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 JASE's Kozo Hiramatsu participates in Manchester Exhibit. (CRISAP) Professor Kozo Hiramatsu, JASE member and pioneering ecoacousticologist, is among three people participating in an exhibit at The University of Manchester's (UK) Whitworth Art Gallery. "Air Pressure" uses sound recordings, on-site and archive film, to represent the sonic experience of living and working adjacent to Narita International Airport in Japan. The exhibit provides the audience with a vicarious, immersive experience of the site and an opportunity to address debates on the impact of aircraft noise on our lives. The exhibit continues through February 12th. Click2Read more.
New England Forum for Acoustic Ecology holds first meeting. The New England chapter of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology held its first meeting in early December. It is planning a series of public forums beginning on Sunday January 29th featuring presentations from individuals working in different aspects of sound from the arts and sciences. The chapter is also planning events that will be site-specific in different parts of New England with concerts, soundwalks and forums. The founding members are: Mike Bullock, Shawn Greenlee, Ernst Karel, Stephan Moore, and Jed Speare with affiliations to numerous organizations, institutions, and groups. The chapter has begun a website and If those interested in contacting the NEFAE should visit their new web site: www.nefae.org/participate (Submitted by Jed Speare)
Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology Programs. The MSAE chapter of the American society for Acoustic Ecology is currently developing programming for Spring 2012. The MSAE discipline is based on collaborative work, if you would like to participate, the chapter invites your ideas. For information on our member's research, creative and public outreach work, please visit our chapter's webpage "Like" our Facebook page: And, follow us on Twitter (Submitted by Jay Needham)
Southern California Sound Ecology. The American Society for Acoustic Ecology's Southern California chapter's Ensemble performed a 30-minute improvised set of field recordings on the webcast series Ear Meal. The video of the performance, as well as photo documentation, can be found online. (Submitted by Glenn Bach)
Schafer's A Sound Education translated. The Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology is currently editing a Finnish translation of R. Murray Schafer's book A Sound Education. The project aims to bring the listening and sound making exercises within the reach of soundscape-oriented people, especially school teachers and pedagogues. The project group Olli-Taavetti Kankkunen, Meri Kytö, Pessi Parviainen and Heikki Uimonen thank the author for his kind permission for permitting the publication of the book.
The Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology in 2012. FSAE is continuing the cooperation in Acoustic Heritage Project during the coming year. Also the soundscape projects taking place in Finnish Northern Karelia - Nurmes, Ilomantsi, Koli – will continue during the year 2012. (Submitted by Noora Vikman)
Finnish Gallery Focuses on Sound Arts. Galleria Akusmata is the first gallery that focuses on sound art in Finland. It opened its doors in December 2011 and is located in Helsinki. The first exhibition is called Black Cube and is based on 3D sound by Petri Kuljuntausta and 3D video by a video-jockey group Random Doctors. The sounds give impulses to the construction of the video. The exhibition will be open to public during December and January 2012. The second exhibition will open in the end of January 2012 and in the future the exhibitions change every three weeks. (Submitted by Noora Vikman)
Experiencing Silence Survey. Experiencing Silence is a National survey on silence related experiences and memories in Finland. Data is collected in co-operation with University of Helsinki, Ministry of Environment, Metsähallitus, Finnish Literature Society, The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland and several non-governmental organizations. Questionnaire is in Finnish, Swedish and Saame language. Ongoing survey ends May 2012. (Submitted by Noora Vikman).
 John Cage At 100. John Cage's 100th birthday is to be celebrated throughout 2012, with all manner of events scheduled for a worldwide celebration. Check out johncage.org for breaking news about music, poetry, theater, happenings, visual art exhibitions, publications, and an ever-expanding calendar of events, to which you're invited to contribute. (Photo: John Cage Centennial)
Art Celebrates Its Birthday. Art celebrates its 1,00,048th birthday in 2012. Last year, multiple networked live streams, performances, parties, and digital "gifts" were exchanged all around the world from January 15-18, 2011. Planning is underway for Art's 2012 birthday celebration.
What If Sound Matters Too?: Revisiting the Potential for Healthy Soundscape. Scott Bernstein co-founder and President of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a 33 year-old Chicago-based national innovations center that promotes healthy and productive communities, gave a presentation on "What If Sound Matters Too?: Revisiting the Potential for Healthy Soundscape" for the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology in September. The audio and accompanying slide show is available online. Click2Read&Listen
 Tuning Cusco 2011: Soundscape and Environment. The first Cusco, Peru public presentation about urban soundscapes and their implication in the daily life of people was given on Tuesday, December 13th by Alejandro Cornejo Montibeller. His talk, titled "Soundscape and Environment", was an effort to focus community interest on sound issues facing a city such as Cusco. Professor Montibeller has conducted research about the urban soundscapes of Lima and many other World cities. He teaches in the Research Workshop area of Radio Sonora (Ison) at the University of San Martin de Porres, Lima and is the curator of a sound arts festival. This talk was part of Tuning Cusco 2011.
Feeling Lost Sounds (Ivanhoe Newswire) For many people, living in a noisy world is a way of life. Escaping sounds of traffic, construction, and crowds isn’t always easy. Hearing birds sing at dawn and crickets chirp at dusk is getting harder and harder to find. Now, scientists are tapping into nature’s sounds and what the sounds can tell us about our world. (Also see next article) Click2Read
New Scientific Field Will Study Ecological Importance of Sounds (Science Daily) A Purdue University researcher is leading an effort to create a new scientific field that will use sound as a way to understand the ecological characteristics of a landscape and to reconnect people with the importance of natural sounds. Click2Read
 John Luther Adams: The Music of a True Place. (New Music Box) In a complex, chaotic world, Adams is the best kind of sonic guide: a humble, innately curious man with an ear deeply immersed in study. Glimpses of what he comes to know are reflected back to us through his music. In many cases, the aural images can be directly traced to the powerful natural world that surrounds him in his home state of Alaska, a landscape that has undeniably left its imprint on his work. More broadly, however, Adams uses composition as a way to explore and understand the world around him, regardless of borders real and imagined. (Photo: John Luther Adams) Click2Read
Great Tits Sing Low to Be Loved or High to Be Heard. (Science Daily) Barry White (American songwriter) knew it, and male Great Tits know it too: to be successful with the ladies you have to sing as low as possible. But to be heard above city noise, you need to sing high notes. Leiden biologist Wouter Halfwerk studies the role of pitch in communication between city birds. Click2Read
 Eavesdropping on America's National Parks (PBS) For four years, the National Park Service has been gathering natural sound in dozens of parks across the country. The idea is to protect visitors — and wildlife — from unwelcome noise. So far, sound has been recorded in about 20 of the country's 388 national parks. The goal is not to preserve natural sound in recordings, but to have a baseline from which to preserve it in the wild. (Photo: NPS) Click2Read&Listen
Sculpture Park Hires First Composer-in-Residence (Affton-Shrewsbury Patch) Laumeier Sculpture Park (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) has hired its first composer-in-residence, St. Louis-based sound artist Eric Hall. The 12-month residency is meant to encourage an active collaboration with Laumeier Sculpture Park’s collections and its landscape and is part of Laumeier’s curatorial focus on "archaeology of place." Click2Read
Occupy Audio: The Soundscape of the Protests. (The Atlantic) The story of technology and the Occupy movement is more than just high-tech new technologies. This post breaks from the smartphone-and-social-media-centric lens to think about sound as a political technology for the Occupy protests. Click2Read
The Call of the Wild Car Alarm. (PBS) Brooklyn artist Nina Katchadourian has a novel solution to noise pollution caused by the tones of common car alarms. She's created a new kind of alarm that blares bird songs that more or less follow the same familiar sonic pattern of most alarms, but with a "natural" twist. NPR's Rick Karr reports. Click2Listen
Noise Research to Combat 'Wind Turbine Syndrome'. (Science Daily) University of Adelaide acoustics researchers are investigating the causes of wind turbine noise with the aim of making them quieter and solving 'wind turbine syndrome'. Click2Read
How the Church Lost Her Soundscape (First Things) What Islam and the Reformation initiated, American churches have completed, voluntarily. Beginning with the charismatic revival and the Jesus movement, the most theologically conservative Protestant churches abandoned the tradition of Christian music and took on musical styles adapted from popular music. It has been an astonishingly rapid and thoroughgoing change. Click2Read
NFL rules on crowd noise. (Seattle Times) While the National Football League (USA) does not wish to place restrictions on spontaneous crowd noise or to diminish fan enjoyment in our sport, it is each club's responsibility to exert proper control over cheerleaders and mascots (including noise-making specialists hired exclusively for that purpose), use of scoreboards, message boards, etc. Artificial or manufactured crowd noise in League stadiums has increased to the extent that teams have notified the league office that they have experienced difficulty communicating within their bench area as well as on the field. Click2Read.
Soundtransit Project is Back. After a 10 month hiatus, the Soundtransit project is back thanks to the generous hosting support of Turbulence.org. SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. Phonography is the art of recording sounds from the environment around us, with an emphasis on the unintentional sounds which often go unnoticed in our daily lives. An international community of phonographers collect and share their recordings, with interests ranging from recordings of natural or urban environments to improvised situations or soundwalks to the resonance of solid objects or the Earth's atmosphere. Click2Visit site.
A Joyful Noise? (CBS) It is almost impossible to find natural quiet, especially in North America. For 18 years, Peter Acker has been traveling the world to collect the sounds of nature with the help of Max, a specially constructed microphone. Click2Read
Free Newsletter. The fall edition of the Noise Free America Newsletter is now online for those interested in noise related social and political issues. Click2Read
Cal-OSHA: Requiring Nonsensical Beep! Beep! Beep! (Noise Free America) The California Department of Industrial Relations (CAL-OSHA) has won this month's Noisy Dozen award from Noise Free America for its regulation 1592(a), which requires the backup alarm on most trucks hauling construction material to be normally audible at 200 feet in all directions. When audible at 200 feet in front of a truck, just how far are the alarms heard to the rear? During quiet periods and some weather conditions, these backup alarms will be audible more than twice these distances. Cal-OSHA's new backup alarm regulation is a prescription for more and more unnecessary, excessive noise. Click2Read.
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