From soundscape documentation to soundscape composition

Barry Truax

The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was established as an educational and research group at Simon Fraser University during the early 1970s and documented soundscapes in Canada and Europe as part of an over-arching concern to draw attention to the importance of the sonic environment. One unique feature of the WSP collection of recordings is its longitudinal documentation of the Vancouver Soundscape over a 40-year period, with recordings from the 1970s, 1990s and the present day. Over that same period, soundscape composition practices have evolved from a documentary mode to an artistic practice. Multi-channel audio reproduction currently provides listeners with a highly immersive auditory experience that has greatly benefitted the practice of soundscape composition by creating esthetically enhanced experiences that are based in real-world experience but move the listener into an abstracted or even a completely imaginary space. The concept and perception of acoustic space is discussed, as well as issues of creating such spaces electroacoustically, with examples drawn from the composer’s practice. The presentation discusses how the artistic use of created acoustic space can relate to (and potentially enhance) our understanding of the human relationships to real-world soundscapes, and hence acoustic ecology.

Mots clés: soundscape; composition; acoustic space; acoustic ecology

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Barry Truax. From soundscape documentation to soundscape composition. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00811391⟩