WFAE Newsletter

WFAE Affiliate News

WFAE Chair Report. By Nigel Frayne. 2009 draws to a close and the WFAE looks forward to another active year in 2010. We look back to earlier in the year when many of us caught up in person at the conference in Mexico City. Stimulating presentations and the meeting of new colleagues from Latin America were a highlight. The opportunity for the WFAE Board to meet in person is always fruitful and this year we resolved to begin a process of transition from my chair-person-ship. Hill Kobayashi was subsequently appointed as Vice-chair and is now involved in Board deliberations and decisions.

Meantime each of the affiliates continue with their individual plans and activities. In Australia our focus has mainly been on producing the next journal which is now practically completed and ready for print. This has been a major undertaking by mainly two of our members, Anthony Magen and Jim Knox. I'd like to thank them for this effort and advise that, due to the schedule running in to the commercial shut down here over the New Year, the journal will now be posted in late January.

The next meeting place for us collectively will be in Koli, Finland in June 2010 where the FSAE will host an international conference. We look forward to seeing you there!

On behalf of the Board I would like to wish you all a happy and safe festive season. I would especially like to extend a warm and heart felt thanks to all the committee members who give up their time and energies in support of each of the local affiliate organisations. And finally thank you to my fellow board members, the affiliate reps. along with Gary Ferrington, Hildegard Westerkamp and Hill Kobayashi.

Editors Note: Nigel Frayne is an Acoustic Designer and Soundscape Composer. He is the director of the Melbourne based company, Resonant Designs. He provides conultation world wide throughout the USA, Europe and Asia as a senior designer for sound and electroacoustic soundscaping, projects have included zoos, museums, aquariums, science and exhibition centres, shopping and arts and leisure precincts.

WFAE Vice-Chair Commentary. By Hill Kobayashi. The sound of singing birds, buzzing insects, swaying leaves, and trickling water in a beautiful forest implicitly imprint the beauty of Nature in our minds. When we are emotionally stressed, recalling the beauty of nature can help us recover a sense of well-being. The crucial factor here is not the means of conveyance, that is, words or language, but “something” hovering around or an atmosphere that we cannot exactly identify.

High-resolution pictures of plants, bio-acoustical recordings of animals, and descriptions of the diversity of grand ecosystems are now easily available through interactive learning systems in the conservation movement. However, no matter how advanced the system or technology, these remain human–computer interactions that can never substitute for a true human–environment experience. Therefore, occasionally we will continue to escape from urban areas to seek out true experiences of nature. Ironically, the nature conservation movement, which promotes conservation areas for preservation purposes, has increased the demand for tourism in these areas and thus has accelerated the speed of environmental destruction. The missing factor here is not the knowledge or technologies, it is an interface with which we can be in nature

Soundscape is a necessary concept, a method, and an interface with which we can achieve a feeling of belonging to nature without causing environmental destruction and in which human and nature can coexist.

Editors Note: Hill Hiroki Kobayashi is a Research Fellow with the Japan Society of Promotion of Science and is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Cyber Interface Lab, The University of Tokyo. Mr. Kobayashi can be reached at vice-chair@wfae.net

News Report: American Society for Acoustic Ecology (ASAE)

The ASAE is planning its first retreat to be held the second weekend in July, 2010, hosted by the MWSAE (Mid-west Society for Acoustic Ecology) and the World Listening Project in Chicago. Members of the greater WFAE community are invited to participate, contact andrea@andreapolli.com or eric@ericleonardson.org for more information.

ASAE continues to expand! We will be welcoming a new official chapter at the retreat, the Bay Area Sound Ecology (BASE) group, and is currently in conversation with a new group forming in Rhode Island.

NYSAE Chapter News:

The NYSAE just wrapped up (end of October) a successful series of soundwalks as part of the public art festival called Art in Odd Places. Over sixty artists and artists groups created installations and did performances along 14th street, a busy thoroughfare for shopping and transportation that cuts across many Manhattan neighborhoods. Members Jamie Davis, Jonny Farrow, Edmund Mooney and Todd Shalom all led public walks focusing on different ways to encounter the urban soundscape: a slow traverse of 14th street; a sit & listen in Union Square; a nature-listening walk in Union Square; and a "dirty gay" soundwalk—a listening tour of important gay nightlife spots on/around 14th street. The event received an enormous amount of local press—documentation of some of our activities will follow before the end of the year and is to be posted to the NYSAE website.

Recent and upcoming Giant Ear))) shows: October was hosted by Mikhail Iliatov featuring "random" sounds and November was hosted by Bleakley McDowell and featured works from Hunter College's Intermedia Arts MFA program students. Both shows are available for streaming and download in the free103point9 archive. December will also be hosted by Bleakley McDowell. Make sure to tune in the for the last show in 2009 on Sunday 27 December, 7-9pm eastern time. And this just in from the shameless self-promotion department: make sure to pick up your copy of the Giant Ear))) cd—makes a great holiday gift! Available from CD Baby and the free103point9 website.

Member News:

NYSAE member Robin Locke Monda, as part of her MFA thesis, just created a fantastic educational website focusing on her native borough of Staten Island. The site is called soundslikestatenisland.com. It features a sound map of the borough, information about acoustic ecology and soundwalking, and of course, sounds! Please visit the site and drop Robin a line!

ASAE VP Andrea Polli published the article 'Listening to the Poles' in RETHINK, published by the National Gallery of Denmark as part of the official culture program for the UN Climate Change Conference and presented this work in a Leonardo Education Forum keynote and commissioned project at the 2009 Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Festival in Belfast Ireland. Her work on Antarctic soundscape and sonification has been awarded a 2010 Wings World Quest Women of Discovery Award.

NYSAE co-chair Jonny Farrow has just published a chapbook of poetics on listening entitled Be Hear Now; available from Sona Books Press.

News Report: Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology/Suomen Akustisen Ekologian Seura (FSAE).

The Soundscape Project Finished. Pirkanmaan äänimaisemat (Pirkanmaa Soundscapes) was a project collecting descriptions and observations about soundscapes in the area of Pirkanmaa during the Spring, Summer and Autumn of 2009. The aim of the project was to explore the diversity of soundscapes within the area. It focused on looking for information about different sounds connected to everyday life or special occasions, work or holiday, different seasons, urban or rural areas. The gathered soundscapes were considered meaningful either on a personal or more general level.

The project received proposals about sonic environments worth recording from February 2009 onwards, and stored and documented the sound information with the proposer. Part of the soundscape proposals were being recorded and laid out on the web site. All proposals as well as the recordings and interviews will be filed in the archives of the Department of Music Anthropology, University of Tampere, Finland.

You can listen to and comment on different, recorded soundscapes as well as explore the suggested descriptions (only in Finnish, sorry about that) on the blog. The easiest way to do this is to click on the map provided (click on'kartta'). For more information contact Project Coordinator Outi Kautonen at pirkanmaanaanimaisemat@gmail.com

Conference Planning Continues. The "Ideologies and Ethics in the Uses and Abuses of Sound" conference in Koli, Finland June 16-19, 2010, now has a web site that provides updated information about the deadline of writing the accepted abstracts and possible papers in published form. There is also more information on the trip to Sortavala and Valamo in Russia after the conference.

Up-Coming Items of Interest.

FSAE has cooperation plans with Turku, the European Capital of Culture 2011.
The opening of a sound exhibition in ”Rulla” centre for Children of Culture 7.8.-19.9.2010.
The Finnish Academy funded new research project “Soundscapes and Cultural Sustainability” begins in full in 2010.

SOUND BITES:

A Piano That Talks. The ordinary piano in this video produces speech. The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transformed the voice of a child doing an English recitation of The Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court into Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) events. These MIDI events then created a representation of the voice of the child via mechanically-controlled piano keyboard manipulations. The video commentary is in German with English captions. The spoken text played by the piano is in English. View video. Also, read a discussion in response to this video posted to a listserv by Dr. Robert Sylwester, a brain and education researcher.

Discourse On Creative Use of Sound. Ear Room is an online publication for developing critical discourse and debate on the creative, and explorative use of sound in artistic practice. Taking shape in the form of one-to-one interviews, the conversations offer a rich pool of insight and debate from a wide range of artists, writers, curators, labels and academics. The intention is to build a dialogue that can have future reference as a resource catalogue and offer a platform for rigorous, insightful and critical engagement in sonic arts. Read More. Also see: Ear Room on MySpace.

Silent night ... Is there peace anywhere in Britain? (Times Online).It is, according to the new noise map of Britain from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my best chance of peace and quiet. But noise is a layered thing and once the top slab of traffic has been peeled off here in Regent’s Park, it exposes you to other irritants. Could children be happy just a little more quietly? Would it kill that group of Russian tourists to exuberate somewhere else? Does a digger do anything but dig? Read Article.

The Sounds of Science. (BBC) Acoustic Engineer Trevor Cox takes us on a two-part journey into the world of acoustics research, starting with the sounds we love to hate. Read and Listen.

Researchers seek UK 'soundscapes" (BBC). A project has launched to capture the sounds of UK locations, mapping them to create "soundscapes" that can be visited by users of the project's site. Participants are asked to record 5 - 10 second intervals of sound using their mobile phones, describing where and why they took the recording.
The sound samples are then uploaded to a site where they are mapped. Read Article.

Conservatory of Flowers' model city, railroad (San Francisco Gate). Sound wizard Andrew Roth of Natural Sounds captured the voice of Giants announcer Renel Brooks-Moon, the organ at the Castro Theatre, a Chinatown funeral band, a theremin at the Exploratorium, the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill and the sea lions of Pier 39. Read Article.

Q&A with an acoustic ecologist (BBC) Questions and answers about Acoustic Ecology with Dr John Levack Drever, Unit for Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths, University of London. What is acoustic ecology? Read Article.

Ecologists Sound out New Solution for Monitoring Cryptic Species (Science Daily) Ecologists have at last worked out a way of using recordings of birdsong to accurately measure the size of bird populations. Read Article.

The Singing Lighthouse (BBC) "I wanted to make the lighthouse sing," says composer Ailis Ni Riain whose composition, the Lighthouse Lullaby uses the natural sounds and rhythms of the building - along with more conventional instruments and vocals." Read and Listen.

RESOURCES: Video - CD - Web - Print

Book: Noise Wars: Compulsory Media and Our Loss of Autonomy by Robert Freedman. Soft Cover: ISBN: 978-0-87586-714-4, Hard Cover: ISBN: 978-0-87586-715-1

Robert Freedman looks at the role of media in society in a unique way—by focusing exclusively on the emerging trend of audience captivity: the relocation of TV and other intrusive electronic media from our home, where we have personal control over it, to all the settings outside the home in which we don’t have control: buses, subways, taxis, elevators, retail stores, hotel and office lobbies, street corners, street furniture, and gas station pumps, among others.

Although the book comes down squarely against audience captivity as a media business model, it takes a conversational, even-handed approach that lets the facts speak for themselves. It does this by showing on the one hand the growth of captive-audience platforms and on the other the rise in people's resentment—even anger—at being made captive to electronic media they haven't asked for and from which they can't escape without personal cost.

By approaching the topic in this way, the book makes a compelling case that the media industry's growing reliance on audience captivity as a business model is setting up a values war not unlike the war between smokers and opponents of second-hand smoke. As the first systematic look at audience captivity from a social perspective, the book makes a crucial and timely contribution to research on and discussions about media and society.

This book offers resources, ideas and tools for people who care about the proper role of television and other electronic media in their lives and the lives of children. Consumers who are interested in media and society, and groups such as the Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood, Action Coalition for Media Education, Commercial Alert, Center for Screen Time Awareness, Center for Successful Parenting, and Parents Television Council, will find this book of high interest. (Source: Algora Publishers) Read More.

Book: Urban Sound Environment by Jian Kang Hard Cover:ISBN: 978-0-415-35857-6. Published by: Taylor and Francis. Publication Date: 13/09/2006. Pages: 304. Over the past two decades there have been many major new developments in the field of urban sound environment. Jian Kang introduces and examines these key developments, including: the development of prediction methods for urban sound propagation; establishment and application of noise-mapping software; new noise control measures and design methods. Also covered is the new EU directive on noise and the substantial actions it has brought about across Europe.

As the importance of soundscape, acoustic comfort and sound environment design have become widely recognized, Urban Sound Environments is a thoroughly useful book for students and practitioners in a wide range of fields, from urban planning and landscape through to architecture and acoustics. Learn more.

Web: Top 10 Incredible Sound Illusions. Following the popularity of our optical illusions lists (20 Amazing Optical Illusions, and Another 10 Amazing Optical Illusions), we have put together an amazing array of sound illusions (auditory illusions). In these illusions, your mind is tricked in to thinking it is hearing something when, in fact, it is not. Visit Site.

Web: Sound of Music | Central Station Antwerp (Belgium). More than 200 dancers perform their version of "Do Re Mi" in the Central Station of Antwerp. With just two rehearsals they created this amazing stunt oat 8:00 AM on the 23rd of March 2009. This was a promotion stunt for a Belgian television program that was looking for someone to play the leading role in "The Sound of Music". See Performance.

CD: Seattle Phonographers Union new release. The Seattle Phonographers Union celebrates the release of their eponymous CD, "Seattle Phonographers Union", a co-operative effort between Seattle-based imprints and/OAR and Mimeomeme. The Seattle Phonographers Union is a protean collective of sound artists, composers, and recordists who improvise live in real-time with unprocessed field recordings collected around the world. The SPU strive to create compelling juxtapositions of everyday and esoteric sounds: A flock of pigeons may alight near flowing water and distant temple bells while a long wire fence shimmers in the wind.
This CD collects unedited sections culled from favorite performances spanning from 2004 to 2008. Performers include Steve Barsotti, Peter Comley, Katie Gately, Mark Griswold, Doug Haire, Susie Kozawa, Dale Lloyd, Perri Lynch, Rob Millis, Toby Paddock, Heather Perkins, Steve Peters, and Jonathan Way.

RESEARCH and PROJECTS

Science of Sound in the Sea. The University of Rhode Island's Office of Marine Programs website offers interested parties a primer on the science of sound in the sea. The main topics covered here are "Sound", "Sound Movement", "Sound Measurement", "Sounds in the Sea", and "Advanced Topics". Visitors who are unfamiliar with the basics of sound should start out with "Sound" to learn about such subtopics as "How do you characterize sounds?" and "How are sounds made?" "Intensity", "Frequency", and "Wavelength" are also explained in "Sound". Visitors should note that within the subtopics, the words or phrases that are highlighted in green can be clicked on to read the definition. A menu on the left side of any page of a subtopic lists all the main topics, and scrolling over a main topic reveals all the subtopics available to peruse. Visitors shouldn't miss the "Sounds in the Sea" topic to learn about such concepts as "People and Animal Use", "Sonar", "Echolocation", and "Underwater Sounds". Source: Internet Scout Report Project.

Academia.Edu. Academia.edu launched last year now helps 300,000 academics a month answer the question 'who's
researching what?'. A dedicated page for the Soundscapeuk mailing list has been created that will show fellow members on Academia.edu. You can see their papers, research interests, and other information. Currently listed are Eleni Lapidaki, Ewan Stefani, Carl Stevens, Daniel Prieto, and Rachele Malavasi. Sign-up to see listings of their research interests, photos and papers.

OPPORTUNITIES: EVENTS

Call For Works Deadline: January 7, 2010
Ear to the Earth
New York City, NY, USA
~~~ Ear to the Earth is an annual festival and worldwide network based on the idea that environmental sound can connect us to the environment with a special vibrancy and emotional depth. The theme of next year's Ear to the Earth festival, to take place in October 2010, will be water.
    Although the festival will be focused at different venues in New York City, it will have an international scope. We would like to demonstrate that artists around the world are concerned about the environment.
    We're interested in the sounds of water and/or sounds or performances that will make us aware of water. We want to direct the public's attention to environmental problems relating to water, including, as a few examples, drinkable water, melting ice, rising sea levels, and polluted rivers.
    Call for works: Send descriptions of your ideas or works, or send pointers to websites or downloads by email to emf@emf.org with the words 'Ear to the Earth' in the subject line. If you prefer to send examples of your works as CDs or DVD's, send them to EMF, 307 Seventh Avenue Ste 1402, New York, NY 10001

Call Deadline: January 15, 2010
INTER-NOISE 2010 39th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering
Lisbon, Portugal
~~~ INTER-NOISE 2010, the 39th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, will be held in Lisbon, Portugal, from 13-16 June, 2010. The Congress is sponsored by the International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (I-INCE), and is co-organized by the Portuguese Acoustical Society (SPA) and the Spanish Acoustical Society (SEA). The Congress venue will be the modern Lisbon Congress Centre, located on the north bank of the River Tagus in a new rehabilitated tourist waterfront area, full of amazing gardens and esplanades.
Papers related to the technical areas listed there are especially welcome for presentation at the INTER-NOISE 2010 Congress. The deadline for the receipt of the abstracts is January 15th, 2010. Notification of the paper’s acceptance will be sent to authors on March 1st, 2010. Manuscripts for publication in the conference proceedings are due on April 1st, 2010. Full details available online.

Call Deadline: April 1, 2010
Sound as Art - Sound in History/Sound as Culture - Sound in Theory
Conference on sound studies
University of Aarhus, Denmark - September 23–25, 2010
~~~The aim of the conference is to profile contemporary sound studies as an interdisciplinary field of studies and to contribute to the discussion and development of the auditive paradigm in general. Key concepts like ‘acoustemology’, ‘acoustic space’ or ‘sonic environment’ might be reflected upon and developed as well, both at a theoretical level and with regard to specific cultural, medial and aesthetic contexts.
Proposals for presentations (20/10 mins) or workshops (90 mins) must be submitted to the conference organisers/programme committee by April 1, 2010 as an email attachment (rtf/pdf/doc) to soundstudies@hum.au.dk. Please include the following information: Paper abstract and title (max. 200 words), name(s), affiliation, e-mail, and technical equipment required (PC/DVD/CD/data projector/over-head projector/etc.). The conference is organized by the " National Research Network on Auditive Culture", the research project "Audiovisual Culture", and the Nordic Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

Event: January 13-16, 2010
Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities.
Honolulu, Hawaii USA
~~~The HICAH conference will be held from January 13 (Wednesday) to January 16 (Saturday), 2010 at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa and the Hilton Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii. The conference will provide many opportunities for academicians and professionals from arts and humanities related fields to interact with members inside and outside their own particular disciplines. Web Site.

Event: June 16-19, 2010 International Conference of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, Koli, Finland
"Ideologies and Ethics in the Uses and Abuses of Sound"
~~~ The 2010 WFAE conference will be held at Koli in Eastern Finland. Koli is a plausible site for reflecting upon ideologies, ethics and soundscapes, since it was amongst the key places of the national romantic artist pilgrims in the late 19th century Finland. The Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology (FSAE) invites researchers and artists from all disciplines to join this forum of discussion. Learn More.

Event: October 1-3, 2010 19th Annual International Conference on Traffic Noise
Dresden, Germany
~~~ The 19th Annual International Conference on Traffic Noise will be held on October 1-3 2010, in Dresden,Germany.
The HAMANN CONSULT AG warmly invites you to take part in the 2010 symposium to discuss the issues raised together with national and international experts and top decision makers. Papers that focus on the described topics are very welcome. Our aim is to further increase the quality of the event regarding its expert content as well as to enhance the comfort of our conference guests. Therefore, we are grateful for any suggestion addressed to us regarding possible workshop topics and plenary papers to create an interesting conference program. For information concerning the conference, the submission of papers and for purchasing the conference proceedings please contact:

Ms. Gesa Ristock
International Conference Marketing
Email: gristock@hamann-consult.de
Phone: +49 351-473 78 15

On-Going: Sound Is Art
~~~ Sound Is Art is a weekly listening magazine seeking to share your unique work with the international sound and music community. Please share your recordings from the following categories:

ARCHIVAL RECORDINGS: Old vinyl snippets and other bits of sound history
FIELD RECORDINGS: Recordings taken from the natural environment with minimal studio processing.
UNUSUAL INSTRUMENTS AND GEAR: Recordings from unique electronic and acoustic instruments.
PERFORMANCE: Excerpts from live sound art performances.
PROCESS: Sound art compositions with interesting source material and studio processing.
SOUND ODDITIES: Uncategorized interesting sound phenomena.

Email an MP3, a related picture (or a few pictures) and a brief description to: margaretnoble2000@yahoo.com

On-Going: Hering Blog Seeks Videos.
~~~ Within our (audio) series Hering (yes, derived from Hearing) we have recently started a new sub-series called Hering Video Edition. Both are targeted at small audiences in very special locations, the most unique being a loft within a 19 century water mill. We are not interested in video art as such, but in those that are linked to sound art or sound artists, like we have started with videos that had soundtracks by artists like Chris Watson, John Wynne and Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay.
If you have videos that don´t exceed 12 minutes in duration, and if you accept that Hering as a non-profit enterprise can´t pay any fees except notifying your work with copyright societies your video(s) are welcome for being checked for projection at further Hering Video Editions.
Information on Hering, both audio and video, sorry only in German, as well as some pictures of the venues you will find at: http://hering.umbra.de

On-Going Call For Sounds: Sound Is Art
~~~ Margaret Noble has started a new ezine that in some ways functions as a museum of unique sound recordings. It is called, 'Sound Is Art!'. It is currently hosted on her website as a blog but her plan is to get a more appropriate domain name soon. She is interested in sound submissions from those who would like to contribute. Visit site: http://margaretnoble.net/blog/

On-Going Call For Work: Submissions for Letters on Sounds, Luvsound's new Journal
~~~ Luvsound is now accepting submissions of new writing on sound for a forthcoming online (and possibly short-run print) journal called Letters on Sounds.
     We're interested especially in writing on the practice of making, listening, and living with sound from artists who work primarily with sound. Please do not submit album reviews or other similar work.
     Letters on Sounds hopes to be a platform for people working in new ways with sound, especially as that might relate to a particular community, to share their approaches and experiences with others of a like mind.
     To submit, please send a short email to erik@luvsound.org with a two to ten sentence description of your piece, as well as a brief biographical statement. Luvsound is a arts co-op and record label based in New Orleans and Brooklyn.