Resources
Contributors Hildegard Westerkamp

PUBLICATIONS
Victorian Soundscapes
John M. Picker
Oxford University Press

Book Victorian Soundscapes Far from the hushed restraint we associate with the Victorians, their world pulsated with sound. This book shows how, in more ways than one, Victorians were hearing things. The representations close listeners left of their soundscapes offered new meanings for silence, music, noise, voice, and echo that constitute an important part of the Victorian legacy to us today. In chronicling the shift from Romantic to modern configurations of sound and voice, Picker draws upon literary and scientific works to recapture the sense of aural discovery figures such as Babbage, Helmholtz, Freud, Bell, and Edison shared with the likes of Dickens, George Eliot, Tennyson, Stoker, and Conrad.

Sonic Experience, A Guide to Everyday Sounds
Edited by Jean-François Augoyard et Henri Torgue
Foreword by R. Murray Schafer,
Translated by Andra McCartney and David Paquette
McGill-Queen's university Press, 2005, 215 pages

book Sonic Experience Never before has the everyday soundtrack of urban space been so cacophonous. Since the 1970s, sound researchers have attempted to classify noise, music, and everyday sounds using concepts such as Pierre Shafer's sound object and R. Murray Schafer's soundscape. Recently, one of the most significant teams of soundscape researchers in the world has been concerned with the effects of sounds on listeners and has developed the concept of  "sonic effect" specifically to analyze the effect of everyday sounds in the contexts of architectural  and urban spaces. In a multidisciplinary work spanning musicology, electro-acoustic composition, architecture, urban studies, communication, phenomenology, social theory, physics, and psychology, Jean-François Augoyard, Henry Torgue, and their associates at the Centre for Research on Sonic Space and the Urban Environment (CRESSON)  in Grenoble, France, provide an alphabetical sourcebook of eighty sonic/auditory effects.  More Information.


Listen To The Raindrops.
Author, Nick Kettles
Ecologist, April 2006
Online article from ExactEditions.com

This is a highly informative article that takes a look at the contemporary world of soundscape by first providing an historical context for the study of sound and then examines today's soundscape issues and debates.
    The article stresses that education will play a critical role in how humans give attention to concepts like noise and quiet in the years to come.
   This is a must read article for those who have been in the field for years and those new to acoustic-ecology.

"Must We All Become Deaf" L'association Le Centre du Son, basé en Isère, nous provoque: Ils viennent de lancer un manifeste intitulé "Sommes-nous tous devenus sourds?" Allez donc voir de quoi il en retourne sur leur site
    The Center for Sound, based in Isère has made available a document, "Must We All Become Deaf". The publication is in French and can be accessed on the internet at the following URL: <http://www.lecentreduson.info/Manifeste/>

WEB SITES


Youth Radio. (Scout Report) With an impressive headquarters in downtown Oakland, Youth Radio is fast becoming a compelling and insightful media phenomenon that should be watched closely. Their mission is a laudable one, and as their website puts it, “…. is to promote young people’s intellectual creative and professional growth through training and access to media and to produce the highest quality original media for local and national outlets.” Of course, the real heart of the site contains the actual programming, which is streamed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Along with unique mix of music, individuals can listen to a host of stories reported by young people. Visitors can also browse a list of recently added
stories by topic, browse a list of recently added stories by topic, which include relationships, society, sports, poetry, and health. Those who are hoping to get some of the basic flavor of the offerings here would do well to take a look at the story featuring reporting from a group of Berkeley High School students at the World Social Forum in Caracas, or by listening to the commentary offered by Lauryn Silverman on the modern conundrum of multi-tasking. Read More

This sound sculpture explores the musicality of sounds hidden within the structure of the London Millennium Foot Bridge. This bridge is alive with vibrations caused by the bridge’s responses to the collective energy of footsteps, load and wind. This sonic world is inaudible to the ear when walking over this bridge. It will be revealed by the use of the accelerometers (which are vibration sensors) that are listening to the inner dynamic motions of the bridge. Harmonic Bridge will be realized by installing a network of live accelerometers on different parts of the Bridge in order to acoustically map in real time its hidden musical life. The live sonic mapping translates into an acoustic sculpture by carefully rendering sounds from this listening network into a spatial matrix of loudspeakers. This sculpture only renders the natural acoustic movements of the Bridge, but tunes the presence of this live sonic data to the characteristics and architecture of the two spaces in which the work is presented: the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, and the Main Concourse of Southwark Station of the London Underground.


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