Evaluation of the Visually Impaired Experience of the Sound Environment in Urban Spaces

Visually impaired people have unique perceptions of and usage requirements for various urban spaces. Therefore, understanding these perceptions can help create reasonable layouts and construct urban infrastructure. This study recruited 26 visually impaired volunteers to evaluate 24 sound environments regarding clarity, comfort, safety, vitality, and depression. This data was collected in seven different types of urban spaces. An independent sample non-parametric test was used to determine the significance of the differences between environmental evaluation results for each evaluation dimension and to summarize the compositions of sound and space elements in the positive and negative influence spaces. The results suggested that visually impaired people (1) feel comfort, safety, and clarity in parks, residential communities, and shopping streets; (2) have negative perceptions of vegetable markets, bus stops, hospitals, and urban departments; (3) feel anxious when traffic sounds, horn sounds, manhole cover sounds, and construction sounds occur; and (4) prefer spaces away from traffic, with fewer and slower vehicles, with a suitable space scale, and moderate crowd density. These results provide a reference for the future design of activity venues (i.e., residential communities, vegetable markets, bus stops, parks, shopping streets, hospitals, and urban functional departments) and the planning of accessibility systems for visually impaired urban residents.

Արտահայտչամիջոցների գործառույթները Կոմիտասի «Անտունի» երգում (Ի՞նչ է լսել Դեբյուսին «Անտունի» երգում)

Հոդվածը նվիրված է Կոմիտասի «Անտունի» երգին: XX դարասկզբին Փարիզում Կոմիտասի դասախոսությունների և համերգների շնորհիվ ֆրանսիացի անվանի գործիչները ծանոթացան հայ հոգևոր և ժողովրդական երաժշտության գլուխգործոցներին: Դրանք արժանացան Ռոմեն Ռոլանի, Գաբրիել Ֆորեի, Լուի Լալուայի և այլոց բարձր գնահատականին: Ի թիվս այլ երգերի՝ հնչեց «Անտունին», որը խորապես հուզեց հատկապես Կլոդ Դեբյուսիին: Սույն հոդվածում փորձ է արվում լուսաբանելու Դեբյուսիի բարձր գնահատականի շարժառիթները: Վերլուծվում է բանաստեղծական տեքստը, մեղեդին, այնուհետև Կոմիտասի՝ երգից բխեցրած դաշնամուրային նվագակցությունը: Անշուշտ, Դեբյուսին նկատած կլիներ Կոմիտասի զգայուն, յուրօրինակ վերաբերմունքն առանձին հնչյունին, նրբերանգներին, լուսաստվերներին, ինչը բնորոշ էր հատկապես իմպրեսիոնիստներին: Օրինակ՝ «Անտունի» երգի միայն վերջին 12 տակտում Կոմիտասը զետեղել է 35 կատարողական ցուցում: Ավելին՝ հատկանշական են նվագակցության և ռեգիստրների հնչուժի հուժկու հակադրումները, բևեռացումները՝ հատկապես 37-38-րդ տակտերում: Այստեղ վոկալի հնչողությունը երկու ֆորտեից նվազում է մինչև երկու պիանո, մինչդեռ նվագակցությունը հնչում է երկու ֆորտե: Դաշնամուրի այդ «մռնչյունը», տիեզերական կոչը հոդվածագիրը համեմատում է Հրեշտակապետի փողի հետ, որը «Ցասման օրը» պիտի ազդարարի «Ահեղ Դատաստանի» սկիզբը: Նման սուբյեկտիվ մեկնաբանությունը չի բացառվում, քանի որ երգն ունի նաև գոյաբանական հնչեղություն: Բացի այդ՝ նախքան ձայնի մուտքը դաշնամուրային նախաբանը նմանակում է եկեղեցական զանգերին, ինչը ոչ միայն երգի համար ստեղծում է հնչյունային դաշտ, այլ նրան հաղորդում է խորհրդավոր բնույթ: Ահա նաև այս զանգերն են, որ կարող էին Դեբյուսիի հոգում արթնացնել իր իսկ «Զանգեր սաղարթի միջով» և «Ջրասույզ տաճարը» դաշնամուրային պիեսների կերպարները: This article is dedicated to the song Antuni by Komitas.At the beginning of the 20th century, thanks to Komitas's lectures and concerts held in Paris, famous French figures got acquainted with the masterpieces of Armenian folk and sacred music. They were highly praised by Romain Rolland, Gabriel Faure, Louis Laloy, and others. Among other songs, Antuni was performed there, which deeply touched Claude Debussy. This article attempts to shed light on the reason of Debussy’s high appreciation. The poetic text, the melody, and then the piano accompaniment are analyzed which are derived from the song itself. Debussy would have noticed Komitas's sensitive and unique attitude to individual sounds and nuances, which was especially typical of the Impressionist artists. For example, in the last twelve bars of the song Antuni, Komitas has written as much as 35 performance marks. Moreover, the strong contrasts of dynamics in different ranges in the accompaniment are to be noted, especially in the bars 37-38. Here the volume of the voice decreases from ff to pp, while the accompaniment continues sounding ff. The author of the article compares this "roar" of the piano, the cosmic call, to the trumpet of the Archangel, which will announce the beginning of the “Day of Wrath” on the “Doomsday.” Such a subjective interpretation is not excluded, as the song also has an ontological meaning. In addition, before the voice enters, the piano accompaniment imitates church bells, which not only creates a sound environment for the song, but also endows it with a mysterious character. These are the bells that could awaken in Debussy's soul the characters of his own piano works.

Environmental Friendliness of a Person’s Musical Space as a Factor of Personality Disharmony Prevention

The article discusses correlations between a person’s musical space and the degree of personality harmony. The sound environment of a person always influences personality formation and his/her behaviour. By studying a person's musical preferences, a degree of harmony of his/her personality development can be understood. The article's purpose is to determine the correlation of musical preferences with the existence of personality disharmony and types of his/her relationships with others, as well as to determine the specifics of the impact of music on personality features of people with special needs. The authors started from the assumption that, depending on his/her personality traits, a person prefers certain patterns of musical discourse. The empirical study aimed to study relations of such personality features that testify the personality disharmony and are manifested in non-viable relationships with others. The personality manifestations in communications and educational activities were also analyzed. It was determined that music therapy plays an important role in the formation of their personalities for people with special needs. The correlation of personality traits with the perception of music has shown that persons with the external locus of control choose musical discourses that, as for their psychological content, reflect uncertainty, amorphy of world perception or its simplicity, primitiveness; on the contrary, persons with the internal locus of control choose energetic, purposeful music. Persons with the disharmonious type of relationships choose music whose psychological and emotional content reflects the next personality traits: possible aggressive behaviour; a life course that does not demand serious decisions, irresponsibility, and reluctance to resolve complex situations.

Maintaining Environmental Sustainability through Existing Environment’s Vegetations

Demands for building in urban areas have been increasing lately, especially educational buildings as support for the human development index. Unfortunately, only a few educational buildings can support green buildings as pilots and educational materials for their users. One of the initiators in becoming educational materials and examples of green buildings is the i-cell multipurpose educational building at the Universitas Indonesia. This study aims to find evidence of how reliable and sustainable planning of an educational building in Depok, Indonesia, can accommodate the needs of its users while being environmentally friendly for its surroundings. It observes the influences of vegetation in the surrounding building, one of which is by maximizing the function of vegetation around the building. The research methods include collecting data from the weather archive, vegetation literature, observing the subject, and analyzing the vegetation’s effect. This study shows that vegetation has an important role in generating a sound environment for humans and buildings, including healing and providing calmness. This study concludes that vegetation plays a role in generating a good environment by decreasing temperature, sound pollution, sun glare and providing shading areas for people. Those conditions lead to the sustainability of the environment surrounding the building.

Spatial Multizone Soundfield Reproduction Design

<p>It is desirable for people sharing a physical space to access different multimedia information streams simultaneously. For a good user experience, the interference of the different streams should be held to a minimum. This is straightforward for the video component but currently difficult for the audio sound component. Spatial multizone soundfield reproduction, which aims to provide an individual sound environment to each of a set of listeners without the use of physical isolation or headphones, has drawn significant attention of researchers in recent years. The realization of multizone soundfield reproduction is a conceptually challenging problem as currently most of the soundfield reproduction techniques concentrate on a single zone. This thesis considers the theory and design of a multizone soundfield reproduction system using arrays of loudspeakers in given complex environments. We first introduce a novel method for spatial multizone soundfield reproduction based on describing the desired multizone soundfield as an orthogonal expansion of formulated basis functions over the desired reproduction region. This provides the theoretical basis of both 2-D (height invariant) and 3-D soundfield reproduction for this work. We then extend the reproduction of the multizone soundfield over the desired region to reverberant environments, which is based on the identification of the acoustic transfer function (ATF) from the loudspeaker over the desired reproduction region using sparse methods. The simulation results confirm that the method leads to a significantly reduced number of required microphones for an accurate multizone sound reproduction compared with the state of the art, while it also facilitates the reproduction over a wide frequency range. In addition, we focus on the improvements of the proposed multizone reproduction system with regard to practical implementation. The so-called 2.5D multizone oundfield reproduction is considered to accurately reproduce the desired multizone soundfield over a selected 2-D plane at the height approximately level with the listener’s ears using a single array of loudspeakers with 3-D reverberant settings. Then, we propose an adaptive reverberation cancelation method for the multizone soundfield reproduction within the desired region and simplify the prior soundfield measurement process. Simulation results suggest that the proposed method provides a faster convergence rate than the comparative approaches under the same hardware provision. Finally, we conduct the real-world implementation based on the proposed theoretical work. The experimental results show that we can achieve a very noticeable acoustic energy contrast between the signals recorded in the bright zone and the quiet zone, especially for the system implementation with reverberation equalization.</p>