Soundscape

The term soundscape ( soundscape ) is an English portmanteau composed of the words sound and Landscape. The Soundscape describes the acoustic shell that surrounds a person in a particular place.

Soundscapes are used in music, radio art and sound art. In particular, in the musique concrète sounds of nature, technology and the environment are taken with the microphone and edited both unprocessed or slightly used as electronically altered. Musicians who use in their compositions soundscapes are, among others, Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp, Luc Ferrari, Francisco López, Klaus Hinrich Stahmer and Steve Reich.

Definition

The soundscape is the core concept of a young interdisciplinary science, Sound Studies, which deals with sound research, acoustic communication and sound design. Focus of soundscape research is the relationship between man and the ligand is located in constant change environmental sounds.

Under a soundscape refers to the interaction of the acoustic phenomena that produce in a room and through this. The soundscape of a place is made up of natural sounds, language, labor and machine noise, and music. Soundscapes ranging from sound art, music or sound design in shopping malls, airports or offices, to soundscapes of cities, villages and landscapes. It may be the smallest nuances that give a sound a specific characteristic, and thus make it unique.

Conceptual history

The term " soundscape " appears in the thesis of the American architect Michael Southworth for the first time in 1969. But it was coined by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer and sound researcher, who called the 1971 World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC to life. The WSP is supported by UNESCO and the Donnar - Canadian Foundation. The main objective was to record the sound effects and catalog, in order to analyze the changes over the years. Based on these analyzes, the WSP explores the sociological and aesthetic aspects of the acoustic environment.

With Schafer's main work, The Tuning of the World (1977 ), the term became internationally known. German translation experiments like " soundscape " and " soundscape " could not prevail.

Theory of Soundscape

Lo-Fi and Hi- Fi

Due to the industrial and especially electro-mechanical revolution of the 18th and 19th century machine noise and speaker sounds have become much more present. The result is that the differentiable soundscapes, in which man can make acoustic single events (eg birds chirping ), the soft inflection soundscapes. These are so overloaded, so that the man can only perceive very loud sounds and is overwhelmed by the soundscape with sounds.

Murray Schafer called the forefather of the soundscape movement acoustically cluttered soundscapes ( example of a Central Station) as lo-fi - and the acoustically differentiable soundscapes ( example, an alpine pasture ) and Hi-Fi.

Within a hi-fi landscape overlap sounds to a lesser extent. Schafer identifies the acoustic assembly as perspective with a front and a back background. So could continue to hear in the distance than in a city the listener due to the peaceful environment. The city therefore amounts to atrophy of the wide listening ( and far vision). This is the most important change in the history of perception. In a lo-fi landscape ( sphere ) the individual acoustic signals are overshadowed by a higher- compacted volume accumulation. So, a clear sound, like the snapping of a shattering branch, covered by a broadband noise. The perspective would be lost - in the city there is only present, no distance.

The hi-fi or lo-fi property of a place affects it significantly impact the subjective perception and evaluation of a place.

The description of sound spheres

According to Schafer classified spheres in three main features: keynotes, signal sounds, and orientation sounds.

The term comes from the fundamental theory of music; there he determines the key or tonality of a composition. The root of a soundscape, however, is made up of geography, climate, flora and fauna. Signal sounds are clearly contoured sounds. Most are warning signs: bells, whistles, horns and sirens. You can be organized extensive codes ( such as horn signals in India), but it can decipher and understand the recipient.

Orientation sounds found in a society special attention. They characterize the acoustic life of a community.

Pre-industrial soundscape / Post-industrial soundscape

Schafer distinguishes between the pre-industrial soundscape and the post-industrial soundscape. During the pre-industrial soundscape will mainly determined by natural sounds, the post-industrial soundscape is saturated with machine noises. The result was a rapid increase in acoustic information, so that only a few of them to perceive clearly and should be classified. Schafer explores the acoustic break to the industrial age, including through written records. So Renée Mauperin describes the upheaval in 1865 as: " ... The noise of foundries and the whistle of the steam engine torn all moments the silence over the river ."

The historian Oswald Spengler leads to a possible function of volume or noise. If the power of a sound sufficient to create a great acoustic profile, one could call it imperialistic. As an example, the comparison between a man with a jackhammer and a man with a shovel could use.

There, an acoustic space each is ruled and other acoustic activities are interrupted. This mastery of acoustic activities and the resulting attention, the industry is making the world, without regard to other cultures, to use. Industry must grow, and with it their soundscape. This is an ongoing process over the last two hundred years.

The flat running sound wave ( traveling wave )

Another feature of the industrial revolution is the flat running sound wave. It is caused by speed and resistance. Rhythmic pulses obtained by different speeds, different pitches. From a frequency of 20 hertz, the impetus for the human ear merge into a continuous tone. Not all sound waves are flat. Every sound has a characteristic curve that consists of different sections: Einschwingflanke, body, transitional oscillations and decay. The visualization ( sound recorder) a sound body, which consists of a constant tone, one sees a langgezogende horizontal line - a traveling wave. Machines generate noise with low information value and high redundancy. Machines can hum, such as generators, or they can be interrupted by cascades rhythms, like sewing or threshing - in any case, they continuously produce sound. According to this phenomenon was created by the industrial revolution and enhanced by the electrical engineering. The consequences are permanent base tones and broadband noise waves.

Flat running sound waves can only be changed by an increase or decrease in speed. This happens through a continuous change and acts as a glissando. Another phenomenon, the result of the industrial revolution and thus the traveling wave is the " Doppler effect " is. Although this effect was already present, for example, the galloping of a horse or the humming of a bee, but it has only been discovered in the course of the increased speeds of the 19th century.

The Schizophonie

In connection with the development of recording, playback and transmission technologies Murray Schafer sees as a major problem the separation of the original sound of his cause. He speaks in this context of the Schizophonia, the Greek prefix " schizo- " the separation or separation and the syllable " phonia " said the voice. The word Schizophonia suppressed based on the concept of schizophrenia from the nervousness that is created when a sound is separated from its source. Murray Schafer represents taking the position that each sound unique and inseparable from the mechanism that permits it produces is. Recording and transmission technology make it possible, however, to separate the sound from the polluter and reproduce in other places and in other contexts. Nowadays, one could take each tiny sound of nature, high levels and send around the world. The independent existence of sounds in time and space can spread nervousness and anxiety, according to Murray Schafer. Murray Schafer's recordings of a lake, falling on the rain, have a documentary character, because he wants to preserve the reference to the sound polluters.

Landscape Ecology

The traditional landscape ecology is concerned with the landscape structure and its functions, including the underlying ecological and anthropogenic processes. Since the mid- 2000s science focuses addition to the existing visual aspects but also on the " sonic environment". They are increasingly examined the qualitative relationships between landscape structure, its functions and the daily sound patterns. The spatial and temporal variability in the perception of sound and identify dominant sound categories ( sounds human, biological or geophysical origin) is examined in relation to landscape characteristics. Meanwhile, the landscape ecology assumes that every landscape has its own specific sound.

R. Murray Schafer talks about a stunting of the human listening habits. This was mainly a result of technical developments in the audio range, since the Hi -Fi quality sound let the real world appear to be lo-fi. His vision is an auditory balanced society, find in their soundscape all sounds up to complete silence place. The specialized listening room in culture and media, however, WOULD almost like a vacuum that must be filled through performance and ritual. Barry Truax, who is seen by some as a successor Schafer, sees music, language, sounds, synthesized sound and silence of as a continuum, as a cognitive composite with smooth transitions. It developed Truax sound systems that are closely connected, as " organized sound ". This is not only useful on communication, but mainly affect the electro-acoustic design of the current and future world positively. While Schafer's perspective is more oriented high historically in order to understand today's soundscape evolutionary, Truax tried to set up an analysis model, in which the acoustic communication can substantiate the basis of different situations. The focus of this analysis model, the mesh of sound and hearing is within all human interactions.