Sound, Media, Ecology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxvi

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2. Sound, Media, Ecology: Introduction in Three Acts

   • Milena Droumeva, Randolph Jordan

   Pages 1-18

3. Acoustic Ecology: Foundations and Critical Responses

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 19-19

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   2. Acoustic Ecology and the World Soundscape Project

      • Barry Truax

      Pages 21-44

   3. The Disruptive Nature of Listening: Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow

      • Hildegard Westerkamp

      Pages 45-63

   4. Local Eardonances: Raymond Murray Schafer’s Contribution to the History and Present-Day Practice of Noise Abatement

      • Karin Bijsterveld

      Pages 65-84

   5. Multimodal Scholarship in World Soundscape Project Composition: Toward a Different Media-Theoretical Legacy (Or: The WSP as OG DH)

      • Jonathan Sterne

      Pages 85-109

4. Environment and Community

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 111-111

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   2. Nothing Connects Us but Imagined Sound

      • Mitchell Akiyama

      Pages 113-129

   3. Havana’s Falling Tanks and Flooded Laneways: Examining the Acoustic Community

      • Vincent Andrisani

      Pages 131-151

   4. Acoustic Ecology and Ecological Sound Art: Listening to Changing Ecosystems

      • Leah Barclay

      Pages 153-177

   5. Listening to Renewable Energy Technologies

      • Linda O Keeffe

      Pages 179-195

5. Media and Society

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. The Uncanny Soundscapes of the Palestinian Exile: Rethinking Technics, Memory, and Sound

      • Özgün Eylül İşcen

      Pages 199-216

   3. Responsive Listening: Negotiating Cities of Sirens, Smartphones and Sensors

      • Sarah Barns

      Pages 217-231

   4. Listening to Traffic with Guts and Antennae

      • Andra McCartney

      Pages 233-241

   5. Acouscenic Listening

      • Sean Taylor, Mikael Fernström (Softday)

      Pages 243-259

   6. Evening of Sounds: Auditory Cultures in Radio Call-in Programmes

      • Heikki Uimonen

      Pages 261-284

6. Back Matter

   Pages 285-294

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This volume reads the global urban environment through mediated sonic practices to put a contemporary spin on acoustic ecology’s investigations at the intersection of space, cultures, technology, and the senses. Acoustic ecology is an interdisciplinary framework from the 1970s for documenting, analyzing, and transforming sonic environments: an early model of the cross-boundary thinking and multi-modal practices now common across the digital humanities. With the recent emergence of sound studies and the expansion of “ecological” thinking, there is an increased urgency to re-discover and contemporize the acoustic ecology tradition. This book serves as a comprehensive investigation into the ways in which current scholars working with sound are re-inventing acoustic ecology across diverse fields, drawing on acoustic ecology’s focus on sensory experience, place, and applied research, as well as attendance to mediatized practices in sounded space. From sounding out the Anthropocene, to rethinking our auditory media landscapes, to exploring citizenship and community, this volume brings the original acoustic ecology problem set into the contemporary landscape of sound studies. 

• acoustic
• urban
• environment
• sonic
• space
• technology
• digital
• humanities
• sound studies
• sensory
• anthropocene
• auditory
• landscape

• Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

  Milena Droumeva

• Concordia University, Montréal, Canada

  Randolph Jordan

Milena Droumeva is Assistant Professor in Communication and Glenfraser Endowed Professor in Sound Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, specializing in cultural sound studies and sensory ethnography. She works across the fields of urban soundscape research, sonification for public engagement, as well as gender and sound in video games.

Randolph Jordan is Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. His research, teaching, and creative practice reside at the intersections of soundscape research, media studies, and critical geography. He has published widely on the ways in which the fields of acoustic ecology and film sound studies can inform each other.