In conclusion the authors of the report of the soundscape research study group Jean-François Augoyard, Henrik Karlsson, Justin Winkler propose:

• The establishment of a permanent scientific soundscape research group is highly desirable.This group is self-constituting and acts as a coordinating agency and centre of expertise which supports research projects and programmes at an international level.
• The soundscape research group evaluates project proposals and accompanies their execution. This will be done by by bringing together people on an interdisciplinary and international basis, linking their methodological and technical knowledge, and giving directions for fundraising. The group communicates and cooperates with eventually existing study groups for education and for the arts.
• The soundscape research group creates an interdisciplinary centre for advanced studies in sound and soundscape research. This centre is not necessarily permanent and bound to a single place or institution, but can emerge in a calendrical turn in different regions.
• The soundscape research group provides a scheme for scientific communication that takes into account the problem of language and different scientific cultures.

Resolution

adopted June 13th, 1998 by the Conference participants in the Assembly Room of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm:

In recognition of the fact that sound is of vital importance in forming our relationship with the world, the general assembly of the conference Hör upp! Stockholm Hey Listen! unanimously recommends to individuals, organizations and authorities everywhere the following actions:

1. To enhance a sense of privacy of the individual's sonic space.
2. To support the development of sound-oriented educational programs at all levels from childhood onwards, and to initiate research into all aspects of the sonic environment.
3. To improve the sound design in objects and media, and to support programs for the training of sound designers.
4. To create and enforce legislation to protect the acoustic environment and the public health; both aimed at ensuring a better quality of life.

In conclusion we wish to draw public attention to the important initiatives already undertaken to these ends in the Manifesto for a Better Sound Environment by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, the Mission Statement of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and in the Report and Resolution of the Soundscape Research Study Group of the present conference.

Stockholm, June 13th 1998

A Comment on the Final Discussions By Catharina Dyrssen, Göteborg

Art and research. Art or research? Art and action? Research and Action? The last day of the Stockholm conference was devoted to concluding discussions, mildly conducted by Albert Mayr and Claude Schryer in the form of "quasi una sonata", as Albert Mayr later described it.

Introductions were made by Xavier Bonnefoy (WHO, Copenhagen), Keiko Torigoe (Tokyo), Arline Bronzaft (New York) and Jean-François Augoyard (Grenoble), representing environmental strategies and action, health politics, and research methodology. The conference as a whole had expressed a wide range of approaches to sonic questions, and the richness of the collective knowledge and skills had been impressive. This last day, a natural urge for structuring the forces appeared in the assembly. How are we to work most efficiently?

A suggestion was made to form a research institute or a network in order to coordinate scientific ambitions, but some participants (I among them) opposed to this idea as it might obstruct creative interactions between research, art and politics which could be useful for gaining practical results on sound issues. Another argument was that it is better to work from the highly qualified research centres that are already established than to formalise a new institute.

The discussion never got to a single final statement (thank God), but ended with an open resolution and the forming of a number of equally open networks in research, design, architecture and planning, education to continue contacts.

Contact: Catharina Dyrssen, Kennedygatan 16, S - 414 73 Göteborg, eMail

Some personal reflections on the conference it was good to:

1. listen to ourselves and to sit quietly listening to others listen to others' listening...
2. be inspired by the actions of the Japanese and their innovative "soundscape preservation" projects...
3. hear Murray Schafer end his opening speech with "one must also know when to stop making sound"...
4. be reminded by Arne Naess that the sound environment is not only an important part of the ecological crisis but also an essential link in our quality of life...
5. observe the emergence of sound design as a discipline and partner in the acoustic ecology community...
6. consider noise pollution problems in an interdisciplinary and socially enlightened context and as Birgitta Berglund suggests "to compose with the noise"...
7. be critical of new media and critical of our own ignorance in this field...
8. consider acoustic ecology as a model for other forms of environmentalism...
9. remember the good "practical" advice of Xavier Bonnefoy of the Who, including the notion that community involvement is at the heart of social change...
10. consider "Northern Soundscapes" and have a wonderful yearbook to take home as a reminder...
11. compose time with Albert Mayr and open the windows of the "action day" to the world...
12. experience less as more...
13. be in the kind and wise company of Henrik Karlsson and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music...
14. have Ola Stockfeldt remind us that we are all excellent listeners...
15. realise that building a mature society involves letting go of our individual egos...
16. to be present when a Minister of the Environment of Sweden agrees that sound is of importance on the social and environmental agenda... 1
17. listen to the endless debates, misunderstandings and moments of convergence within the acoustic ecology community...
18. hear a fabulous concert of the church bells of Stockholm...
19. feel a historic shift in the acoustic ecology community as we progressively move from awareness to action...
20. see the WFAEgive itself a solid structure and a bold mission...
21. visit Stockholm as a model of an ecologically balanced city where clean water flows in the heart of the city...

Contact: Claude Schryer, 4280, Clark - Montreal QC H2W 1X3 - Canada; fon +1 514 842 1088, fax +1 514 987 1862, eMail

At the Stockholm Conference on Acoustic Ecology I was able to meet with like-minded individuals from many countries and disciplines. Meeting face to face with people, rather than knowing them through e-mail or their academic/artistic works, is much more to my liking. Furthermore, in such personal meetings there is a greater tendency to discuss matters other than those related to the basic theme of the symposium and, of course, there is the opportunity to engage in moments of fun and light-heartedness. Thus, a conference can be both personal and friendly as well as educational and scholarly.

The delightful setting of the city of Stockholm, as well as the wonderful treatment extended to the participants by the host, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, also made the "Hey Listen Conference" especially memborable.

The "Hey Listen Conference," in bringing participants together from different disciplines and countries, served to underscore the fact that the issues concerning sound and noise are not bound by culture nor discipline. On a more personal note, I thank my fellow participants, for whom English was not the primary language, for being able to present and discuss their papers in English as well as conversing with me in my native tongue, not theirs. In a larger sense, however, hearing the participants speak among themselves in lanauges other than English further emphasized the international flavor of acoustic ecology.

All participants warned that our natural sounds are endangered as they are being drowned out by the roaring of overhead planes, the blasting of sirens, the honking of automobile horns, and a myriad of sounds that are "just too loud." Hopefully, having gathered together as a group, we will continue to work as one to caution against excessive sound abuse and to protect and enhance the beautiful sounds of our world.

Contact: Prof. Arline L. Bronzaft PhD, 505 East 79th Str., Apt. 8B, New York NY, USA, eMail HYPERLINK "mailto:albtor@aol.com"

Introduction

With the following text I do not at all want to suggest that the WFAE reconsider its name. 'Acoustic ecology' is certainly a workable programmatic motto and a sufficiently catchy slogan for the promotion of our goals. Nevertheless I think that now that the organizational and functional set-up is well defined we can afford:

• to define more clearly, to ourselves in the first place, what the term means and what it definitely should not mean.
• to discuss how comfortable we feel with it.

Excerpts from a listening (and not) diary

June 1998. I am walking up a mountain. It's a nice, sunny day. Some birds, their visual presence strangely out of sync with their acoustic presence, irregular wafts of wind bringing fragments of the traffic noise in the valley up to where I am. Suddenly the weather gets worse. I want to make it to the top, but don't want to get caught in a storm. So I walk faster and faster, my heartbeat accelerates, I feel the blood hammering in my ears, now I can also hear it. Aha, I think, here I have a new entry for my listening diary. The hammering becomes quite loud, all other sounds get amplitude-modulated by it.

To my surprise, the big dark clouds in the sky move away as quickly as they had arrived. I relax. The hammering in the ears is still there, it's not audible anymore but still modulates the external sounds. I reach the top and rest. On the way back, with my auditory perception back to normal, I try to find an appropriate angle for the listening diary. I have gone through a lot of 'earmindedness' (part of it not voluntary, part of it not auditory), but is this the right vanage point? From when on do I register my heartbeat, for example, from the moment I can feel it distinctly, from the moment it starts affecting my perception of the sounds around me, or from the moment it becomes audible by itself? Could there not be a way of integrating the acoustic phenomena into the wider context of the psychophysiogical experience?

Billy et al.

WFAE is committed to respect and protect the sonic manifestations of all species. There is, of course, nothing to be said against this. But how do we go about those low-frequency oscillations that are sonic to other species but not to us, simply because we can't hear them? Does our committment extend to them too? This may look like a minor issue, but I think it has methodological implications that are not secondary.

Billy is my dog. From our angle he behaves rather ecologically, that is, he barks rarely. When the siren of a police-car or an ambulance passes nearby he howls against it, out of discomfort, I imagine, although sometimes he gives also the impression of trying to join in an ancestral ritual. I will never know, probably, nor will I know whether other forms of his behaviour that may appear strange to me are due to acoustic signals or noises that he can hear and I cannot.

The frequency and amplitude ranges within which we perceive oscillations as sounds are, as we know, different from those of other species. Thus it may seem rather anthropocentric to say: Let's take care of the low-frequency phenomena we can hear, what's outside our perception range may attract our attention occasionally, but is not of real concern to us.

Acoustic Ecology and Time Geography

Most disturbing and ugly sounds originate from some human activity. Now, certainly such sounds need to be fought against whatever their origin may be. At the same time I think there are certain activities that by themselves are closer to our field of interest and thus may deserve some special attention. Let's take traffic, for instance. Here the AE approach follows two main lines: Noise abatement (involving research and activism) and acoustic design (involving research and lobbying for implementation of better solutions). Furthermore we are also in favour of measures aiming at reducing individual motor traffic, such as a greater availability of low-cost public transport and the promotion of the use of bicycles in urban areas.

I believe we should go a step further and also ask a few questions that, at first sight, have little to do with AE, such as: Why do people today move around so much? (Let's ignore the transport of goods for the moment.) Which characteristic patterns can one detect in the mobility of a given population? Do these patterns tell us anything relevant?

Now somebody may argue that, if we go as far as asking such questions, by the same token we ought also to investigate, say, the economic and other processes of industrial plants. I don't agree, because human travels, be they on foot from one's home to the grocery next door, be they in a jet around the world, are mechanical oscillations, out of our hearing range certainly, but just a few powers of ten below the oscillations we are dealing with normally and thus rather akin to sounds.

A suggestion

What I am trying to hint at through these sketchy examples is this: Perhaps we could use the term AE not only in its current meaning, i.e. referred to audible oscillations, but also in a broader, more abstract meaning, in the sense of an acoustically inspired approach to all low-frequency phenomena.

This would link us to the musical-ecological approach (so to speak) of the Pythagorean tradition, with its extended concept of music that comprises everything periodic in the low-frequency field, audible or not, and much more.

Using AE in a figurative sense would also open up some so far neglected interdisciplinary links. In fact, if we leave aside the fields that deal with audio phenomena from different angles (acoustics, psycho-acoustics, etc.) it appears that our interdisciplinary dialogue has been primarily with disciplines concerned with static configurations (architecture, urban planning). This has led, in part, to a notion of environmental sound as being another element in the "furniture" of substantially static spaces. Thus it seems appropriate to bring AE back in contact with the disciplines that look (and listen) to the environment (natural and man-made) from a dynamic angle and think of it as a set of processes and flows.

Contact: Prof. Albert Mayr, Time Design, Via del Pratellino 7, CP 18106, I - 50129 Firenze, fon +39 55 580950 fax +39 55 578007, E-Mail: brauen@tin.it

Introduction

The study of soundscapes is an interdisciplinary research effort, and it is probably necessary to keep it that way. There are great advantages with interdisciplinary work, but there are also problems associated with differences between research cultures. Some of these problems concern the concepts used to construct the theoretical framework. This article aims at describing one such problem within acoustic ecology i.e. the differences between a phenomenological and an ecological approach and to discuss some of its consequences for soundscape design.

Hopefully, this critique will be taken as an attempt to start a debate about the concepts used in acoustic ecology, and not as a critique of the project as such. The author does not attempt to cover all aspects of the theoretical framework of acoustic ecology (as represented in for example [8]), but addresses one general question that seemed to be of importance at the conference Stockholm, Hey Listen!, namely whether acoustic ecology is about ecology or not.

Phenomenology and ecology

The study of soundscapes is about the experiences of sound, in contrast to the physical properties of sounds. It is about "Ear-mindedness" [10] and conscious awareness of the sounds that surround us. The first-person perspective and personal experience are central, making this approach essentially phenomenological. Ecology, on the other hand, is about the interaction between living plants or animals and their environment (including other plants and animals).

Although at least some parts of the ecological movement are human centred, ecology is not only about us ecology forces us to consider the living conditions for other species than our own. This makes it impossible for ecology to be based on a first-person perspective, because even though we might know what the experience of another human being is like and even this is not trivially true we will probably never know what it is like to be another animal [cf. 6].

This is not to say that we have to adopt a mere behaviourist approach to the study of soundscapes, but rather that we have to complement our phenomenological approach with something that acknowledges the many different forms of interaction between agents and their environment. There are research approaches within acoustic ecology that focus on interaction [cf. 1, 7, 9], but these are human centred and must be complemented if they are to be applied within an ecological framework.

What indicates a good soundscape?

Given that we have to complement our phenomenological approach with something based on agent-world interaction, will the present criteria for good soundscapes still do? Truax's description of a good soundscape seems to be typical: The criteria for soundscape design are embodied in the ideal of Schaferës hi-fi, balanced soundscape which promotes active listening and even sonic delight which he describes as the soniferous garden. The predominant strategy is to maximize pleasing and informative sounds and to minimize unwanted or uninformative (e.g. flatline or broadband) sounds. [9, p. 11]. These criteria take the listener's experience as the starting point, and before we can conclude that these criteria are ecologically valid as well, we have to examine them further. According to the argument made above, we have to substitute the listenerës experience with conditions for agent-world interaction.

Informative Sounds

One of the most discussed sources of noise pollution is the sound of traffic. The constant noise in a city might not be a good soundscape, but does it consist of non-informative sounds? Consider for example listening to noise due to traffic when trying to get to sleep. The noise is likely to disturb us, as our current activity requires silence. The constant noise does not seem to be very informative at all.

However, when in the street walking or biking, the very same sounds might be very informative. The sounds of the cars around an agent specify what is happening and helps the agent adapt to rapidly changing conditions. An approaching car will be noticed, even if it is not seen, due to the sounds it makes. If cars were silent this would not be possible; Henrik Karlsson organiser of Stockholm, Hey Listen! warned us about the fast cyclists in Stockholm: They are silent and therefore dangerous!. To the agents involved in traffic, the sounds are of vital importance to their interaction with each other. The sounds of the cars are also informative for the agents driving the vehicles: the sounds inform about when to change gear, when to stop and attend to the engine etc. Apparently, the very same sounds can be both informative and non-informative.

The property of being meaningful might not only depend on different activities, but on, for example, how far from its origin an acoustic event is propagated. However, it is not necessarily the case that sounds propagated from far away are uninformative. Sounds also help orientation, and the sound of traffic might for example inform an agent about the direction to a nearby city or road. This can be quite valuable information, when, for example, lost in the woods.

The eventual meaningfulness of sounds also depends on other sounds in the present soundscape. The sound signal of a mobile phone can be informative if there are only a few phones in the immediate environment, but it can also be uninformative if there are many phones around and it is difficult to say which one is calling. This problem partly depends on the way the signal is designed (hard to differentiate in terms of identity and direction), but also of the signal's secondary function: to inform the user's surroundings that she owns a mobile phone.

Pleasing Sounds

That ideas about beauty and aesthetic values vary enormously is not a very controversial statement. We all have our own view on what our environment should look, feel, smell, and sound like. However, even if there were something called pleasant sounds that we all could agree upon, it is not trivially true that these sounds would make up the soundscapes we want to have.

Although silent, meaningful sounds influence an agent's present activities that is what makes them meaningful and informative and sometimes this can be quite disturbing and not a very pleasant experience at all. This might be one of the reasons why some people find certain types of noise relaxing it does not inform them of anything that might influence their current activities, and if you are trying to get to sleep, it does no harm if the noise makes you tired as well.

Interaction and experience

As it seems, the meaningfulness of sound depends on the interaction between agents and their environment to what extent and in what way the acoustic events influence an agents activities. "Activity" does not imply a behaviourist notion of action and behaviour, but includes mental activities like planning, problem solving, reasoning etc. as well (to the extent that the agent in question possess these cognitive abilities). The relation between interacting with the world and experiencing it, is also evident in our ways of expressing ourselves: how we interact with our environment and how we experience it, are intimately related.

As some readers might have noticed, the analysis made here has a lot in common with Eleanor and James Gibsonës ecological psychology and particularly their theory of affordances [cf. 2, 3, 4, 5]. The notion of meaningfulness employed in this article is basically their concept of affordances. Eleanor and James Gibsonës ecological psychology is one of the most interesting candidates for the complement we ought to be looking for.

Discussion

Ecology forces acoustic ecology to consider the acoustic environments for all species and not just humans. In order to do this, acoustic ecology has to complement its present phenomenological approach based on personal experience, with something that enables the community to describe and theorise about conditions for interaction between different sorts of agents and their environments.

When substituting acoustic ecology's focus on experience with ecology's focus on interaction, we face a relativism we do not want. Criteria for good soundscapes, such as informative and pleasing sounds, do not seem to hold in an ecological context. Using criteria such as these should prove even more problematic in more remote domains of acoustic ecology, especially when our own experiences are not in focus.

The property of being a meaningful sound clearly depends on the interaction between agents, activities, and their acoustic environments. However, a complement that would satisfy the new demands of ecology, might not have to force us to leave phenomenology. Using a theoretical framework like the theory of affordances or a notion of meaningfulness enables us to keep the phenomena while acknowledging the many and complex ways of agent world interaction. Such a framework would also acknowledge the intimate relation between listening and soundmaking, and can encompass the notion of the listener as composer (as whether a certain acoustic event is a musical one or not, depends on the way the listener is listening).

All of this comes at a price, though. Due to the intimate relation between the properties of sounds and the interaction between agents and their environments, it will be impossible to classify a sound or soundscape as good or bad, without also classifying the activities performed in them correspondingly. When promoting, protecting or prohibiting certain sounds and soundscapes, we will also be promoting, protecting or prohibiting ways for agents to interact with each other and the rest of the environment. This i.e. soundmaking as only a part of behaviour in general is a much more difficult problem, especially when it comes to our moral guidelines about what to accept and what not to. Moreover, if acoustic ecology is not to be thought of as a form of aesthetic moralism, the guidelines for soundscape design must be argued for very carefully. The ecological movement may have its own special aesthetic values, but that is not what makes it ecological.

References

1. Augoyard, Jean-FranÁois (1998). The Cricket Effect. Which Tools for the Research on sonic urban Ambiences? In: Papers presented at the conference Stockholm, Hey Listen! June 9-13, p. 1-7. Stockholm, The Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

2. Gibson, Eleanor J. (1977). How Perception Really Develops: A View from outside the Network. In: Laberge, D. & Samuels, S. J. (eds.): Basic Processes in Reading: Perception and Comprehension, 155-173. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum

3. Gibson, Eleanor J. (1982). The Concept of Affordances in Development: The Renascence of Functionalism. In: Collins, W. A. (eds.): The Concept of Development, vol. 15, 55-81. Hillsdale, New Jersey: L. Erlbaum Associates

4. Gibson, James J. (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company

5. Gibson, James J. (1979/1986). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers

6. Nagel, Thomas (1986). The View From Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.

7. Thibaud, Jean-Paul (1998). The Acoustic Embodiment of Social Practice. In: Papers presented at the conference Stockholm, Hey Listen! June 9-13, p. 17-22. Stockholm, The Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

8. Truax, Barry (ed.) (1978). Handbook For Acoustic Ecology. The Music of the Environment Series; No. 5. Vancouver, A.R.C. Publications.

9. Truax, Barry (1998). Models and Strategies for Acoustic Design. In: Papers presented at the conference Stockholm, Hey Listen! June 9-13, p. 8-16. Stockholm, The Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

10. Wagstaff, Gregg (1998). Utopianism: from Cage to Acoustic Ecology. In: Papers presented at the conference Stockholm, Hey Listen! June 9-13, p. 23-29. Stockholm, The Royal Swedish Academy of Music

Haga Park Evening Soundwalk

Around nine p. m., the air was still warmed by sunlight as we stepped out of the buses at the Haga park in eastern Stockholm. Walk silently, was the stipulated rule, which turned some of us into solemn listeners and some into giggling children.

Traffic noise gradually decreased as the green shores around the bay enveloped us with their trees and birds and playing people. Feet on gravel suddenly overwhelmed the ears, and some instinctively started walking on the grass beside the path. Dense parts, dominated by the quiet rustling of leaves and twittering birds, interchanged with open, green slopes that brought in the reflections from the water. After some kilometre we reached the small Echotemple, a beautiful little pavillion from the late 18th Century. Marc Crunelle held and interesting minilecture on the mysteries of soundwaves which ended up in a lot of hooing around some people patiently trying to have a quiet picnic on the floor.

This park was once the royal pleasure garden, a Swedish counterpart to le Trianon by Versailles. Its rhythm comes from the graceful cultivation of plants and movements, a soft polarity between city and landscape, with the pavillion as a very precise accent. Today, the park is a huge green bowl framed by traffic. The city never lets off its presence; all the time you know that you are in an urban environment. But part of the loveliness of the place, its scents and sounds, soft shapes and colours, are derived from this polarity with the city.

From the pavillion we walked down to the shore where a covered boat was waiting with beers and sandwiches on the tables. A tremendous noise broke out. All of us were talking at the top of our voices, keeping up in intensity with the roaring engines of the boat and the flaming sunset of the late evening. The evening surely produced a rhythmic variation of sounds over time and space.
Catharina Dyrssen, Göteborg

Nachmittags, gegen 16 Uhr: die Konferenzteilnehmer an Deck eines Bootes auf Hafenrundfahrt. Endlich k^nnen sie reden, nach stundenlangem Stillsitzen und Zuh^ren. Und sie reden und reden. Die Schiffs-Motoren dr^hnen. Die Konferenz H^rer reden. From awareness to action. Was für eine Freude, zu sprechen! Great to meet you t-t-t-t-t-t-tuck. Haven't seen you tucktucktucktuck long time - how tucktuck you? When is your tucktucktucktuck schedulded? What is tuckt-t-t-t-t -tuck impression of tucktucktuckference? Tucktucktucktucktucktuck did you like the music tucksterday in the tucktucktucktuck.... - Anstrengend! Manche halten den Mund, verschlieflen die Ohren und genieflen den Augenblick. Die Sonne. Die Felsen. Das Ufer mit ein paar schÖnen Gebäuden. Die Wolken. Die kleinen krausen Wellen. Tucktucktucktuck ... Wie niedlich das Schiffchen tuckert. Was für ein entspannender Nachmittag...
Sabine Breitsameter, Berlin

The most exciting listening event for me at Stockholm Hey Listen! was the performance of "Concerto Borealis" for the churchbells of Stockholm.

My first listening location was along the water in Skeppsholmen facing Gamla Stan. There I heard (and recorded) bells from at least five or six locations. The soundscape also contained a high mixture of other ambient sounds including gulls, cars, people walking and talking, boats, bicycles and water splashing against the seawall (from the wake of passing boats).

My second (brief) listening spot was on the bridge from Skeppsholmen headed toward the National Museum. There I recorded clear sounds from the bells of Skeppsholms kyrkan, though passing traffic added some machine noises to the soundscape.

My next listening point was a crowded square in Gamla Stan about half way between Storkyrkan and Tyska kyrkan. There the performance took on the aspect of a dialogue between the bells of those two churches. Other sounds in the soundscape consisted mostly of people talking in the square.

I listened to the conclusion of the piece on Skomakargaten very close to Tyska kyrkan. The walls of the buildings focused the sound of the bells from the church providing the sensation of being bathed in bell-sounds.

Although I made a DAT stereo recording at each of these locations, the recorded soundscape suffers a bit for the same reasons that photographs of scenic landscapes are never as impressive as the actual landscape: what cannot be recorded is the tremendous scope of the original.
Eric Somers, Poughkeepsie NY

I konsertsalen / vibrerande tonklanger /hänför öronpar
Yngve Wirkander, Skruv

The first sound I relate to urban Stockholm is however a rural signal and song: high pitched, spatially interpreted herding calls from Gammelboning, sung by Susanne Rosenberg, who is influenced very much by the folk singer Lisa Boudrå.

Susanne and her vocalists opened the soundscape conference with that song in the concert hall, they once produced a version chanting along and towards a silent lake and they sang it down from the Catharina Church into the Sunday morning of Södermalm: Acoustic roots, that melt the rural with the urban into the familiar: home, pastoral region, dialect, family, summer youth, grandfathers, appletrees, nordic landscape, fade into a sweet church song, rehearsed down below inside.

The inhabitant of the apartment across the street invisible has placed his hifispeakers on the balcony and injected loudly a dense word collage audio art into the songs: it sounded as if the neighbours from 3rd and 4th floor yelled at each other at least three times a day.

Surprised silence. Laughter.

Two ravens in Gamla Stan continue their dialogue in empty streets, where on Sunday morning a group of soundscapers walked silently together. Their steps became a parameter of variable space, as the walls and houses vary in distance to the pedestrians. One walker remembers his childhood here, and still hears inside the horses, the carriages, the calls, birds and no traffic. Suddenly a bottle breaks, thrown by someone returning early late from concentrated drinking. This sound has a dramatic moment.

Surprised silence.

Down to the water electronic music is displayed over the lake. Sometimes the sound gives voice to the passing boats like film music and design. Airplanes mix easily into the composition of water and rough electronic sound. A water art installation in one of the subway stations the longest gallery in a city. In the evening many voices, dialects and cultures move along into the Tunnelbana, cross and mix and overlay and produce more than anything else Acoustic Urban Flow.
Hans Ulrich Werner, Köln

Some suggestions for a better acoustic environment, as asked for by the organizers of the Conference on acoustic ecology. Sounds to develop sounds who could help in a more local touch. The city of Stockholm could organize competitions to create:

• a special Stockholm sound design for the bells of the bicycles in Stockholm.
• new bells for the churches of Stockholm, maybe more powerful and brilliant (they tend to be quite shy).
• new sounds for the different waters: the existing fountains could sound more expressively with, for example, sounding objects floating on the water. Some sounding water mills could help people feel the impressive strength of the flows under the bridges.
• new sounding flags for listening to the wind in special places.
• as many sheltered and acoustically well oriented open air scenes for non amplified street musicians (we listened to a very nice group, before the opening of the conference, and it was a too rare pleasure to meet them again, as I did in Central Station).
  

Remembrances of Soundscapes Past
By Gary Ferrington, Eugene OR

As a child in the 1940's I remember well my mother's love of writing poetry. Though she has been unable to write often over the years it always remained an interest of hers and so in her late 80's she joined a senior citizen writing group. It was that group to which I posed a question: What sounds do you recall from your youth? The following excerpts of their remembrances of soundscapes from the early part of our century reflect a time much different from ours.

Bernice Morrow remembers the sounds of her childhood in Hood River, a small town located in Oregon's apple growing region. "On the back porch of our farmhouse was a water pump on top of the deep well as was common on farms for the water supply. Priming the pump brought forth a distinctive sound of water filling the buckets or pans for drinking, cooking, washing and cleaning. There were other typical kitchen sounds including firewood crackling in the wood stove, churning cream into rich butter, the process of canning vegetables and fruits the open kettle method with bubbling syrups. Popping corn in a wire basket on top of the stove was always a winter treat.

In the Fall, at apple harvest time, the noise of the fruit pickers in the orchards could be heard moving the ladders from tree to tree as they stripped the branches and carefully placed the apples in containers which were then moved by horse drawn wagons to sheds for sorting and packing. These were all productive sounds associated with the gathering of crops."

She continues, "My mother had a treadle sewing machine and made most of our clothes and outer garments. I used to love the sound of the sewing machine as it often meant she was making a new dress or coat for me. My father's pride and joy was a Victrola, and in the evening we usually sat around the heating stove and listened to music records that he had ordered from a Sears & Roebuck catalog."

Lillian Thompson recalls, "One Sunday we were sharing a ride to church in a black surrey, with the traditional fringe on top. It was pulled by a horse whose hooves went "cloppity-clop" on the road. Somehow I had my iron piggy bank along. It broke open and spilled out, my pennies crashing to the ground! Being only three, I was crying with concern over my scattered fortune. Those pennies had been laboriously earned, one at a time for singing in a lisping voice, 'Pretty Mr. Squirrel/ Sitting on a rail/ Cocked his head and listened/Curled his bushy tail.'"

Aino Bossio lived on a desolate island in the Columbia River gorge as a child. She recalled a world full of sounds. "We could always hear the distant whistle of a steam train along the river shore. As it approached we could hear the rumble of the wheels. River boats brought another sound with the chug, chug of their engines and an occasional whistle which could be clearly heard on the island.

All the transportation between the island and the shore was by row boat. The dipping of the oars made a rhythmic sound in the water. Somewhere off in the distance a shot might be heard, probably a dear being hunted for food."

Living on an island provided the opportunity to hear more gentle sounds. "Sitting quietly on the porch at twilight we could hear the rustle of the leaves in the many trees on the island. We could hear the croaking of the frogs and the howl of a coyote off in the woods. Sometimes we could hear the loud buzzing of a mosquito looking for a place to land and get its fill."

Aggie Tadlock, who also lived along the Columbia River where large fish wheels were used to capture salmon and sturgeon returning from the sea to the spawning grounds up stream, wrote: "I liked listening to the slap of the waters as the huge paddles rotated on the fish wheels in the roaring river. The sun setting on the turning wet wheel looked like glistening diamonds." She also recalls that one day her house was visited by an Indian shaman. "A stranger came to the farm. He was wearing a loin cloth and his body was covered with garish Indian symbols. He had stopped by our house as his horse had a stone in its hoof. Papa invited him to lunch but he refused. He did ask for a bowl of water then scattered it throughout the house. He danced and sang. His movements and sounds so scared me that I ran and hid in the barn. I was upset with my parents whom I thought were in danger. Papa later said the medicine man was on his way to an Indian pow-wow and was only driving away any bad luck that would befall our house.

Norma Stormer recalls, "One summer when my husband and I were Forest Rangers on Sugar Loaf mountain in Eastern Oregon we lived in a wall tent. The electrical storms were very close and frightening. The loud thunder and the streaks of crackling lighting splitting huge, tall pine trees right down the middle was an awesome and scary sound to hear alone in the forest." She also remembers, " Once when deer hunting with a group I was put on a stump where I was to shoot a deer others would scare out while circling around through the woods. I saw some deer but they were too far away to shoot so I just sat there enjoying the sounds of nature. When the group returned they asked if I got bored while waiting. I replied no, I was just listening to the silence. It was so peaceful."

These writers remember times when there were no jet planes overhead or automobiles to drown out the more subtle sounds of the natural environment. A soundscape of relative quiet was common for these women in their youth. For us today a similar soundscape is remote and difficult to find.

First of all, there's the musical garbage truck. It comes around every morning about 7 and plays very loud classical music for a few seconds followed by a sexy woman's voice telling you to take out your garbage. At first I thought it was an announcement for an early morning church service, but I was wrong. It's for garbage. Very impressive.

Then there's the potato trucks. These are trucks that go around the neighborhood selling produce and meat and stuff to restaurants and families. The loudspeakers are something like the bells on a Dickie Dee ice cream thing. (What are those vehicles called anyway?) They are usually really obnoxious and loud and just announce the vegetables and prices in loud, panicked voices. I had one of those following me down the street the other day. I felt like running for the hills. But, occasionally there's a person with some style (or silliness) who has some fun with it.

The other day I heard a guy selling bulgogi and sogogi (types of beef) and he was singing "bul-bulgogi-bu-bulgogi-go-go-gogi." It was hilarious. And another time there was a guy who sang his vegetables pansori style the famous Korean throat singing style which is very dramatic and energetic. It was fun. I would have bought potatoes from him.

Streets

I've never felt the weight of the history of a place in such a tactile way the sheer age of that city permeates the air (in addition to all the car exhaust). And despite all the traffic noise, there is still a sense of the aural scale-of-living for which Paris was built.

For example, we stayed at L'Hotel de Beaune on rue de Beaune, a small side street just off of Boulevard Saint Germain. The architecture (the prototypical 7-story grey-stone-facade-with-mansard-roofs-and-wrought-iron-terraces-on-narrow-streets design enforced by Napolèon III's chief urban planner, Baron Haussmann) creates an acoustic intimacy where from any open window, the smallest, most delicate sounds occurring on the street below can be clearly heard.

This may not seem like such a big deal, but in North America, our townhouses and apartment buildings are almost never built with the intention of drawing aural focus out into the streets below. We North Americans seem forever obsessed with blocking out the street, and hence a big chunk of societal participation and civic responsibilty goes with it (although I suppose in North America, television could be considered the new societal boulevard....)

Speed

Then there is the sheer speed of Paris. The vespas, motorcycles, and cars darting, zipping, flying past you with kamakazi-like intensity. The language is also spoken with such speed (for an anglo with a decent but slow grasp of it), that I began to experience the effects of auditory streaming, and one night unintentionally agreed to have a cheese course following dinner, when I was really holding out for the creme brulèe w/anise for dessert.

Restaurants

...and speaking of restaurants...except for a few touristy cafes, none of them played music during service. Not a single 'can of music' to be found anywhere, which was something of a revelation. The absence of music in the dining room effectively placed all the focus on food and the theatricalities of service. It then occurred to me that the presence of music could be regarded (especially by aurally-minded restaurant critics), as a kind of apology for, or at least a distraction from, uninspired cooking and second rate service.

Secondly, the absence of music puts the aural focus on the intimacy and temporal flow of conversation. The dynamics of conversation ebb and flow across the temporal space of the dining room, and by the end of service, the sparseness of conversation between the few remaining diners acts as a kind of unspoken signal to everyone that lunch or dinner has come to a close.

As someone who has periodically served as a music consultant for fine dining restaurants, this experience has resulted in a fairly major shift in my thinking about the restaurant soundscape. I already knew that canned music in the dining room was really just a way of masking more serious design problems, but the fact that there are some very successful, very sophisticated restauranteurs who refuse to play background music tells me that there is hope.

Award for R. Murray Schafer

Canadian composer and soundscape researcher Raymond (also: Richard, Robert, ...) Murray Schafer received the Karl Scuka Award 1998 of the German Südwest Rundfunk for "Winter Diary". The prize for radio art was awarded at the occasion of the Donaueschinger Musiktage October 17th.

A la recherche de lieux aux phènoménes acoustiques

L'architecte, sculpteur et chercheur en psychologie de l'espace Marc Crunelle est la recherche de documents au sujet de lieux avec des curiositès ou phènoménes acoustiques. Il serait heureux si quiconque se souvient d'avoir vÈcu quelque part un tel lieu particulier ou en avoir lu lui en ferait une communication. Il ècrit :

A mon sens il y a deux sortes d'acoustique architecturale: la plus connue, celle ètudiè par les physiciens et les acousticiens : quantitative, prèoccupèe d'amplifier ou au contraire d'attènuer les sons règnant dans un espace ou provenant de l'extèrieur : approche qui a le succés que l'on connaît ; et une autre, vivante, rencontrèe au hasard de nos balades et de nos voyages et dont nous ne connaissons en fait que peu de choses. C'est celle qui profitant des caractèristiques spatiales et des comportements sonores inhèrents tel ou tel b,timent, utilise les rèverbèrations, les èchos, les focalisations des sons. Il y avait une pratique des sons, inscrite dans la culture orale. C'est dans cette pratique vivante, vècue, des sons qu'il faut, notre avis, rechercher les racines des rèalisations architecturales contenant des phènoménes acoustiques remarquables. Encore faut il refaire les mÍmes gestes qu'autrefois, retrouver leur rÙle, imiter leurs fonctions.
Marc Crunelle, Bruxelles

Architect, sculptor and environmental psychologist Marc Crunelle is searching for places and phenomena with special acoustic features excperienced or known from literature. He thinks that much can be learned from ancient architectural and oral practice. He would be glad for every communication made to him about this topic.

Contact: Prof. Marc Crunelle, 2b avenue Brugmann
B 1060 Bruxelles; fon +32 344 5090
E-Mail: mcrunell@ulb.ac.be

World Tune is an interactive sound sculpture based on the web with local realizations in Finland, Portugal, Switzerland and Germany. World Tune is a lively, growing, constantly changing sound sculpture that plays environmental sounds from all over the world.

Up to now there are four 71/2 foot high loudspeakers installed, which emit the daily sound of World Tune: in the garden of the museum of Saarijärvi (Finland), in the yard of the 23rd School of Lisbon (Portugal), in the park of the museum in Tellow (Germany) and high up on a mountain called "Hoher Kasten" close to St. Gallen in Switzerland. The heart of the sculpture is a virtual machine the World Tune Engine which makes it possible that everybody in the world who is connected to internet can send sounds to the World Tune System. So World Tune is a kind of acoustic barometer that gives an impression to the listener of the vibrations in our world. The life of this sculpture, which appears and disappears in different regions of our world, depends on the activity of the people who like this idea.

Our hope is, that you as professionals in the context of acoustic ecology and environmental sounds could support our project. There are several ways you could do that:

1. Visit our homepage and tell us your opinion! What do you think about World Tune? Do you have hints how to make it better?
2. Tell us adresses of people or institutions that might be intersted in that kind of project.
3. Participate and open a local sound library in your region.
4. Publish our idea and inform people and instititions about our project ...

Contact:
EMail: neuhaus@snafu.de
EMail: worldtune@imbse.de
WebSite: http://www.snafu.de/~neuhaus/worldtune/home.html

Sonar Awareness Counterattack The goal of the military sector is to ensonify the planet. And there is a network of buoys and satellites already in place. The low frequencies present a problem, however. And the means by which they've been tested on humpback whales leaves us all asking serious questions.
Cheryl A. Magill

Web Site: http://www.angelfire.com/ca/fishattorney/ lfaslinks.html

Earprints on the Air

We produce a weekly radio show, Earprints on the Air (KPFA Berkeley) that features soundscapes from around the world, as well as nature sounds and audio art. We can't pay anything, but can put sounds on the air.

Contact: Catherine Girardeau and C. Jason Reinier Earprint Productions, Soundworks, 662 Anderson St., San Francisco, CA 94110, USA; fon +1 415 821-4264. E-Mail: earprint@sirius.com

Soundscapes gesucht

Seit September 1997 ist in Frankfurt ein kleiner lokaler Radiosender auf der Frequenz 97,1 mHz und 99,85 mHz im Kabel auf Sendung. Radio X, so der Name, ist ein nichtkommerzieller und werbefreier Anbieter. Selbst Sponsoring ist nach den Auflagen der Landesmedienanstalt Hessen, als Genehmigungs und überwachende Stelle, untersagt. Das Radio lebt vom ehrenamtlichen Engagement der vielen verschiedenen Frankfurter Programmteilnehmer. Mittlerweile sind mehr als 89 Gruppen, Initiativen und Redaktionen aktiv und gestalten das vielseitige Programm, das von Themensendungen, Kulturprogrammen, Musikmagazinen über Information, Service und Beratungzu Features, Hörspielen und Klangexperimenten reicht. Gespräche mit Gästenaus dem kulturellen Leben sind ebenso Bestandteil, wie Musik Liveübertragung und Veranstaltung von Konzerten.

Das Projekt Radio X finanziert sich aus Mitgliedsbeiträgen und die Landesmedienanstalt Hessen zahlt neben einer Anschubfinanzierung eine regelmässige Unterstützung zum Betrieb. Dieses Geld stammt aus Gebühren und Werbeeinnamen der kommerziellen hessischen Privatsender.

Demnächst wird auch das zweite professionelle Sendestudio fertig. Drei Schnittplätze mit dem Harddisc - Recording System Cut-Master stehen dannden Gruppen für Vorproduktionen zur Verf,gung. Nun unsere Anfrage an die Leser des "New Soundscape Newsletter". Wer kann und m^chte uns kostenlos Soundscapes, Klangexperimente oder andere akustische Dokumentationen zur Verfügung stellen? Besonders auch Gemafreies Material für die derzeit nicht zu finanzierende Nachtschiene wird gesucht. Wir ben^tigen eine CD, Mini-Disc oder ein DAT-Band und eine Freigabe des Autors. Ferner wären wir natürlich über Infos, Bücher oder Textbeiträge hocherfreut. über die Modalitäten setzen Sie sich bitte mit uns in Verbindung. Kontakt und Information: RADIO X, Peter Kaiser, Sch,tzenstrasse 12, D - 60311 Frankfurt/M
fon +49 69 29971222
fax +49 69 29971223
E-Mail: radiox@inm.de
Web Page: http://www5.inm.deradiox/

Co-op Soundscapes

Co-op Radio, CFRO, 102.7FM, the community radio station in Vancouver Canada now has a weekly soundscape/sound art program: Soundscapes. The program broadcasts recordings produced in Vancouver as well as works produced by artists working in other parts of the world. We would very much welcome any submissions of material for our program: CDs, cassettes, DAT.

Contact: Allan Jensen, Co-op Radio, 337 Carrall Street, Vancouver B.C., Canada, V6B 2J4.
E-Mail: comox@intergate.bc.ca
Web Page: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/cfro/

Quiet Trails Campaign

The Montana Wilderness Association (MWA) invites you to join the Quiet Trails Campaign to protect the quiet backcountry and to responsibly manage motorized use on our public lands. Current public policy provides increasing access to motorized recreation vehicles at the expense of traditional "quiet" users. "Forest Service management of motorized vehicles is badly out of balance," said MWA President Dennie Tighe. "Fewer than eight percent of Montanans use motorized vehicles on our trails, while currently 57 percent of national forest trail miles permit some type of motorized use."

Improved technology, agency assistance and outdated land management plans are laying our backcountry open to off road vehicles. To help document this growing threat, MWA has created an Incident Report Form for activists to report damaged resources, user conflicts and illegal activities.

Contact: For a copy of MWA's newsletter dedicated to the Quiet Trails Campaign and the Incident Report From, please contact MWA, PO BOX 635, Helena, MT, 59624
fon +1 406 443-7350
E-Mail: mwa@desktop.org

world sounds

Cyber Concert on November 8, 1998 with Thomas Gerwin's "Acoustic World Atlas" is a coproduction of Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Stiftelsen Elektroakustiske Muzik i Sverige (EMS) Stockholm , ZKM / Zentrum f,r Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Deutsche Telekom AG and EUMETSAT.

On the "Acoustic World Atlas" one can play 201 different soundfiles from three "World Sound Keyboards", where different play modes allow one to musically modify the original sounds ad hoc. "Acoustic World Atlas" is, at the same time, a kind of acoustic documentation, all sounds have been recorded at the original sites during the last two years and sent to ZKM to be incorporated in this project. People worldwide have been asked through internet and newspapers to make recordings of their environment. They have sent more than 1100 recordings from nearly all parts of the globe. I have composed with it short and typical sound portraits 3 to 21 seconds in duration. These soundfiles are complex sound figures, creating counterpoints to each other using rules of musical parameter construction. "Acoustic World Atlas" is dedicated to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE).

The cyber concert "world sounds" at "Stockholm European Cultural Capital 1998" will be played live at three places live at the same time. Additionally, it will be broadcast via radio/TV/Internet. I have created a new work for "Acoustic World Atlas" plus three acoustic and three electronic instruments. Three musicians will perform the work on "Acoustic World Atlas" in Karlsruhe. They will be recorded and broadcast live to Stockholm and Darmstadt. At the same time three instrumentalists (flute, trombone and a soundscape musician) will play in Stockholm and three instrumentalists (percussion, live-electronic and a soundscape musician) will play in Darmstadt together with their virtual partners. The groups will be recorded and broadcast simultaneously on special connections among Stockholm and Darmstadt to Karlsruhe.

All broadcasts will be mixed together and electronically modified live. The modified mixture then should be broadcast via RADIO/TV/Internet to a larger public. This way three live events in Stockholm, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe are aspects of the whole, where the virtual space from "the other side" touches the real space of each other. The overall event "world sounds" takes place in the virtual space of Radio/TV/ Internet.

In a kind of "dichotomy of outer and inner space", the sounds will be given back to the world, where they came from, constructing and shaping reality by reflecting it: "world sounds". Hereby I would like to thank those individuals and friends, who made the "Acoustic World Atlas" project possible through their wonderfull sound contributions: Pascal Amphoux, Jean-Francois Augoyard, Banjar Babakan, Llorenc Barber, Martin Bartkowski, Nicole Blaffert, Dietmar Bonnen, Joel Chadabe, Peter Cusack, Carola Dewor, Chantal Dumas, Nick Fortunato, Nigel Frayne, Albert Gerdes, Hanno Gerwin, Catherine Girardeau, Barbara Heller, Anna Ikramowa-Eggeling, Mirjam Jauslin, Jürg Jecklin, Jeròme Joy, Manfred Kroboth, Petri Kuljuntausta, Emanuelle Loubet, Wittwulf y Malik, Lou & Dawn Malozzi, Albert Mayr, Andra McCartney, Shigenobu Nakamura, Sabine Peters, ReBreak Studio, Dirk Reith, Jason Reinier, Clemens von Reusner, Jean C. Rochè, John Richards, Rik Rue, Michael Rusenberg, Wenjuan Shi, Claude Schryer, Gerd Schwandner, Yaap K. Spek, Ulrich S,sse, Walter Tilgner, Katarzyna Topolinska, Tamasz Waliczky, Heinz Weber, Gisela Weiss, Hans Ulrich Werner, Hildegard Westerkamp, Justin Winkler.
Thomas Gerwin, Kalsruhe

Contact: inter art project, fon/fax +49-721-94 31 953.
Web Site: http://www.swo.de/ThomasGerwin

Fluss durchs Ohr

This year's large "Landesgartenschau" of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Southwest Germany takes place in Plochingen. Thomas Gerwin composed a new CD "Fluss durchs Ohr" ("River/Flow through the Ear", see below under "Hints and Reviews"), a soundscape journey along the Neckar river from the spring up to the flowing together with Rhine river. Ten sound postcards are created from typical places on the line, movement 11 on the CD is freely composed purely from water sounds which are recorded around, above and inside the river and then processed in the computer music studio.

Information und Bestellung: inter art project, Seboldstr. 1, D - 86285 Karlsruhe

CASE: Report from August 19, 1998 Meeting

By Claude Schryer, Montrèal

This summary of discussions from this meeting, which was held in French, is here related in English for the benefit of the "English as a common language" acoustic-ecology readers. Perhaps other "Post-Stockholm" meetings of this nature can take place in various parts of the world by individuals who attended the conference?

Present: Claude Schryer (composer and president of CASE), Diane Leboeuf (sound designer, working on a CD on the soundscapes of the St-Lawrence river), Claude Langlois (film sound editor and a teacher of sound arts at INIS and Universitè de Montrèal), Luc Beauchemin (graphic designer and artist), Emmanuel Madan (composer and sound installation curator), Hèléne PrÈvost (radio producer and composer), Andrè Breton (professor of communications at UQAM), Charles De mestral (composer and professor of sound arts at CEGEP Vieux-MontrÈal).

First we introduced each other and gave a brief presentation on our activities and interests. Then the four of us present in Stockholm gave an outline of our experiences at the Stockholm conference.

I presented a text about my personal reflections concerning "21 good things about the 1998 Stockholm Conference", which I read and commented on at our meeting. (See Echoes from the Conference)

Hèléne, Diane and AndrÈ agreed with most of my comments, which we discussed (however I forgot to take any notes...). Hèléne Prèvost mentioned that she experienced the conference as an engaging exploration of ethics and aesthetics in relation with acoustic ecology, and that she felt nourished by the numerous contacts and exchanges. For her, the WFAE is both a "groupe de veille" (observation group?) and an action group. She noted that the acoustic ecology community has greatly matured since Banff in 1993, and reminded us of Arne Naess' suggestion to "articulate our experiences" and Keiko Torigoe's philosophy of "respect and action". Diane LeBoeuf spoke of Stockholm as a powerful and enriching experience, where she was able to exchange openly with a wide variety of specialists and experts in the field of acoustic ecology. Andrè Breton noted the compelling presence of "sounically aware" architects at the conference. He also mentioned that he was a little disappointed at the choas near the end of the conference during the resolutions debate.

We then listened to excerpts of recordings taken during the conference, including:

• the Sunday evening church bell concert heard from a mobile recording source
• a quiet Sunday morning soundscape
• the sound making crosswalks for the blind from two different perspectives

• publication of the French version of R. Murray Schafer's "A Sound Education"
• participation in the CASE "Soundwalk" project
• development of a "soundscape" archive or database for Quèbec
• organisation of a one day symposium on acoustic ecology issues in Quèbec
• development of a "sound calendar"
• posting in public spaces of a Sound Manifesto
• production of a CD or CD-ROM of disappearing soundscapes in our region
• designing a sound making device to put on bicycles
• making films such as "Odyssèe sonore" more accessible to the public
• development of a Canadian acoustic ecology listserv
• stronger presence of the French language within CASE (principally in the CASE Files newsletter)

FKL:
Mitarbeiter/innen im Vorstand gesucht

Aufgrund steigender beruflicher und familiärer Beanspruchung haben unsere Kassierin und die Geschäftsführerin um Entlastung auf Ende 1998 ersucht. Gleichzeitig ist die Zeit für eine/n FKL-Webmaster gekommen. Wir freuen uns über Leute, deren Engagement für die Klangumwelt die Bereitschaft zur Mitarbeit im FKL-Vorstand einschliesst. Die einzelnen Aufgaben sind nicht übergross, solange sie auf genügend viele Schultern verteilt werden können. Der Vorstand des FKL arbeitet auf ehrenamtlicher Basis.

Interessenten wenden sich an die Geschäftsstelle FKL, Hammerstr. 14, CH - 4058 Basel, oder an Justin Winkler, fon/fax +41 32 841 4654.

Possible Soundscape Session at Berlin Meeting in 1999

The the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is long established, large, active, and covers most aspects of sound. The Seattle meeting this summer, the largest in the ASA's history, was attended by over 2000 people. The abstracts occupy 350 pages, of which soundscapes took one page. There are 14 technical committees concerned with topics such as musical acoustics, noise, psychological and physiological acoustics, architectural acoustics, and so on. I recommend looking into its activities. The meeting after next of the ASA will take place in Berlin 15-19 March 1999, jointly with two European societies. Deadline for submissions has been in Septmber already. However, you can inform yourself at http://forum99-asa.tu-berlin.de/abstract.html, or the main Asa web address at http://asa.aip.org/

Contact: Fred Lipsett, 37 Oriole Drive, Gloucester, Ontario, Canada K1J 7E8 fon +1 613 746-3507, fax +1 613 746-5445 E-Mail: ad653@freenet.carleton.ca

Fluss durchs Ohr

Die Komposition "Fluss durchs Ohr" (1998) von Thomas Gerwin erscheint zur Landesgartenschau 98 auf CD. Sie verdichtet und inszeniert in zehn So/ootzen originale Umweltklo/oonge von der Quelle bis zur M,ndung des Neckar in Form von "Klangpostkarten" und beleuchtet so idealtypisch die ganz verschiedenen Klanglandschaften und akustischen Ereignisse am Neckar. Die einzelnen Stationen der Klangreise heissen: "BornSchwenningen", "Rottweil", "T,bingen", "Plochingen-Landesgartenschau", "Metropolis Stuttgart", "Ludwigsburg", "Marbach", "Heilbronn", "Heidelberg" und "ManheimTransit". F,r den elften Satz "corrente..." wurden als einziges musikalisches Material verschiedenste Wasserklo/oonge verwendet, die mit Spezialmikrophonen am und im Neckar aufgenommen und sodann im Computer-Studio bearbeitet und komponiert wurden.

"Fluss durchs Ohr" ist auch als ein Beitrag zum Thema Klang^kologie geachteine UmweltKlangKomposition, die auf vergn,gliche Weise die Ohren ^ffnen will, indem sie Vertrautes neu beleuchtet und bisher Âberh^rtes in's Bewusstsein r,ckt.

Die CD "Fluss durchs Ohr" wird in der Ausstellung an der Landesgartenschau in einer "H^rlandschaft" mit Sitzen und Kopfh^rern inszeniert. Auf jedem der zehn Kopfh^rer ist einer der So/ootze der CD als Endlosschleife zu h^ren. Der elfte Satz "corrente...", der einzig aus unterschiedlichen Wasseraufnahmen komponiert wurde, ist nur auf der Kauf-CD zu h^ren.

Marc Crunelle, Bruxelles

My session seemed to have gone the way of the Soundscape Project of the 1970's, so it was a great pleasure to find that Joe, who was Chairman of the Noise Committee in 1995, had organised the session (There was much else of interest to WFAE members at the meeting, and a few remarks about the ASA are given below).

European members of WFAE might be particularly interested and also find it easier to attend than those on other continents, and those who spoke at Stockholm might be especially interested.

From there go to Meetiings, Future Meetings ..., Joint Meeting..., The Entire Call for Papers, and finally to Abstract Submission Guidelines.The instructions for the preparation and submission of abstracts are too long to include here.

The subject should be given as "soundscape" or "acoustic ecology" or something similar so that the papers may be grouped in the same session. Abstracts of forthcoming ASA meetings can be seen at http://asa.aip.org/asasearch.html; abstracts are currently shown for the next meeting at Norfolk, VA, after which those for the Berlin meeting will appear.

Topics of possible interest to WFAE members at Seattle included the effects of noise on health, tire noise, aircraft noise, and the effects of noise in intensive care units.

Attendees received the proceedings on a CD-ROM.

Here are some hints how to enjoy our homesite:

• Go to the Engine and load all of the five sounds (it might take some seconds), create a soundscape out of these sounds that fit to your actual mood.
• Click on "broadcast now" button and transmit a sound from our libraries directly to our loudspeaker sculptures outside
• If you want to broadcast a sound that you recorded by yourself, you have to upload it before to our library. We will give you a password that allows you to do that if you are really interested.