Soundscape: Fairbourne Railway

Rail Sights and Sounds (1:47) This short documentary is about the sights and soundscape of the Fairbourne railway near Barmouth. The railways is a 12 ¹⁄4 in gauge miniature running for 2 miles from the village of Fairbourne on the Mid-Wales coast, alongside the beach to the end of a peninsula at Barmouth. It was opened in 1895. Originally built to carry building materials, the railway has carried vacationers for over a hundred years. Click2Read more. Source: BBC.

Soundscape Installation: Stockholm Noise

Oljud Stockholm / Stockholm Noise was an exhibition at the Museum Of Music in Stockholm as a part of the Stockholm Culture Festival 2009. Håkan Lidbo and the ethnologist Elin Franzén asked five artist to make remixes of the most sounds that people in Stockholm find most annoying; The Underground, a kitchen at McDonald’s, a kindergarden at a small back yard, a noise café and a road in Old Town with passing heavy traffic. People in Stockolm were interviewed about these sounds and if their attitude to the sound changed after they heard it remixed into music. 

Oljud Stockholm / Stockholm Noise wanted to investigate how we can change our attitude to noise in the city and make it less stressful. By listening with your musical ears instead of your critical ears, one might not only be much less irritated by the noises of the city, one might also discover a new quality and a new dimension of the city. 

The artisits that made noise into music were Mokira (Andreas Tilliander), Noisebud (Sol Andersson and Johannes Ahlberg), Sophie Rimheden, Håkan Lidbo and Yourhighness (Johannes Wikström).

The entire work process, from the audio collection to delivery, has been documented in five short films. In the movies, we also hear the relationship artists have with their noise and what the locals think of their city's sounds and noises

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Soundscape: Lisbon Funicular

Elevador Lavra (2:44) The mechanical sound of this unique funicular has echoed in Lisbon's streets since 1884, when the Elevador do Lavra was heralded as the first such system in the world. 

It has a total length of 188 meters and an average gradient of 22.9%. The funicular was built by the Portuguese engineer Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard. The cable car, originally used a mechanism similar to steam locomotives, was later modernized with electric technology of the tram network. It is classified as a National Monument in Portugal since February 2002. Source: You Tube

Soundscape: Underwater seal calls

Seal Calls (1:49) Imagine being able to hear the sounds of unseen seals beneath your feet. This clip includes rarely-heard underwater sounds of seals swimming below the ice in Antarctica. Scientists can hear these sounds from inside their lab and out in the field. From Werner Herzog's 2007 documentary, "Encounters at the End of the World". Source: You Tube

Soundscape: English Canal Barge

Transitioning a Lock (5:15). A short video of a canal barge going through a lock near Workhouse Bridge, in Staffordshire, England. A pleasant soudscape of water and craft on an August day in 2010. Source: YouTube.

Soundscape: Bells of St. Joseph the Worker

Church Bells (4:25) The bells of St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Beal City (Mount Pleasant), Michigan are featured. The large bell tolls noon, followed by a 90 second dwell, then the midday Angelus is chimed. Source: YouTube

Soundscape: Luperon Street Corner

Street Corner in Luperon (7:02) This is an interesting street corner scoundscape in which the camera is placed at ankle height and documents the passing life on an intersection in this small town. From the blaring music of an off screen source to the mix of people and traffic, life is paced at its own unique rhythm in  Luperón, a town in the Puerto Plata province of the Dominican Republic, which lies in the north of the country and is a small tourist center with one all-inclusive hotel and a coastal bay. Source: YouTube

Soundwalk: Vienna

Vienna listening walk (10:16) A listening walk through the Christkindl-Markt in Rathausplatz, on December 12, 2011, starting 18:06 h MEST.  This is an exercise in the course "Alltagsklaglandschaften" taught in the Department for European Ethnology at the University of Vienna by professor Justin Winkler. 

The video lacks obvious visual perfection and actually doesn't aim at achieving such. It simply accompanies a listening walk and accepts all kinds of glitches and jiggling. The agitation retraces the body movements of the recordist. The camera is held at the upper chest level. Therefore sounds which go past the recordist disappear quickly behind his back: the cloak's cloth insulates, and the body, in contrast to our ears, splits the audio world in audible "front" and absent "back". The recordist cannot see what the camera "watches". So he does not correct changes of direction and the skew position of the image. Source: You Tube

Soundscape: Tianjin, China

From My Window (1:00) As China becomes an industrial nation the soundscape of many cities is changing. James Morgan captures the soundscape of Tianjin from his his window. Tianjin  is a fast growing city and is the sixth-largest in China. It is located in the northern part of the country. Source: VIMEO

Soundwalk: Parco del Faro, Catania

Walkin' On Sound Shine! (8:43) (Italian) A short document about a guided soundwalk in Catania's Parco del Faro area on June 25th, 2011. Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse.  Source: VIMEO

Soundwalk: Florence

COME SUONA FIRENZE? (6:48) (Narration in Italian) This is a short documentary about soundwalks in Florence, Italy during the Real-Time Festival 2011. The goal is to discover the acoustic characteristics of Florence  through a series of events  that contribute to raising awareness and appreciation of urban acoustic spaces the musical contextualization of some places in the city.

Soundwalks were led by Justin Winkler, Sara Lenzi, Francesco Michi in the historic center of Florence, in the park of Villa Strozzi and in Villa Vogel.  Source: YouTube

Documentary: Center for Soundscape Study

Wild Sanctuary (4:57) This 2009 documentary explores the work of Bernie Krause in his study of the soundscape.  It details the creation of a  proposed Center For Soundscape Study. Click2Learn more. Source: VIMEO

Soundscape Installation: Death Valley Cycle 2

Death Valley Cycle 2 (2:48) This is a sound/video installation created by artist, Richard Lerman, a professor in the Arizona State University New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. The work was recorded over a 12 month period at Death Valley National Park and marked Lerman’s eight years of living with cancer. 

Death Valley video and soundscape by Richard Lerman. Produced and edited by Alexander D. Chapin, videographer/editor in the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development.  Source: Vimeo

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Soundscape: Flash Mob Performances (Part 2)

As noted in Soundscape: Flash Mob Performances (Part 1) human sound making is one activity that can temporarily change the character of an acoustic space. This posting includes recent musical events that temporarily altered the cultural soundscape two different communities.

Som Sabadell Flashmob (5:41)  On the 130th anniversary of the founding of Banco Sabadell, and paying homage to their city, a flashmob of 100 people from the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l’Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs, performed this Beethoven work on May 19th, 2012  the public square of Sabadell Spain.

Flash Choir in Times Square (7:50) To honor Phillip Glass' 75th birthday, NPR Music commissioned Glass to create a short work to be performed by a flash choir on Times Square in New York City. About 200 singers were involved along with conductor Kent Tritle and soprano soloist Rachel Rosales. The event took place July 10, 2012.

Project: Evaluating Soundscapes

Soundscapes in and around Paris (5:32) By Charlie Mydlarz. The Research Centre at the University of Salford is building a sound map of the world to investigate how sounds in our everyday environment make us feel. People around the world are asked to use their mobile phone to record 30 second clips from different soundscapes and upload them to the Centre's Sound Around You Internet site. 

This video demonstrates the selection of various French soundscapes using the Sound Around You software. The soundscapes you hear were recorded with a mobile phone and tagged in-situ with opinion data (i.e. scores out of 10 for the likes of soundscape quality, pleasantness, excitement, eventfulness, tranquility, etc).  Locations include the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, Gardens of Versailles, Gardens of Foutainbleau, Place de la Concorde, Cimetière de Montmartre, Sacré Cœur and Provins. See an earlier posted video: Project: The Sounds Around You. 

Project: Analyzing Landscape Sounds

Discovering the Soundscape (2:43) First attempts at capturing and analyzing dominating sounds in the landscape of the costal plain of North Carolina with samples taken in Tar River North Park, Creenville and Goose Creek State Park, Washington. Project undertaken by Inge Kersten and Jorrit Noordhuizen, March, 2010. Source: YouTube

Soundscape Composition: Lohberg

Lohberg (11:54) This abstract piece covers an abandoned industrial area in the "Ruhrgebiet" region of Germany called "Lohberg". The photographs were taken on location by Peter Hölscher with field recordings by Michael Rüsenberg captured at the Gdansk dockyard in Poland. Source: Vimeo

Soundscape: Portland Aerial Tram

Riding the tram (4:29) Fragmented conversations form the soundscape inside a Portland, Oregon aerial tramway car as it descends from the Oregon Health and Science University campus, located in the Marquam Hill neighborhood, down to the city's South Waterfront district. Source: Vimeo

Project: What Do We Sound Like to a Whale?

What do we sound like to a whale? (1:00) This short video, embedded within a web page related to under ocean acoustics is very illustrative of the disturbance human sound making can be to the natural acoustic environment of the sea. Source: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology - Right Whale Listening Network.

Project: Sound of Rivers

Muota River (10:50) Eine Vertonung der Ökomorphologie by Andi Gantenbein. This video was part of a thesis project titled "Sound of Rivers". It follows the Muota river in Switzerland.  One sequence has been recorded per eco-morphological section and played according to its length. Someadditional hydrological and geographic information are given at the side. Source: Vimeo.

Soundscape: Saturday Market Buskers

Saturday Market Buskers (5:26) The Saturday Market in Eugene, Oregon is one of the oldest in the nation. Each weekend, from early spring through the fall, the market is alive with the sound of musical performers. These buskers provide an acoustic soundscape through which thousands of tourists and residents explore the arts and crafts of the region. Source: VIMEO

Project: Repurposing Sound Gadgets

Circuit Bending (8:16) The soundscape of many contemporary households is filled with all types of gadgets that talk, make music, squeak or squeak and, at some point, they become discarded. Circuit bending is the creative short-circuiting of devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators. Emphasizing spontaneity and randomness, the techniques of circuit bending have been commonly associated with noise music, though many more conventional contemporary musicians have been known to experiment with these "bent" instruments.

Lecture: Milton Garces - Primordial Sounds

Into The Deep End of Sound (6:56) What sound does a tsunami make? An earthquake? The whole Earth? Milton Garcés studies infrasound, sound that is lower in frequency than the “normal” limit of human hearing. He shares some of his recordings of storms, earthquakes and tsunamis. Perhaps most astounding of all, he plays the vibration humming at the core of the entire planet. Source Pop! Tech

Project: Hearing Hackney

Hearing Hackney (1:50) In preparation for the upcoming 2012 London Olympic games, Hackney Hear is an interactive GPS-triggered audio tour of London’s East End (host of the 2012 Olympic Games) that can be experienced on a user's iPhone or Android. 

As you walk the streets of Hackney, stories new and old will be channeled direct to your ears. You'll hear from famous residents like Iain Sinclair and Tom Hunter to the Turkish and Vietnamese migrants that now populate the area. We’ll also reflect the rich artistic community that have flocked here - commissioning new music, poetry and literature from voices such as Shane Solanki and Kaffe Matthews. These audio clips, which provide artistic renderings, historical tidbits and introductions to the borough's diverse communities, will be triggered as a user walks through the streets, creating his/her own personal soundscape. 

Lecture: Jad Abumarad - Bioacoustics

Sound and Science (15:41) From crayfish hairs to monkey neurons, Radiolab host and producer Jad Abumrad shares examples of how sound has been used to make scientific strides. Along the way, he explains how audio can convey failure or express error. Click2Read more about this presentation. 

Source: PopTech

Lecture: How Sound Affects Us

How Sound Affects Us (3:20) In this short film Julian Treasure explores the four effects sound has on us – physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral. Source: SoundCloud/Vimeo 

(See also: Julian Treasure's TED Lecture on the same topic: 4 Ways Sound Affects Us.)

Soundscape: Cascade Mountain Winter

Sounds of Snow and Water  (6:07) The white sounds of snow falling with water freely flowing downhill in Olallie State Park in the Cascade Mountains of  Washington State. Source: YouTube

Sound Installation: Denver Soundwalk

Soundwalk: Sound Art in Downtown Denver (1:11) Pedestrians encounter a public art installation of Jim Green called Soundwalk while they stroll downtown Denver, Colorado. 

Soundwalk Denver (2:15) Most people who walk down this street simply think they are hearing things and pay little attention to the innocuous grates that line this one block of downtown Denver. Then there are those who look down and double back to investigate, for it is from these grates that the sounds are escaping. 

Source: YouTube