Research: Animals and acoustic Communication

BBC Nature Wild Video Collection. Acoustic communication is the sending and receiving of messages using sound. Bird song, the roars of lions and the chirping of cicadas are all examples of this. Sometimes the messages are outside the range of human hearing, such as the ultrasonic squeaks of baby rats or the infrasound rumbles of elephants. Most acoustic communication is not language, in the sense that humans use it, although language is one aspect of this adaptation.

There are 50 videos on animal communication archived on this BBC site.

Documentary: Constructing Sonic Belvederes

Sonic Seascape Terrace (8:16 ) Documentation of two sonic belvederes constructed by Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski and Hanna Haaslahti in Turku (Finland) during summer 2011. A realtime soundscape composition created by Alejandro Montes de Oca was distributed on the terraces from the hydrophones submerged in the body of water surrounding the terrace. 

Call For Video Links

The Soundscape Explorations directory is looking for online videos related to the field of acoustic-ecology. Please send URL links to soundscapexplorations@gmail.com


I am interested in all topics related to the soundscape as it is studied from a variety of disciplines be they scientific, social, or artistic. 


Thank you!

Phonographer: Nick Penny - sound diarist

Sound Diarist (1:46) Throughout 2008 Nick Penny, a musician turned sound diarist created an online archive of sounds recorded near his home in Oundle, Northamptonshire, UK. He shares the sounds he records with listeners all over the world who turn into this soundscape of everyday life. His sound diary is available online. Source: BBC. 

Soundscape Composition: Sounds of Africa

Each of these two videos is a montage of images and nature sound woven together into an Animal Planet TV Program promotion for Africa Month. Created by David Bez. 

Sounds of Africa 1 (1:00) 

Sounds of Africa 2 (1:00) 

Sources: YouTube

Soundscape Installation: Times Square Sound Sculpture

Sound Sculpture (1:46)  Even in the cacophony of staccato noise that defines Times Square, one sound seems particularly intriguing. Depending on one's ear it is either a continuous oooom-like mantra, a moan, a reverberating bell or an organlike drone. 

It can be heard if you stand on or near the grating over a subway ventilation shaft on the pedestrian island where Broadway and Seventh Avenue intersect south of 46th Street. You can even detect it sometimes aboard the Queens-bound R, N and W trains before they lumber into the West 49th Street subway station. But no tourist map or sign identifies it.

That is the whole point.

"I wanted a work that wouldn't need indoctrination," says Max Neuhaus, the artist who created the work, which he calls a sound sculpture. "The whole idea is that people discover it for themselves. They can't explain it. They take possession of it as their own discovery. They couldn't do that if it were labeled 'An Artwork by Max Neuhaus.'  Full article.

Source: New York Times Video

Documentary: Listening to Northern Lights

Listening to Northern Lights (7:45)  When solar flares hit the Earth's magnetic field, the skies at both poles can light up with auroras. The particles also create very low frequency electromagnetic waves, a type of natural radio that can be picked up around the globe. Every year sound recordist Steve McGreevy heads north where the reception is best and points his receiver at the sky. This was made for use in the Minnesota Planetarium and Space Discovery Center dome, thus the circular frame of the images). Produced by Joel Halvorson NASA Earth-Sun Museum Alliance (ESMA)

Phonographer: Knud Viktor

Le Sculpteur de son (8:51) Knud Viktor (1924 Copenhagen) is known as a pioneer of phonography and sound ecology. Formerly a painter but also a photographer and a film maker, Viktor wanted to picture the landscape by capturing the impact of the intense light and sounds upon animals. He spent most of his life trying to capture the tiny sound of animals and the sound of erosion on the rocks of Régalon (Lubéron, France) where he was living at the time of this interview.  Source: YouTube

Knud Viktor, Le Chantre Du Luberon  (12:00) Have you ever heard the sound of a worm in a fruit, that of a guinea pig in the womb?  Knud Viktor did. Perceiving the imperceptible, he recorded thousands of sounds, mixing, and processing them for seventeen years, to achieve a "sound painting" of the blue mountain of Luberon.  Originally a painter, printmaker, photographer, he explains why he turned to the world of sound. He explains how by making short films on crickets that little by little, "the sound took over him." He speaks of his early recordings. Source: ina.fr

Language: French only