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Acoustic Ecology 2.0 Contemporary Music Review ISSN: 0749-4467 (Print) 1477-2256 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr20 Acoustic Ecology 2.0 Garth Paine To cite this article: Garth Paine (2017): Acoustic Ecology 2.0, Contemporary Music Review, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2017.1395136 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2017.1395136 Published online: 15 Nov 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gcmr20 Download by: [Arizona State University Libraries] Date: 15 November 2017, At: 08:03 Contemporary Music Review, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2017.1395136 Acoustic Ecology 2.0 Garth Paine In this article, I argue for a reassertion of the practice of acoustic ecology. I present an argument for the rejection of the term soundscape in favour of the notion of an acoustic ecology; along the way, I show how the concept of ecology is a powerful tool in re- imaging the role of sound awareness in the society. I argue, however, that acoustic ecology as defined by Luc Ferrari and Murray Schaeffer needs refocusing or revitalizing. I suggest a framework that prioritizes community engagement, exploration, and experience of the sounding world, driven by a desire to build stewardship and agency for change management in the community. The proposed model draws on the sensibilities of acoustic ecology to drive design solutions to anthropocentric sound challenges. This kind of work provides for the development of tools that quantify environmental psychoacoustic metrics and can be used to design and manage acoustic ecologies that contribute to well-being, social cohesion, and quality of life. Keywords: Acoustic Ecology; Listening; Community Engagement; Sustainability; Sound; Somatic Every day we listen to sounds in the world to identify their source. The bird or coyote calls (biophony), the car, motorbike, plane or your sister’s voice (anthrophony), or the wind in the foliage, the water in the river (geophony) … But we do not often listen to these sounds as a network, a mesh of relationships that forms an ecology. Furthermore, Downloaded by [Arizona State University Libraries] at 08:03 15 November 2017 we do not often consider that the sounds we hear are conditioned, augmented, and filtered by the environment in which they occur—the rich reverberation created by a rock canyon or the glass skyscrapers of a major city, the quiet absorption of a dense undergrowth, thick leaf litter, or fresh snow on the ground. Consider also that the density of air varies from the cool mountain top or canyon base to the heat of the open desert plane. In these variations, the confluence of sound is conditioned by the density of the air, dispersing the excitation and the fidelity of the sound in warmer dryer environments more quickly than occurs in dense, cool, heavy air. Here, a uniquely detailed sonic fidelity seems to hang in the ether for an inordinate © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 G. Paine period of time. Geographic structure, altitude, and humidity all influence sonic ambi- ence and ecology. If we adjust our listening to engage with the idea of the sounds around us as a set of dynamic relationships, an acoustic ecology, then we can consider that they tell us a good deal about the health of the environment in which they occur, the biotic ecology (biosphere). The diversity and density of species, the abundance of vegetation and the profusion of its foliage (affecting reverberation), and the density of the air determined by temperature, all act as key sonic indexes of environmental condition. These indicators change as environments respond to climate change. The sound absorption coefficient changes as foliage becomes less or more profuse, while the density and diversity of the biophony transform with variation in the prevalence of species calls. The wildlife recordist Bernie Krause demonstrates this later point through a comparative analysis of his historical recordings in the Sugar Loaf State Park (see https://vimeo.com/166,214,601). These forms of critical listening are one of the ways in which acoustic ecology can assist in raising public awareness of environmental changes. Teaching members of the public to listen gives them insight into the richness of the acoustic properties of the environments they frequent. It also provides a way to heighten awareness, to develop stewardship through public engagement, and to support agency in the efforts needed to care for and manage environments subject to climate change. In addition, the creative application of field recordings in these environments and the composition and performance of musical works derived from environmental sounds provide accessible ways to develop a creative capital around the value of acoustic ecol- ogies and their uniqueness to each site. Acoustic Ecology 2.0 In recent years, the community of people interested in the sonic properties of the world has grown, but also fractured and then focused around different practice titles. A non- exhaustive list would include Soundscape Ecology (Purdue University, Farina; Krause and Gage, Pijanowski), Sound/Sonic Ecology (Pailhès and Vogt, Kelman), BioAcous- tics (see the journal Bioacoustics – The International Journal of Animal Sound and Its Recording, Taylor & Francis), and Soundscape studies (a broad title for a range of prac- tices and pedagogies examining the sounding world). Downloaded by [Arizona State University Libraries] at 08:03 15 November 2017 I share with Tim Ingold a dislike for the word ‘soundscape’ because it seems so gen- eralized as to be meaningless, but I also share his concern that one cannot ‘scape’ a medium—we do not have lightscapes. The acoustic ecology of the world is so rich, intricate, and dynamic, that to refer to the overall gestalt as a ‘soundscape’ provides little insight into the phenomena being discussed. As Ingold (2011, p. 157) eloquently writes: ‘For sound, I would argue, is not the object but the medium of our perception. It is what we hear in. Similarly, we do not see light but see in it’. The ‘scaping’ of sound is perhaps a result of its complexity, the manifold sources meshing into a single perceivable gestalt. The geographer Hägerstrand (1976, Contemporary Music Review 3 p. 332) comments that ‘(t)he big tapestry that nature is weaving, is woven because all things have a temporal vector that enmesh’. Hägerstrand neatly sums up the very nature of ecology as a dynamic system of interaction, co-dependence, and interdepen- dence, where life itself is made and presenced. To prioritize the idea of an ecology in our discourse about the sounding world is to bring attention to these enmeshed vectors: in our case, the acoustic ecology of the world we share. Sound is a uniquely temporal medium. It is the very temporality that illuminates transformations and relationships, night into day, year-on-year climate changes, how the environment responds to such pressures. Guided by Ingold and Hägerstrand, in this article I argue that there is value in re-assembling around the term Acoustic Ecology. I foreground the dynamic vectors of both the individual and the whole: the geo/bio and anthrophony as well as what I refer to as somaphony, the underlying, a priori sonic signature of an environment. World Forum for Acoustic Ecology—Acoustic Ecology 1.0 One of the founding precepts of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology was a desire to protect and maintain a status quo in the sound make-up of our environment, that is, to work against any further perceived degradation of the environment. In much of Murray Schafer’s(1986, 1993) writing, there appears to be a desire to recede to times past, with discussion about the need for quiet, for musty sanctuaries of the soul in which one could recover from the sounds of the modern industrial economy. On the surface, these seem like lofty ideals driven by a committed belief that the increasing prevalence of the sounds of mechanization over the past century or so was having a detrimental effect on human well-being. In so far as there had been substantial increases in anthropogenic sound, and urban and industrial designs were not prioritizing a consideration of our acoustic ecology, these concerns were well founded and formed the basis for a re-awakening of aware- ness of the importance of considering balance and stewardship in the acoustic ecology of the globe as a whole. It brought with it a push for careful policy development, while simultaneously issuing a call for public engagement through projects such as the World Soundscape Project. We all make sound and would intrinsically benefit from develop- ing an astute awareness of the role we play in forming and finessing our acoustic Downloaded by [Arizona State University Libraries] at 08:03 15 November 2017 ecology (Figure 1). Reflection on these ideals leads me to the following thoughts: (1) It is critical that we are conscious of our sound environment and that we play an active role in moderating noise and designing the sonic properties of urban (and all) environments to promote well-being. Humans should develop an acute awareness of their own contribution to the acoustic ecology. (2) Exposure to loud sounds and noise has been shown to have a negative impact on well-being. 4 G. Paine Figure 1 A common sign in Athens, Greece, encouraging communal environmental pro- tection action. (3) The sounds of our industrialized environment are part of the acoustic ecology; they do not exist in isolation. (4) Humans adapt quickly. An individual who grows up in a large and active city may feel uneasy sleeping in a quiet rural setting; there is no single baseline.
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