The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Online Reader is pleased to have a number of contributing authors. These individuals are listed below along with the articles we have in the WFAE data base.
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Adams, John Luther

Strange and Sacred Noise. "My music has long been grounded in the physical, cultural and spiritual landscapes of the North and in an ideal of sonic geography - place as music, and music as place. More recently, I've begun to explore new aspects of the relationships between music and place, in a convergence of sonic geography with sonic geometry."

Barrio, Isabel López and José Carles

Madrid - Acoustic Dimensions of Inhabited Areas: Quality. "To study the acoustic environment in all its facets, we have to go beyond the type of quantitative, correlational approach used to date in Spain and develop a new, qualitative line of analysis which takes into account not just the acoustic variables but also the context in which they arise and the cognitive processes involved in acoustic evaluation."

Beck, Alan

Listening to Radio Plays: Fictional Soundscapes. "The radio drama director fills the role of ideal 'ears', selecting, focusing and designing, though the audience actively play their part in the construction of the 'second play' in their heads. Moving backwards from this fictional world may well give us further insights into our hearing roles in real life.

Is radio blind or invisible? A call for a wider debate on listening-in. This article seeks to widen the debate over radio as 'blind' through phenomenological approaches and a less defensive attitude to radio broadcasting.

Copeland, Darren

Cruising For A Fixing. Imagine a time where a school of sonic artists arrived on the serious music scene (acoustic and electro-acoustic) with a fierce dedication to rendering real world sound events in ways that were undeniably true-to-life.

For An Awareness of Associations. "Sound tells the blind person about place. The process of identifying people begins the moment they make a sound; no matter how incidental the sound. The blind listener, on the basis of a half-utterance or a few strides along a path, may need to resolve several questions: Is that a woman or a man?; Do I know that person?; Is he or she coming towards me? Could I be standing in his or her way? Et cetera, et cetera. People can shape ideas about the world and themselves just by listening to the associations triggered by sounds."

Indifference or Ambiguity " ... listeners may experience a stream of images flowing through a cinematic sound canvas, but not possess the vocabulary to describe these images. Their inability to articulate their impressions might be the result of an untrained ear - an ear which is superseded by visual attention, and whose higher development has been restricted to the arts of speech and music.

Shared Listening Journey: The Sounds of Displacement. Following the International Congress of Acoustic Ecology at the Abbaye de Royaumont in Paris, a group of twelve congress participants embarked on a three day shared listening journey through France. The theme of the journey was "the sounds of displacement," so appropriately, the group was in constant sonic motion through Lyon, Grenoble, Clelles (Mont Aiguille region), and Nice.

Ten Questions for a Listener. The purpose of this exercise is to facilitate a discovery of new meanings in sounds that are normally taken for granted.

de Geest, Heather

The Negative Persona of Silence. "The exposure of many individuals, particularly of the Western culture to a relatively quiet soundscape can lead to a variety of negative emotions, including anxiety, terror, boredom, and loneliness. These negative perceptions of silence can perhaps only be adjusted through a greater personal understanding of the value of quiet, for the benefit of our own individual soundscapes and the good of our society.

Feld, Steven

From Ethnomusicology to Echo-Muse-Ecology: Reading R. Murray Schafer in the Papua New Guinea Rainforest. "What role can an anthropological voice have in this large mix we're calling acoustic ecology and soundscape studies? How is this voice complementary to, yet distinct from, voices from history, acoustics, performance, design, psychology, geography, musicology, composition, architecture, philosophy, or communications? One way to answer is with the simple observation that anthropologists tend toward the Kantian view that all knowledge begins in experience."

Ferrington, Gary

Audio Design: Creating Multi-Sensory Images For The Mind. Audio design is the process of creating meaning through the use of aural imagery. The sound designer recognizes the uniqueness of the medium and works with its symbolic language to effectively communicate ideas, concepts, and emotions. Understanding the storytelling nature of audio and the power of the human imagination to generate mental images, is critical to effective audio design.

Keep Your Ear-Lids Open. Being able to perceive visual and aural stimuli are natural capabilities most humans have at birth. However, the ability to derive meaning from these stimuli is a learned process beginning with infancy and continuing throughout one's lifetime.

Kids, Imagination, and Audio In The Classroom. The ability to form mental images of objects and events not immediately available to the senses is the essence of human imagination. This unique attribute of the mind makes possible the ability to seemingly see, smell, hear, and feel things which do not exist in the present tense.

Kids, Noise, and Orchestrating the Soundscape. Ecology is the study of biological systems and the effect external and internal forces have on such systems. Educational efforts in this field are increasingly important as humankind strives to preserve and rehabilitate a world environment which has suffered from human excess

Kids Radio Is On The Air! Active listening has been largely replaced by passive viewing, both at home and in the classroom. Though television is an invaluable educational resource, it provides little opportunity for children, and adults, to use their imaginations. The learned skill of generating images within the mind is important when seeking solutions to many critical problems.

Learning To Listen: Children's Books That Guide The Way. Learning effective listening skills is something educators and parents can facilitate for children and youth. This guide to books encourage exploration and understanding of the soundscape. The list is in two parts. The first suggest books for children. The second is for parents, teachers, and youth who would like more information about the soundscape and how to develop listening skills.

On A Clear Day I Can Hear Forever. I am not one that is totally displeased with the sounds of my city. In many ways the sounds generated by cars on wet streets, or human voices from the sidewalk ten floors below provides a connectedness between myself and an active living world.

Take A Listening Walk and Learn To Listen. Taking time to listen to the sounds around us is worth the effort. We live in an acoustic environment full of subtle and not so subtle sounds that both enrich and detract from our daily life. Giving attention to these acoustical events not only enhances our appreciation of natural and human soundscapes but also makes us aware of endangered sounds and those sounds, which like weeds, may be destroying the soundscape.

Franklin, Ursula

Silence and the Notion of the Commons. "What we are hearing, I feel, is very much the privatisation of the soundscape .... There was a time when in fact there was in every community what was called the commons .... The notion of the commons is deeply embedded in our social mind as something that all share."

Gallon, Ray

A Call To Action. "If we want to protect and defend both our capacities and our opportunities for listening; if we want to improve the quality of sonic life, we must be capable of articulating our ideas and proposing clear and credible actions which have the possibility of real implementation and influence."

Harley, Maria Anna

Notes On Music Ecology As A New Research Paradigm. The almost universal acceptance of the postmodern paradigm in humanistic studies, including musicology, reveals the deeply felt necessity for re-examining the fundamental issues of value, meaning and context.

Imada, Tadahiko

The Japanese Sound Culture. "The decision of whether some sounds are regarded as music or not rests with the cultural background of the listener. In other words, cultures do not share the same methods of listening; there are as many ways of listening as there are cultures and ears. I am going to introduce the Japanese sound culture and its heritage.

Jespersen, Morten Rømer

Soundtrekking Soundscapes. There can be as many scapes as there are senses, and with technological enhancement, maybe even more. The scape is a particular way of spatially relating the observer, or the actant to space and time. A scape is thus a way to focus on particular aspects of the dynamic relationship between an actant and the environment. Landscapes concerns vision, soundscape concerns hearing, smellscape concerns odour. Scapes can be understood as the spatial configuration of an environment related to an isolated sense of an actant. Since, initially, this scaping is anthropocentric, scapes is a way of considering relationships in the dynamic networking between humans and non-humans

Kesier, Brenda and David Lubman

Bow Bells: The Sound Of Community. The Bow bells of London represent a familiar soundmark and centuries of identity for London Cockneys born within their acoustic range. This powerpoint presentation is a study of the Bow bells and their importance in the daily life and culture of this London community. This is a Powerpoint presentation delivered at the 149th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Vancouver, Canada, May 19, 2005. Note: a sound file related to this presentation is available at http://www.intervalsignals.net/countries/uk-bbcws.htm (third from the top).

Krause, Bernard L

The Niche Hypothesis: A virtual symphony of animal sounds, the origins of musical expression and the health of habitats. "Prior to the European migration to North America, Native partially experienced their aural world as a symphony of natural sound where all the creature voices performed as an integral part of an animal orchestra. With their habitats radically transformed by deforestation, agriculture, and urbanization, and with many tribes displaced by war and disease, numerous families lost their direct source of sonic natural textures in a relatively short period of time."

Levant, Yvie

Music as Image: Sound and Language. Dire, pour autant que je m'en souvienne, comment et quand la dimension environnementale a pris naissance dans mon travail de musicien c'est d'abord situer les formes sensibles des lieux de vie autant que se remémorer les événements significatifs du temps en question.

Mariétan, Pierre

Fragments/Sources. Le temps de la mémoire ne peut être naturellement séquenciel. Un nouveau scénario est à produire qui convient mieux au présent, mélangeant les parties sans rechercher obligatoirement un ordonnancement chronologique.

Maue, Kenneth

Pianos I Have Known. The first piano I owned was mine for five minutes. I'd moved into a remote cabin, ideal for playing music, and, short of money, had patiently, fervently, waited for a free or cheap piano to appear. A friend who taught school phoned. "We have a piano that was supposed to be hauled out months ago. The janitor's so keen to get rid of it, just come take it."

Quiet Is Freedom. "Quiet is now so uncommon that many people don't know what it is (when the radio's turned low?), or shun it. True quiet isn't so much a lack of something as the presence of the world's wholeness."

What John Cage Did. The day came, I knocked on the oak door, booklet of pieces in hand, and was greeted by a man busy at work, his desk strewn with scores - but not too busy for a kid he'd never heard of. Our visit was brief, but Cage gave me more than I'd hoped for. His respectful interest washed away any hint of pestering-student-and-celebrity-artist, and made us two fellow composers side-by-side over a day's work.

Mayr, Albert

Above and Below Acoustic Ecology. "I, for one, have long felt a certain uneasiness with it (the name Acoustic-Ecology), or at least with the way we have been using it so far; an uneasiness that has not disappeared after the meetings in Royaumont and Stockholm. I will try to formulate its main aspects in a subjective, anecdotal way without any claims to scientific validity."

Miller, Wreford

Thesis: Silence In The Contemporary Soundscape. "Silence is... so many things, or not-things. Its definition depends upon your point ofaudition, and on your culture, your ideology, and most especially, it depends uponthe topic at hand. Silence is rarely the central topic of discussion or investigation, butit is always there (or not-there), because it is the necessary partner to sound or communication. Whatever your understanding of it is, I contend that there is less of the desireable silence, and more oppressive silence, than there was only a short while ago. We are globally damaging our communicative abilities through our ignorance and abuse of silence, and the effects are ecologically and socially disastrous. Sensitivity to silence is essential to listening well. A clearer understanding of silence is a powerful aid in cultural sensitivity, ecological awareness, and personal physical and communicative health."

Radle, Autumn Lyn

The Effect Of Noise On Wildlife: A Literature Review. "Noise pollution, as it effects humans, has been a recognized problem for decades, but the effect of noise on wildlife has only recently been considered a potential threat to animal health and long-term survival. Research into the effects of noise on wildlife, which has been growing rapidly since the 1970s, often presents conflicting results because of the variety of factors and variables that can effect and/or interfere with the determination of the actual effects that human-produced noise is having on any given creature. Both land and marine wildlife have been studied, especially in regards to noise in the National Parks System and the onslaught of human- made cacophony in the oceans from military, commercial and scientific endeavors."

Redström, John

Is Acoustic Ecology About Ecology? "There are advantages with integrating the study of soundscapes with a more general framework, such as ecology. Soundscape studies will be able to use the rich theoretical framework of ecology, as well as benefit from publicity due to the current ecological movement. However, ecology puts new demands on the theoretical concepts used in soundscape studies, and these new demands are likely to cause some problems. This article aims at exposing one of the basic conceptual differences between soundscape studies and ecology -the difference between a phenomenological and an ecological approach- and to discuss some of its consequences."

Rothernberg, David

One Last Note. "That ecstasy inside the art of sound is not so much pure pleasure as final escape from the meanderings of an individual into the an essential oneness with the unspeakable meaning of the world. No one will be able to tell you what is or why, in so many or so few words. The celebration in sound seems like a language but it is not a language. Why not? Because you can love and share in it even if you have no idea what is going on. Published in Parabola, spring 1998 and inThe Best Spiritual Writing of 1999, ed. Philip Zaleski (Harper SanFrancisco, 1999).

Noise Picture Method:A Manifesto? "This is the world of noise, the noise world, where too much is happening and nothing needs to be seen. No one tells you where to look, human pictures and messages announce themselves everywhere, wishing so much to mean something while the words only serve to obliterate any real meaning of the world's necessity to be one way and not any other. All we have created is a world of possibility, with no choice more necessary than any other." Published in Finnish in Kuva, Spring 1998, a magazine of photography and design.

Schafer, R. Murray

The Glazed Soundscape. "The glazed window was an invention of great importance for the soundscape, framing external events in an unnatural phantom-like 'silence.' The diminution of sound transmission, while not immediate and occurring only gradually with the thickening of glazing, not only created the notion of a 'here' and a 'there' or a 'beyond', but also introduced a fission of the senses. Today one can look at one's environment, while hearing another, with a durable film separating the two. Plate glass shattered the sensorium, replacing it with contradictory visual and aural impressions."

Schryer, Claude

Art et environnement sonore. Dans mes creations sonores j'aime monter, traiter et combiner des paysages sonores naturels, urbains et humains en forme de juxtapositions poétiques, de perceptions altérées, de re-contextualisations et de réflexions sur les contradictions, les anecdotes et la magie du quotidien. Depuis 1994, je m'intéresse de plus en plus à une notion spirituelle de l'écologie sonore.

Electroacoustic Ecology in Canada: Bicycle Orchestras and Radio Pirates. The notion of ecology has emerged recently in the domain of electroacoustics. A large number of artists from diverse disciplines explore and employ the soundscape in their work and show their sensitivity to this theme. Their interesting and timely reflections on problems related to compositional work expand the debate and nourish discussions on the quality and organisation of the soundscape in urban and natural environments.

Report: Soundscape Vancouver '96. The Soundscape Vancouver '96 symposium brought us up to date and has paved the way for the future of Vancouver as a leading voice in acoustic-ecology in many ways. The event consisted of a month-long residency, a concert and a symposium.

Sensibilisation au bruit. Le 30 avril 1997 est la «Journée internationale de sensibilisation au bruit», une campagne antibruit organisée par la « Ligue pour les Malentendants » de New York pour sensibiliser le public sur les impacts négatifs du bruit pour la santé et la qualité de vie. Entre autres choses la Ligue propose une journée de « régime silencieux » de soixante secondes sans aucun bruit de 14h15 à 14h16.

Siegfried, Walter

Paper Presentation: Soundtracks to Reality. In the cinema as well as in the traditional book, we find ourselves in the category of "inside stories", "cocoon-stories". I am interested in the other category: stories whose threads lead outwards into the world presently surrounding me: situational stories.

Tatum, Jeremy B.

Physics, Physiology and Psychology. When we complain about instrusive noise, sooner or later we encounter the word decibel. Typically what happens is that some official comes along and mumbles something about decibels and then explains to the authorities that the noise we are complaining about isn't really all that loud at all. He will say something about logarithms, which municipal council members don't understand at all but will be impressed by the long words, and your complaint is dismissed.

Thorn, Richard

Virtual Reality: A Sound Proposition? Whilst the choice apparently offered by interactive programmes is, in reality, no more than a function of prior design decisions, any particular combination of choices, and the resulting sense to be made by a user, is unlikely to have been foreseen as a possible text by the original author. Audiences are now able to construct their own texts and meanings - a prospect not without its problems.

Truax, Barry

Acoustic Communication. "I have attempted in my book my book to give the field an intellectual basis. That basis can be understood as a twofold critique, firstly, of traditional disciplines that study some aspect of sound, and secondly, of the social science inter-discipline of communication studies itself."

Sound in Context: Acoustic Communication and Soundscape Research at Simon Fraser University"Research activities at Simon Fraser University over the past 25 years that bridge environmental acoustics and music are summarized, including soundscape studies, acoustic communication, soundscape composition, and the granulation of sampled sound. Gaps in traditional disciplinary approaches in dealing with environmental sound are identified, and an acoustic communicational model is proposed as an interdisciplinary alternative. Examples drawn from the author's compositions, and the work of R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp and the World Soundscape Project are discussed."

Van Allen, Leslie

The Soundscape of New York City in the 1930's .The Noise Abatement Commission was formed by the Commissioner of Health for the City of New York in October of 1929. The purpose of the commission was to study noise and determine its effects on people and to propose ways of eliminating unnecessary noise in the city. This paper summarizes the Noise Abatement Commission's final report in 1930."

Van Peer, René

Calibrating The Senses. While exploring the cave... "We advance in near silence. Questions, warnings or drawing each other's attention to some especially wonderful feature come out in just a few words. No long conversations, no calling out. Any words that are spoken are gone the moment they have left your lips this place has no reverb to speak of. With the magnificence of the shapes, the damp and silent cold, and the close atmosphere this is an awesome otherworldly environment, that makes me want to keep quiet."

Nature of Sound: Part One. The area of sounds from nature on record is variegated and, above all, large. This is the first part of a series of articles about recordings of sounds from natural surroundings.

Nature of Sound: Part Two. This second part of the series focuses on soundscapes. These feature sonic impressions of how environments sound, mostly through the animals that live in them.

Songs Soaring. It is a well known fact that for ages birds have inspired Western composers to write music. The Nightingale, always widely admired for its song, is a famous case in point. Songs get compared to masterpieces, species to masters. In varying degrees of divergence from the original, renderings of bird vocalizations have found their way into compositions. To analyze and demonstrate their musical content the melodies are often translated into notation, written out on staves.

Westerkamp, Hildegard

The Local and Global "Language" of Environmental Sound. By Hildegard Westerkamp. Environmental sound can be understood as a type of language. Each sound or soundscape has its own meanings and expressions and is like a spoken word: it has something to say about all living beings' behaviours and their relationship to their surroundings, about listening and soundmaking habits. Whether urban or rural, the sounds of our home environments give us - often unconsciously - a strong "sense of place". Since audio technology and recording equipment can now be used in similarly portable ways as a camera, the soundscape can be recorded, reproduced, composed and processed by more people than ever before.

Nada an Experience in Sound. "Nada (Mati Ghar, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts) is a sound installation about listening. It wants to open our ears and provide a time and place to explore a most essential aspect of our lives sound. It is a listening journey from noise to silence, from the external to the internal, from acoustic onslaught to acoustic subtlety, from worldly to sacred sound experiences."

Soundscape Composition: Linking Inner and Outer Worlds. These thoughts were sparked by the large spectrum of pieces submitted to the Soundscapes voor 2000 competition of soundscape compositions. I listened to them all as a member of the selection jury. "Soundscape as a musical style" was the only theme or guiding idea that was given to participating composers and jury members alike. The absence of more detailed selection criteria and definitions made me thoughtful about the fact that, to date, there have been few attempts to define soundscape composition as a genre.

Listening to the Listening. There is a complex and mysterious place between a sound and thelistener's experience of it. A sound occurs. And is heard. But by which person? From which culture? In what mental state? What physical state? What psychic space? With what intellectual knowledge? Which past experiences? What age? From which gender?"

The World Soundscape Project. "The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was founded by R. Murray Schafer in the late 1960's to study the acoustic environment and the impact of technology on it. The WSP established an international reputation through its innovative approach to sound, as well as its numerous research publications and tape documents. Through systematic and critical study the project has endeavoured to contribute to and co-ordinate research on the scientific, aesthetic, philosophic, architectural, and sociological aspects of soundscape ecology. The project's focus is to find solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape where the relationship between the human community and its sonic environment is balanced."

Winkler, Justin

Soundscape Research in France. Although a lot of soundscape research and design has been done in France by various institutions for more than a decade astonishingly little is known about this in the English speaking part of the world - partially, no doubt, because of language barriers. Here are some examples of French Institutions involved in Soundscape Research.

Wrightson, Kendall

An Introduction To Acoustic Ecology. This article explores a brief historical perspective of acoustic-ecology and expands upon some of the original ideas put forth by individuals such as R. Murray Schafer.