THE SOUND DIMENSION IN THE UPPER BASIN OF THE MIÑO RIVER (GALICIA, NW IBERIAN PENINSULA)

The sound spectrum of water configures representative marks of various environments, which define a sound heritage with scientific, cultural, emotional, sensorial and educational value. From this perspective, river environments comprise a wide spectrum of sonic resonances. This study, contextualized within the field of geo-sonority research, considers the recording and analysis of water through several samples from the upper basin of the Miño River. The objectives are to advocate for the role of sonority as part of the intangible heritage, to explore its character in the fluvial environment of inland Galicia, and to contribute to the preservation of the sonic marks of water as sounds inherent to the identity of an area. The methodology applied consists of phases of field recording, the creation of databases and of phonic analysis. Water in its sound form, from the drop rhythmically repeating to the roar of a waterfall, fills an audible sound spectrum that characterizes soundscapes. By registering, documenting, and analyzing the sounds of the water, we advance in the knowledge of the diversity of the sound environments in the river basin of the Miño River.

A Personal and Fragile Affair: The Sonic Environment and Its Place In My Compositions

<p>To begin with, I will briefly outline my compositional process. This will help to provide an understanding of my motivations. I will then pose some questions relating to the practice of field recording and the use of these materials in electroacoustic composition. Through a discussion of early electronic music, musique concrete, soundscape composition and the ideologies of composers associated with these movements, I will reveal the tensions surrounding the use of referential material in acousmatic music. Finally, I will show how I have attempted to address these tensions in my own work.</p>

A Personal and Fragile Affair: The Sonic Environment and Its Place In My Compositions

<p>To begin with, I will briefly outline my compositional process. This will help to provide an understanding of my motivations. I will then pose some questions relating to the practice of field recording and the use of these materials in electroacoustic composition. Through a discussion of early electronic music, musique concrete, soundscape composition and the ideologies of composers associated with these movements, I will reveal the tensions surrounding the use of referential material in acousmatic music. Finally, I will show how I have attempted to address these tensions in my own work.</p>

Development of Quick Digital Field Recording and Mapping Method of Geological Objects for Hydraulic Engineering

During the fieldwork of hydraulic engineering, practical engineers normally document geological information manually. Although there are some GIS-based digital tools for geology, they are not perfectly applicable to hydraulic engineering. As a result, the current work mode is ineffective, unmanageable, error-prone, and not conducive to subsequent analysis. To address this problem, we developed a digital tool which enables geological recording and quick modeling based on 3D real scenes in the field of hydropower projects. There are three modules in the surface tool: object recording, image interpretation, and field analysis. The object recording module is to mark geological points (e.g., drills and shafts), lines (e.g., faults, stratigraphic boundaries), and surfaces (e.g., slope and stocking yard) on a 3D scene and then store them in the database. The image interpretation is to interpret the 2D information in images to 3D models loaded in 3D software for further studies, such as GOCAD. The field analysis includes surface fitting, stability analysis of blocks, occurrences calculating, rock recognition, and 69/sketching. The tool is helpful for recording data, drawing geological boundaries, and building a preliminary model in the geological survey.

Sonic sense

This chapter aims to set up the context for novel engagements in notions of sense, knowledge, and meaning via sound. Sound is introduced as material as well as concept, and listening is considered at once as strategy and as expanded method to engage and challenge existing notions of prehension, interpretation, and significance, and to query their rationale. The suggestion is that the sonic offers itself to experience not as meaning but as a challenge to the making of sense, and that consequently through listening we can reach a different sense, that is plural and includes what we did not expect to know. These ideas are developed by listening to Christof Migone’s work HitParade (NewYork) (2012), a group performance which sounds bodies, surfaces, and microphones through their shared rhythm, and to Jana Winderen’s The Wanderer (2015), a field recording of zooplankton and phytoplankton between the North Pole and the Equator.

Distributing Authorship at a Localised Scale: Developing public engagement in sound mapping

Sound maps, particularly the web-based examples that have proliferated since the early 2000s, have proven compelling and valuable as means of conveying diverse perspectives of urban, rural and wilderness sound environments, while opening the creative process of mapping through field recording to non-expert user groups. As such, sound maps hold the promise of broad public engagement with everyday sonic experience and spatial typologies. Yet this straightforward participatory aim is prone to complication in terms of participatory frameworks and scale of analysis. Drawing on a catalogue of sound maps by the author, this article problematises the participatory norms of sound mapping and, in tandem, calls for a more nuanced approach to scale than typically seen to date in sound maps based on geospatial mapping APIs. A sound mapping workshop in Lisbon with a multidisciplinary participant group provided the opportunity to ‘re-prototype’ sound maps at the scale of a local neighbourhood using multimodal means of representation; the results highlighted questions of form, scale, representation, authorship and purpose in sound mapping and demonstrated its continuing potential as a participatory practice.

Withdrawn from Use: Silence, listening and undoing

Steven Connor’s book Giving Way begins with a list of unappreciated qualities, the first of which is a capitalised: ‘SILENCE’. Shyness, reserve, withdrawal and holding back accompany silence in a long sentence of qualities, which ‘tend to be marked with disapproval, sympathy or revulsion’, and some of which are, as Connor notes, ‘characterized as a mental disorder, in the form of social anxiety or social phobia’ (Connor 2019: 1). Silence is often seen as a lack of agency, an anti-social and suspect unwillingness to participate. But as a sound artist working with field-recording, I am aware that silence, withdrawal and holding back can also be a form or method of practice and participation. Since 2004, my creative practice has included a series of physical and imagined silent releases. This article draws on these works and their documentation to explore silence as a potential, shared and communal space; an immediate composition that invites both listener and non-listener into its congress. Listening in on the conversation of telephone pauses and the closed paragraphs of library shelves, silence can be heard undoing purposeful agency, shyly engaging us in the anti-social practice of inaction, so that we might not participate together.

Soundscapes of Resistance: Amplifying social justice activism and aural counterpublics through field recording-based sound practices

This article examines creative sound practitioners who audibly convey social justice commentary through their use of environmental soundscapes as source material. I discuss how micro-watt radio pioneer Mbanna Kantako, electronic music artist Muqata’a and audio activist Christopher DeLaurenti work with field recordings to produce subversive counter-narratives against news media and state discourses. I outline three specific sound projects as case studies: Kantako’s aural counter-surveillance of police encounters within the predominantly poor and Black neighbourhood of Springfield, Illinois; Muqata’a’s album Inkanakuntu (2018) composed using field recordings of Ramallah, West Bank; and DeLaurenti’s radio piece Fit the Description (2015) that incorporates field recordings of the protests following the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I argue that composing with soundscapes of contested urban spaces can function as sonic activism that confronts the oppressive soundscapes of systemic racism. The case studies are examined through the following common themes: 1) the use of what I term aural counterpublics to amplify marginalised voices and soundscapes of resistance, and 2) the radical re-appropriation of microphones and oppressive police and military audio technologies as a means of ‘speaking back’ to systems of power. Finally, I suggest how these case studies convey the need for intersectional and decolonised approaches to soundscape studies.

Loudspeaker-based sound reproduction for evaluating noise transmission into the car cabin

Virtual and laboratory-based design techniques can accelerate the development process over conventional prototype-and-field-test procedures. In car acoustics, the transmission of outside airborne noise into the cabin needs to be understood and managed. Here, we evaluate the accuracy of sound field recording and reproduction techniques for investigating the transmission of airborne noise into the driver's cabin of a car. Reference measurements of a real sound field, generated by a truck with idling engine to create a realistic scenario, were carried out in a semi-anechoic chamber. The reference sound field was recorded inside and around a test car. Additionally, a spatial recording of the reference sound field was carried out and used to reproduce the reference sound field over a loudspeaker array in a different, fully anechoic chamber, where the sound field was again measured inside and around the same test car. A comparison of the measured loudness inside the test car shows that this key parameter for sound quality could be reproduced rather faithfully over a loudspeaker array in a controlled testing facility.

Listening and Recording In Situ: Entanglement in the sociopolitical context of place

This article considers the ways in which soundwalking and field recording entangle the listener in a sociopolitical relationship with place. The place is a physical site in which the listener encounters complex sonic sociopolitical factors, shaped not just by the interactions of people but also by involving living and material objects that voice themselves through sound and vibrations. Sets of expectations and personal identities inform listening experiences, in addition to the material-orientated tendencies in the field, deriving from soundscape composition and acousmatic music. Specific sociopolitical examples that inform sonic experiences in diverse listening situations across different geographic regions are used to uncover bias, and some of the preconceptions of listeners. The article argues for a greater reflexivity in regard to the motives that inform our listening, relationship with places and awareness of the widest spectrum of cultural, historic and sociopolitical contexts.