubert Friday– are interwoven with the water soundscapes throughout. These interviews were recorded in 2018, and graciously provided by the Poudre Heritage Alliance. With special thanks to Annea Lockwood, whose river sound maps were the original inspiration for this piece; and to Stephan Moore, whose guidance was essential to the piece’s creation. Thank you for listening.
Forest Listening – An audio-visual installation
‘Forest Listening’ is an artwork that combines the field recording ‘Rainstorm Inside Forest Earth’ with its corresponding sound visualisation. The visualisation is a diagrammatical investigation that expands the form and function of the spectrogram from the explanatory to the exploratory. This expansion occurs in three ways: translation of the format from digital to analogue; the creation of four diagrams depicting separate levels of volume dynamics; and remaking those four diagrams as cyanotype prints using tonal shades to represent volume dynamics. The field recording ‘Rainstorm Inside Forest Earth’ is combined with hanging canvas banners, made from the cyanotype prints, to create the multimodal installation ‘Forest Listening’. Analysis of exhibiting ‘Forest Listening’ in the Limnerslease woodland at the Watts Artist Gallery & Artist Village, Surrey, UK, suggests that the woodland setting augments the multimodal listening experience, drawing attention to both the artwork and the forest itself.
“Direct impacts of wind farms can include collision and barotrauma (damage to tissues from air pressure changes around turbines); indirect impacts can include habitat loss (roosts, commuting routes and foraging areas) and fragmentation.” – bats.org.uk This piece comments on the impact of wind farms on the bat population. It uses field recordings of windmills taken in Lapua, Finland using microphones that pick up normally inaudible frequencies (such as contact and electromagnetic mics), combined with various field recordings of bats. Originally, the piece explores the use of field recordings with the 3D IKO speaker and investigates how a sense of place can be created using a speaker that projects sound from the inside outwards using the sound reflections of the performance space. This work was made possible thanks to the Develop your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England.
If a river could tell a story, what would it sound like? This immersive literary soundwalk narrates the multivocal story of a river which is the subject of a radical climate adaptation experiment: it is being set free from the narrow channel created for it by humans, and is being allowed to decide where it will go through the land. At the same time, surrounding farmland is being rewilded, and new species, including some that had previously been wiped out by humans – including the beaver – are back, and have a new chance to thrive. At a time of climate and biodiversity crisis, this landscape revolution offers a trickle of hope. Moving between the words of the water and the creatures that live in and around it, this work explores the transformative possibilities created by inhabiting non-human soundworlds and experiences through a combination of literary narrative and spatial sound. This literary soundwalk is currently in development. It is a collaborative creation between Ellen Wiles, a creative writer, anthropologist and curator, and Nicholas Allan, a sound recordist and designer, specialising in nature and wildlife sound. The work has been commissioned by The National Trust, UK.
“The Frequent Listener” is a live performance with grand piano and recorded soundscape composition in the Joan James Harris Theater at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. The fixed composition for 2-channel stereo output, was composed by Eric Leonardson, a 10-minute, 12-second duration of the audio track. With student assistants from Stetson University, Professor Chaz Underminer provided sound reinforcement operational production support. Leonardson directed two artists and conference participants, Alex Braidwood and Lisa Schonberg to perform in rather than on the piano in real time, improvising their accompaniment to the fixed “media soundscape.”
The composition of Impressioni In-Naturali
In this paper the processes that led to the composition of the piece Impressioni In-Naturali (for digital support and live performer) will be exposed. Special attention is given to the performance practice as a construction of the listening experience in an electroacoustically config- ured space and as a form of ecological awareness. It was also necessary to define an acousmatic form not fixed but adaptive to the context, underlining an active attitude highlighted mainly in live electronics. An analysis is provided of the choices of selection and structuring of the material at the microscopic level (realization of the synthesis sounds) and macroscopic (structuring of the generated material) and the practice of diffusion in relation to an informatic performance environment.