“From Psychoacoustics to citizen science: Acoustic Ecology 2.0”
October 25, 3-4PM
Presenters: Sabine Feisst, ASU School of Music, Acoustic Ecology Lab Co-Director Garth Paine, ASU School of Arts Media and Engineering, Acoustic Ecology Lab Co-Director
The Acoustic Ecology Lab listens to the Earth, from community engagement in sound monitoring through public listing walks to psychoacoustic analysis of environmental change.
Garth Paine has been working with colleagues at IRCAM developing a music performance system that moves the audience from spectator to part of the ecosystem of the work. His first major work Future Perfect was premiered at ZKM in Germany – above is a short doc on the project
Hearing loss in adults and children is a widespread and growing problem around the world and has a negative impact on communication abilities and emotional and psychological health. Blending medical research, artistic practices, sound studies and technological innovation, ASU’s Acoustic Ecology Lab in collaboration with faculty and students from Speech and Hearing Science at ASU’s College of Health Solutions are developing new practices and tools for hearing loss awareness, prevention and rehabilitation to share with both local and global communities.
For the last 2 years we have been conducting auditory monitoring in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in partnership with the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy and the Phoenix Zoo – examining the psychoacoustic impact of traffic passing on the road that bisects the preserve and also counting and analyzing sound from aircraft overhead.
One of the recorders with a realtime clock backup battery attached and the MEMS mic with capacitor and resistor for power filtering – the Digital mic means we don’t need a mic preamp which saves lots of power draw
We have also been modeling how sound changes with weather variables and modeling how this might help us measure and predict climate impact (see the Ecosonics project and poster) – we have much more to do in terms of developing a realtime map of how the psychoacoustic parameters dynamically vary across the preserve, but the initial data is very exciting.
Initial research outcomes from EcoSonics show a strong correlation between weather data and psychoacoustic properties of environmental sound
In order to undertake this work (we now have 2 years of recordings from 14 recorders) we built 20 small sound recorders which can be deployed for long periods and take very large SD cards. Here is a link to the GitHub project detailing that recorder with uses a MEMS mic and a Teensy. The design and build instructions are available on GitHub
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31°57’2.90″N
112°51’42.09″W
We also 3D printed small cases so we could weather protect the recorders and place them inside a strong metal case associated with a camera trap at the same location. The 14 recorders are placed at 1 mile intervals, 7 miles either side of the road, so we can track changes in the environment across the 14 mile transect.
McDowell Sonoran Conservancy staff and stewards in the field setting up the field recorders
For more information on the EcoSonics project see Dr. Paine’s article in the Conversation, titled Acoustic Ecology 2.0
Jacob Miller Smith, Doctoral candidate, Composition & Acoustic Ecology Researcher
Noise
Listening With – the theme of 2019’s World Listening Day, calls to attention the need to explore what we are listening with and the importance of not listening for. Particularly unwelcome may be the presence of unpleasant sounds commonly referred to as noise in our environment. These unwanted sounds are just as valid as sounds that many people may prefer. To truly understand a sonic environment they must not be quickly dismissed. Urban sounds —the oppressive roar of a truck engine, the sharp pulse of a coffee shop blender, the late night restless wandering of an upstairs neighbor shape the sonic world in a way that is different than oft-touted calming and natural sounds of wildlife. This begs the question, however, why one should subject oneself to unwanted and stressful sounds.
The point is not to inundate oneself with a barrage of unpleasant sounds but to recognize and accept those sounds as a part of a specific sonic environment, understand their place in it, and perhaps reflect on what they mean for it. This kind of acute awareness can serve to make us tolerate these sounds and allow them to exist as necessary part in an acoustic ecosystem. To dismiss such sounds as noise poses a risk: that of romanticizing sound to the detriment of the observer who wishes to listen with.
As I struggle daily with such sounds, I incorporate them into my listening practice and attune myself to them. Thus they become less jarring and hurtful and at the same time I am more aware of their context. In practicing acceptance and understanding of all sounds, I also become more conscious of my own contributions to my sonic environment, whether they be heard as pleasant or not . This is not to say that relaxed and passive listening should be frowned upon, as this is one of many modes to perceive our sonic surroundings.
For World Listening Day, let us all explore listening with, and not listening for.
Our sonic environments consist of more than sounds of organic materials and living beings, and sounds we are responsible for. It is important to refrain from romanticizing our sonic environment if we wish to truly understand and hear it.
The theme for World Listening Day 2019 is “Listening With,” as created by composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood:
“Listening with…
listening with the neighborhood
at midnight, and again at dawn.
Listening with an awareness that all around you are other life-forms simultaneously listening and sensing with you – plant roots, owls, cicadas, voles – mutually intertwined within the web of vibrations which animate and surround our planet.”
I find the idea of “listening with” intriguing. Through my own research, weekly soundwalks, and a Deep Listening Intensive, I’ve been encouraged to listen to, with, and through my body. During a past listening meditation, I distinctly remember sitting at my kitchen table and being aware of the refrigerator’s low groans, mid-range hums, and higher crackles in and through my left lower ribs with an almost dull tingling sensation. Something about the fridge sounds resonated clearly in my body, helping me better hear the range of sounds emanating from the machine. Feeling how my body interacted with the sounds also heightened my sense of sharing the space, both sonically and physically. Sensing how the groans, hums, and crackles moved through the room and my body, I could then reflect on how my own sounds pass through spaces and impact others.
This type of reliance on embodied and multi-sensory listening – detecting changes with our skin, absorbing sound in our bodies – elevates the listening experience. It can also better connect us to ourselves and the space we’re in. Listening with our bodies to discover resonance can reveal how we’re feeling, if we’re holding tension, how we’re moving through a space, and how that space is interacting with us. “Listening with” allows for the gathering of information, which in turn can bring about empathy and care for the intertwined vibrations of people and spaces around us.
Passenger Pigeon
The American Bird Conservancy warns that “Hundreds of bird species are on track toward extinction. If these species blink out, we’ll have just one species to blame: ours.” Climate change, habitat loss, overfishing, collisions, and invasive species are among the reasons for the dwindling of almost a hundred bird species in the Americas. What will this mean for our sonic environments?
The extinction of North America’s incredibly abundant passenger pigeon in 1914 was a sonic sea-change. Simon Potagon, a member of the Potawatomi tribe and well-known writer in the 19thcentury, remembered the mesmerizing and awe-inspiring sounds of the me-me-og – the wild passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). To Potagon, the spring flocks of hundreds of thousands of travelling pigeons sounded as if “an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the forests towards me” and like “distant thunder” getting “nearer and nearer.” He found the sound of such large flocks to be as stirring as that of the “grandest waterfall in America,” when “these birds drop from their course like meteors from heaven.” He enjoyed the sounds of their gurgles, their flapping wings and their feasting on nuts and seeds in the forest.
Wisconsin’s newspaper Commonwealthreported in 1871 that hunters dropped their guns when confronted by the avian wall of sound: “Imagine a thousand threshing machines running under full headway, accompanied by as many steamboats groaning off steam, with an equal quota of R.R. trains passing through covered bridges – imagine these massed into a single flock, and you possibly have a faint conception of the terrific roar.” Passenger Pigeon
When the settlers discovered that this bird was easily obtainable and delicious protein it only took about fifty years for the passenger pigeon to go extinct. Martha, the last member of a the species that once made up a quarter of North America’s bird population, died in the Cincinnati Zoo on 1 September 1914 Martha died in Cincinnati Zoo (for more information see the Smithsonian Magazine
No field recordings or transcriptions of the pigeons’ calls are extant. Bohemian-born American composer Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781–1861) who witnessed large passenger pigeon flocks when he settled in America dedicated a symphonic work to this bird: The Columbiad or Migration of American Wild Passenger Pigeons(1858). Listen to a live performance of the work by the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchesta
Psychoacoustics has played an important role in automobile design for at least a decade now and this work takes it to another level – just think about those 16+ loudspeakers in your car, they are doing noise cancelling and sound sculpting to present you with an automobile sound that is largely artificial – so now you could dial in your own —
more information here in the B&K Waves Journal
to celebrate Earth Day I am going out to listen to the world – we are listening on a constant basis in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve – here is a little sample for your enjoyment on this special day
We are delighted to share our EcoRift VR experiences in an upcoming exhibition Listen to the World thanks to Darren Copeland
EcoRift: nature sojourns – Embodied sonic experiences by the Listen(n) Project
The EcoRift delivers immersive experiences of being present in highly valued natural environments without needing to travel and without degrading the environments by visitation. The prototype is designed with an explicit accessibility strategy that provides open access to the experience of pristine natural environments across the globe, including for the elderly and people with disabilities who may otherwise not have access.
EcoRift can be used in exhibitions in the partner communities and in festivals and galleries internationally. Extension to this system will allow individuals to capture their own National Park experience and upload it easily into the system.
Along with the other rich media tools developed by the project (Dr. Paine helped develop the Unity3D Ambisonic tools with Blue Ripple Sound), EcoRift directs community awareness to issues of sustainability, environmental engagement, critical enquiry and interpretative discourse around questions of how digital technology and rich media environments can be used to deepen value systems around these precious, yet fragile ecosystems. Given the ongoing need to increase ecological consciousness, the EcoRift is designed to provide new virtual immersive environmental engagement cultivating environmental awareness and community agency.
The EcoRift system was created by Dr. Garth Paine and student programmer, Andre Maestas and was launched during SXSW Eco in Austin, Texas in 2014. EcoRift experiences have been developed for each of the Listen(n) locations and this project is a core stream of the overall Listen(n) Project, democratizing access to nature and building community stewardship around important protected environments.
The success of the EcoRift experience is largely due to the fact that the PointOfView (POV) of both auditory and visual streams moves without perceptible latency and produces such a tightly correlated experience as to be perceived as an embodied relation to the content. This critical accessibility and embodiment is essential in exploring how digital technology and rich media environments can be used to create experiences of being present in remote environments.
In response to a recent article I published in The Conversation, I got a wonderful email from an author, Herselman Hattingh, who wrote a short story for the Boston review about a sound recorder’s who sits out in the desert recording the sounds and tracking, through these recordings, the demise of the ecosystem around him. The story was awarded first prize in the 2018 Aura Estrada Short Story competition. The author was so struck that I am sitting out there recording and doing time series analysis to examine climate impact based on my own sound recordings that they sent me the link to the story they wrote, saying
In September 2017 I wrote a short story. I just had this idea of a guy with an old-fashioned tape recorder out in the desert. I did not know what he was doing there, but it turns out he was recording the end-times and that he is not alone.
I read your story yesterday and was really surprised to find that a fictional character with a fictional job turned out to be based on something very real and very interesting.
Co-Director of the Acoustic Ecology Lab, Dr. Garth Paine wrote an article for the Conversation titled, Listening to nature: How sound can help us understand environmental change – it discusses environmental sound and how in collaboration with citizen scientists, some of our research explores how sound can be used to predict climate impact – happy readings and listening. Want more good news, sign up to The Conversation’s newsletter https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters.
31°57’2.90″N 112°51’42.09″W
An ambisonic recording made by Dr. Garth Paine at Senita Basin, just 4 miles from the US-Mexico boarder ( 31°57’2.90″N, 112°51’42.09″W) is included in the Cycling74 Max8 software release to showcase the new multichannel audio systems.
As Max8 does not include ambisonic decoders as standard, the file was rendered as an 8 channel horizontal surround file.
Several ambisonic option are available for Max such as the HOA Library, ICST Tools, and a host of excellent plugins such as those by Blue Ripple Sound
It is great that our ongoing work in documenting the acoustic ecologies of these contested lands is finding a new voice on the computers of thousands of people world wide. Just check the mc.sfplay~ help file and click the senita-8ch file
Thanks to Cycling74 for their support of our work. Listen to hundreds of hours of field recordings of the US SW deserts for free online.
Weekly Soundwalks run by Anne-Marie Shaver and Hunter Langenhorst
Wednesdays
5:15 – 6:15pm
ASU School of Music
Tempe, AZ
Meet at the fountain
Need a mid-week break? A soundwalk is the perfect way to invite relaxation in the midst of a busy schedule. We will begin and end the soundwalk at the fountain in the School of Music courtyard. The walk itself will last about 20 minutes, and all are welcome to share their observations and thoughts afterward.
Garth Paine is a researcher/composer in residence at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris and at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany for 2018.
He has been at IRCAM since the beginning of February developing a new concert work for field recordings and composed sound for an immersive ambisonic sound playback and for webAudio and WebVR – a truly immersive concert experience. In this talk he will demonstrate some of the technology developments and talk about the value gained by teaching listening skills and embedding acoustic ecology within the community.
The talk will be followed by a performance using your smart phone – demonstrating some fo the techniques they have been developing at IRCAM over the last 2 months.
Psychoacoustics has played an important role in automobile design for at least a decade now and this work takes it to another level – just think about those 16+ loudspeakers in your car, they are doing noise cancelling and sound sculpting to present you with an automobile sound that is largely artificial – so now you could dial in your own —
more information here in the B&K Waves Journal 
We will be presenting workshops and a concert in Joshua Tree with partners JTLab, Joshua Tree National Park, the Mohave land Trust at the end of April – thanks to the generous funding from Invoking the Pause
Poster here – Community Pause – Invoking the Pause and the Listen Project 
