As we publish, we will list links to articles, reports, and relevant webinars here.
Sound Travels leaders have published articles on topics such as ecology and acoustics, music and its impact, which may interest Sound Travels followers.
Below we also list some of our favorite resources. Enjoy!
We have two new soundpacks! With this resource you can enjoy the soundscape of a favorite place after you visit or become familiar with its sounds before you go.
Parents, caregivers, and educators can prepare youth for a multisensory exploration.
We invite creatives to use clips to compose or as additions to other projects.
North Park Village Nature Center in Chicago is a unique spot. Find the sound clips, images, and recommendations for educators here.
Columbus Zoo and Aquarium — sound clips, images, and recommendations for educators. Squawks and talk and more.
Noise distracts foraging bats, a study led by Drs. Louise Allen and Nickolay Hristov, Epub 2021 Feb 10
Noise is becoming a more prominent feature of many landscapes. Noise can primarily function to mask-meaning that it obscures a cue by overlapping with it, or distract-meaning that it occupies an animal’s attention. The study indicates that the pallid bat does not seem capable of compensating for environmental noise.
Proc Biol Sci 288(1944):20202689, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2689.
Singing Insects explains Carl Strang’s research on cicadas, crickets, and katydids in the Chicago area.
Recommended
Acoustically Fascinating and Often Free: The World of Acoustic Ecology, Field Recording, Soundscape, & Soundwalking : The Basics, Logistics, and an Invitation to Explore via Online Resources Compiled by Eric Leonardson, Associate Professor, Adj. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Junior Ranger Sounds Explorer, activities to increase awareness of sound among youth interested in outdoor spaces. Purchase multiple copies here.
A World of Sound–Short articles to celebrate the year of sound (2022). Experts from the UK Acoustics Network and the International Year of Sound team published articles exploring the world of sound and how it benefits and causes problems to people, other animals, and our environment. Everything vibrates and makes sound, from the smallest living cells in the human body to the biggest skyscrapers. https://kids.frontiersin.org/collections/17985/a-world-of-sound
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
World Listening Day (#WLD, #Worldlisteningday) The annual World Listening Day is a global participatory event on composer R. Murray Schafer’s birthday, July 18. He wrote The Tuning of the World. Each year the World Listening Project selects a theme for World Listening Day. The 2022 theme of “Listening Across Boundaries” was created and described by Heather R. Spence, a musician and marine biologist based in Mexico.
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference organized in partnership with Atlantic Center for the Arts, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. “Listening Pasts – Listening Futures” takes place March 23-26, 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the WFAE’s founding. For more details please visit: https://www.wfae.net/conference2023.html.
AudioMoth Is an open-source acoustic monitoring device used for monitoring wildlife. See also, Tips from the Saturday, July 14, 2022 the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology AudioMoth workshop,
Specific to Parks and Natural Soundscapes
Check out
NPS Natural Sounds & Night Skies Division https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1050/index.htm
The National Park Service offers a sound gallery with entries like this one of coyotes howling:
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/sounds-coyotes.htm
A Study of Signs, Whispers, and the Experience of Muir Woods, by Levenhagen et al.
First published: 21 October 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10156
Telemetry, a public radio-style audio series helps transmit some of Yellowstone’s scientific investigations to listeners, wherever they are.
For explanations of noise pollution, some research, and engaging graphics, check this World Atlas article: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-noise-pollution.html
https://mwsae.org/workshop-on-listening-across-boundaries-world-listening-day-2022/
A tribute to Schafer’s music and importance in acoustic ecology tribute on Flight Risk (hosted by Ed Herrmann on KOPN Columbia, MO, July 17, 2022), includes interviews with acoustic ecologists, Hildegard Westerkamp and Eric Leonardson. Also archived on Music From Other Minds, on Berkeley community radio KALW-FM.
Advisor Eric Leonardson from the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology also recommends these sites for resources on sound, ecology, and society:
http://intecol2021.org/
Advisor Eve Payor from the Atlantic Center for the Arts recommends:
Young Sound Seekers program
https://atlanticcenterforthearts.org/youngsoundseekers/
Audio postcard by Jack Hines, 2019 artist-in-residence at the ACA Soundscape Field Station at Canaveral National Seashore https://www.nps.gov/cana/getinvolved/air-creative-contributions.htm
The Nature Fix by Florence Williams https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Fix-Happier-Healthier-Creative/dp/0393242714
The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krause https://www.amazon.com/Great-Animal-Orchestra-Finding-Origins/dp/031608686X
Digital High Fives: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/sound/ juniorrangersound.htm
Advice for exhibit designers is available. In “Sound Advice: Acoustic Considerations for Museum Design” (2007), Weatherhead gives readers a place to start (making a sonic map), and sets expectations for a team. She suggests a minimum of four players: the exhibit designer/developer, the acoustics engineer, the A/V or multimedia designer/producer, and the museum leader.
Pros and Cons to Sound as an Immersive Experience. Immersive exhibits are by definition complex and multisensory, often incorporating virtual and physical spaces as well as strategies to transport visitors to a distant realistic or imagined space.
The temptation to focus on and elevate natural soundscapes is strong, but also can be a trap. Visitors to “Sugar from the Sun” heard recorded insect, bird, and amphibian sounds. Evaluators found some respondents went looking for the origins of the sounds, wound up disappointed and began questioning if the experience was real or fake (Gyllenhaall, 2008). “Coast to Cactus in Southern California” incorporated Spanish, English, and Spanglish. Including a first language may have evoked nostalgia, and this is significant as waves of emotion may distract from STEM concepts but solidify intent to return and open new topics for discussion among visiting group members.
Some authors critique crowd-sourced collections of sounds. The British Library/National Trust project “Sounds of Our Shores”, directed its users to collect “favorite sounds,” which resulted in a rich collection of natural sounds, but diverted attention away from soundscapes of protest and working class struggle. Tourle (2017) argued that despite the appearance of an open exercise in crowd-sourcing sonic heritage, the project in fact erased the complexity of shoreline sounds.
Unusual approaches
Musical interpretations of data sets (e.g., “Earth System Music” by Lee de Mora), http://sonify.wpi.edu/
Accessible Oceans, led by Amy Bower, Woods Hole. Bower and an interdisciplinary team of scientists and sound experts are working to design auditory displays of ocean data about phenomena such ocean-atmosphere exchange and underwater volcanic eruptions. For some background on Bower’s research, https://web.whoi.edu/oceaninsight/sound-for-science/
For explanations of noise pollution, some research, and engaging graphics, check this World Atlas article: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-noise-pollution.html
“Virtual Museum: Reconnecting to the Natural Heritage” in Boulder, Colorado AND “The Affective Geography of Silence: Towards a Museum of Natural Quiet” are helpful models for engagement in description and data interpretation (e.g., using an exercise like creating a shared ideal landscape).