Caseorganic: Created the page!

2026-08-25T09:09:36Z

Created the page!

New page

=== Definition ===

Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment.<ref name="wpae">[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_ecology Acoustic ecology], Wikipedia.</ref>

Acoustic ecology is informed by two traditions: acoustic ecology, which began in the late 1960s among composers and communication scholars and is concerned with human perception, community identity, and noise, and soundscape ecology, which emerged from biology in the 2000s and uses recorded sound as a quantitative instrument for measuring habitat condition. See [[Biophony]] for the second.

=== World Soundscape Project ===

Acoustic ecology started with R. Murray Schafer, 1933 to 2021, a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist, working with a team at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.<ref name="wpae" /><ref name="wpschafer">[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Murray_Schafer R. Murray Schafer], Wikipedia.</ref>

The World Soundscape Project was founded in 1969 as a research and educational endeavour, and established the modern field concerned with raising public awareness of sound, documenting environmental sound and its changing character, and establishing soundscape design as an alternative to noise pollution.<ref name="canenc">[https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/world-soundscape-project World Soundscape Project], The Canadian Encyclopedia.</ref> Its stated aim was an ecologically balanced soundscape in which the relationship between a human community and its sonic environment is in harmony.<ref name="canenc" />

Schafer's associates in the early stages included Howard Broomfield, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Adam Woog.<ref name="canenc" /> Funding came from the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Canada Council, and UNESCO.<ref name="canenc" />

Research covered studies in new sounds, studies of schizophonia, an archive of lost and disappearing sounds, a glossary of sounds in literature, sound association tests, soundscape analyses of events and community soundmarks, the sonic environments of schools, the design of acoustic parks, sound typology and morphology, the semantics of sound, and the meanings of silence.<ref name="canenc" /> The group produced publications, radio broadcasts, and an audio archive of several hundred hours of environmental recordings.<ref name="ent">[https://www.entandaudiologynews.com/features/audiology-features/post/the-art-and-science-of-acoustic-ecology The art and science of acoustic ecology], ENT & Audiology News.</ref>

Founding members joined representatives of the international community to form the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology in 1993.<ref name="ent" />

=== Schafer's vocabulary ===

'''Soundscape.''' The acoustic environment considered as a composition with structure, rather than as an undifferentiated quantity of noise.

'''Keynote sounds.''' Named after the key of a piece of music. These are usually not heard consciously and instead form a sonic background. They are ubiquitous, which gives them substantial effect on behavior while also expressing the character of the people surrounded by them.<ref name="legacy">[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382483258_The_legacy_of_R_Murray_Schafer_-_twenty-four_hours_of_soundscape_measurements_an_analysis_of_the_acoustic_ecology_of_a_city_centre The legacy of R. Murray Schafer], ResearchGate.</ref>

'''Sound signals.''' Foreground sounds listened to consciously, carrying information that requires a response.

'''Soundmarks.''' By analogy with landmarks. A sound unique to a place, held in regard by the community, and worth protecting for that reason.

'''Hi-fi and lo-fi soundscapes.''' A hi-fi environment has a favorable signal-to-noise ratio, so sounds can be heard clearly without crowding, each occupying its own acoustic space, and the listener can hear far into the distance.<ref name="legacy" /><ref name="jse">[https://justsoundeffects.com/article/chapter-1-the-soundscape/ Chapter 1: The Soundscape], Just Sound Effects.</ref> Schafer compared this to instruments in a classical orchestra.<ref name="ent" /> A lo-fi environment masks its own components, so perspective is lost and the listener can only hear what is close.

'''Schizophonia.''' The split between an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction. Schafer's WSP studies examined the pervasive presence of reproduced sound in the soundscape, covering muzak, radio, and portable personal listening devices.<ref name="canenc" />

'''Earwitness.''' Someone who reports what a place sounded like, treated as a source of historical evidence about environments no recording exists for.

=== Method ===

Field recording produces a documentary record of a place at a time, which makes change over decades measurable by comparison. Instrumented measurement records a numerical representation of loudness as sound pressure level, together with frequency distribution.<ref name="legacy" />

The WSP archive was built specifically to enable the first, documenting the sonic transformation of particular places over long periods.<ref name="jse" /> Its publications include ''The Vancouver Soundscape'' (1973) and ''Five Village Soundscapes'' (1977), the latter recording five European villages and returning to them later.

The soundwalk, developed by Westerkamp, is one of the field's characteristic exercises: it consists of a walk taken with attention directed at listening rather than looking, in which participants record what they hear and where.

=== Criticism ===

Schafer's prescriptive ideals have received critical re-evaluation, particularly by Ari Kelman in 2010, who objected to the normative ranking of natural sound above human sound built into the hi-fi and lo-fi distinction.<ref name="orgsound">[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/article/editorial/F819C3ECC50409B87AC3F74F250532DA Editorial], ''Organised Sound'', Cambridge Core.</ref>

Tim Ingold's 2007 critique of the term soundscape itself has been widely cited, arguing that the visual metaphor imports assumptions that do not hold for hearing.<ref name="orgsound" /> Barry Truax, a WSP member, has responded that Schafer's neologisms were intended as rhetorical devices for communicating new concepts to a wider audience rather than as rigorous definitions.<ref name="orgsound" />

=== Relation to interface and display ===

Schafer's position, that we should treat the environments we find ourselves in as musical compositions, converts a hearer into an analytic listener, which is exactly the capacity an auditory display depends on.<ref name="lemma">[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.5757 Haptic Input + Auditory Display = Musical Instrument?], arXiv.</ref> When an environment produces sounds arising from data and events, monitoring becomes possible by listening rather than by looking.<ref name="lemma" />

In auditory display work the term acoustic ecology also refers to the internal ecology of the various sounds within a sonification, meaning how the elements of a designed sound system relate to each other.<ref name="lemma" />

The keynote and signal distinction is the operative one for designing device sound. A keynote is continuous and unnoticed and shapes behavior anyway. A signal demands attention and should be reserved for events requiring a response. Most notification sound is designed as signal and functions as keynote, which is a failure to match the channel to the information.

Masking sets the constraint. Over a relatively narrow frequency range, quiet sounds become inaudible in the presence of louder sounds at a lower frequency.<ref name="intro">[https://www.academia.edu/4410713/An_Introduction_to_Acoustic_Ecology An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology], Academia.edu.</ref> A room with many devices signaling in overlapping bands is a lo-fi environment by Schafer's definition, and no individual signal in it can be relied on.

=== Further Reading ===

* [[Biophony]]
* [[Low Resolution Indicators]]
* [[The Feeling of Space]]
* [[Rhythm Science]]
* [[Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art]]
* [[The Silent Language]]
* [[Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man]]
* [[Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environment]]
* [[The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces]]
* [[Culture and Space: Conceiving a New Cultural Geography]]
* [[Space is the Machine]]
* [[Place: The Networking of Public Space]]

=== Key texts ===

* Schafer, R. Murray. ''The Tuning of the World''. Knopf, 1977. Republished 1994 as ''The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World'', Destiny Books.
* Schafer, R. Murray. ''The Book of Noise''. 1970.
* Schafer, R. Murray. ''The Music of the Environment''. 1973.
* Truax, Barry, ed. ''Handbook for Acoustic Ecology''. ARC Publications, 1978.
* Truax, Barry. ''Acoustic Communication''. Ablex, 1984.
* Westerkamp, Hildegard. "Soundwalking." ''Sound Heritage'' 3, no. 4 (1974).
* Pijanowski, Bryan C., et al. "Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape." ''BioScience'' 61, no. 3 (2011): 203-216.

=== External Links ===

* [https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html World Soundscape Project], Simon Fraser University
* [https://www.wfae.net/ World Forum for Acoustic Ecology]

== References ==

<references />

[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Methods]]

Acoustic Ecology - Revision history

Caseorganic: Created the page!