Some Issues of Soundscape and Acoustic Ecology

Throughout both online and academic articles, there is a debate about which is more beneficial for humans: natural sounds or sounds of human activity. The distinction that these sounds are for humans is important. Unless you are searching for animal rights or national park sources, the impact of sounds on the non-human residents is discussed. The noise impact on animals and insects will have to be investigated later, but this is one issue when discussing the discourse on soundscapes and acoustic ecology.

As mentioned before, Murray Schafer divided the soundscape into lo-fi and hi-fi. Lo-fi is associated with noisy soundscapes that depict busy city life and hi-fi is when "sounds overlap less frequently; there is more perspective--foreground and background" (1977, 43). A hi-fi soundscape is more rural and quiet.

Dr. Andra McCartney questions this method of defining soundscape by asking,"if hi-fi and lo-fi is to delineate a boundary between modern and pre-modern, industrial and natural, city and countryside, what do we do with noisy nature and sparse city soundscapes?" (24). She argues that people seek out both hi-fi and lo-fi soundscapes for different reasons. People may have emotional and personal ties to a soundscape that should be accounted for when discussing the merits of natural and human sounds. In this project I am similarly asking the same question and my recordings seem to convey a sound that is between a hi-fi and lo-fi soundscape. At times, I am within a sparse city soundscape.

Later in the article she discusses soundscape compositions. At the beginning of my soundscape interests, I thought I would create a piece based on the field recordings from my neighborhood. I entertained the idea of including clips of everything I heard in the past month or a compilation track of only ambulance sirens. However, after much thought I decided not to compose a piece out of the soundscape. I was not sure why I was so against creating a piece until I read McCartney's article. She says that, "(e)ach time a soundscape composer designs a soundwalk or a theatre piece, an installation or broadcast work, relationships with the world are expressed through how the maker treats the place, the sounds and the audience" (24). She goes on to describe how the composer has to make decisions about what aspects should be highlighted and what ideas are being masked unto a place.

This is exactly why I chose not to do a composition. I am in the early stages of investigating soundscapes and somehow I feel it would be a disservice to represent the neighborhood as having a surplus of  ambulance sounds or natural sounds. This would go against my previous argument that a diversity of sounds exists in the neighborhood. The soundscape has a certain amount of nature and sparse urban soundscape that at this point would not be represented well if I had my own composition. The recordings thus far are not compositions. They are field recordings and soundwalks that represent my interest in certain sounds in the neighborhood, but are not altered or edited for a specific purpose.

Dr. Andra McCartney is the major researcher in Sound Walking Interactions, so I will continue to model some of her soundwalking methods as the project progresses.

In the article Discrete Mapping of Urban Soundscapes, Olivier Balay describes how the E.U. directive of June 25, 2002 created an influx of research grants and public sector spending on quantitative acoustic maps. He asks, who is going to use them? And, how will they serve to improve the urban soundscape? He wants to build new kinds of sound maps that are more descriptive and can supplement the information provided by the mapping of acoustic measurements.

Instead of creating an attitude of control and insulation of urban sounds from the domestic space, society should listen to urban sounds to describe what sounds are comforting and what sounds are not. This may help to gauge what people within a territory think of their surroundings. This method may also engage and facilitate debate between all those involved in urban development. In Acoustic Ecology and some literature on Soundscapes, urban planning and development is a major theme. Balay is coming from this background and incorporates sound as an important component in designing urban spaces.

Although I am not explicitly looking at the historical urban development in Hillcrest, I think it is important to include how other people describe the landscape and soundscape of the neighborhood. When other buildings were built or torn down, did the sounds change? There are residents who have lived in the area for years, while others have just moved in. Having a multitude of descriptions would help to create a better explanation of the neighborhood soundscape.

McCartney, Andra. "Ethical Questions about Working with Soundscapes." Journal of Acoustic

Ecology (2010): 24-25.

Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester:

Destiny Books, 1977.