Soundscape: Alaska Raven Call

Sound of Ravens (2:21) This short video by Doug Brown, is a recording of a Raven on a crisp sunny day in Anchorage, Alaska. The videographer notes: "Ravens are known to make about 33 distinct sounds which are also combined to make even more sounds. I've always found their vocalizations amazing on a cold, clear, sunny day in winter with the Raven in a near-by tree... it's very much the essence of the Far North for me" Source: YouTube

Interview: Daniel Perlin

The Importance Of Sound Perception (6:55) Daniel Perlin, a sound designer from New York curated a workshop at Strelka and Domus Mixtapes Sound of Moscow event. In this video he talks about the way we may perceive the world through attentive listening to the soundscape environment. He also discusses his own projects, importance of local musicians, potential of sounds as means of communication and also explains what Moscow sounds tell him about the city.

Soundwalk: Grand Central Terminal

Grand Central Terminal (4:06)  This audio/slide program by Carlin M. Wragg is a soundwalk through New York City's Grand Central Terminal. It was recorded on February 3, 2011 as an exercise for Sound and The City, a course taught by Daniel Perlin for NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Soundwalk: Blind listening walk

Soundwalk (4:52) (Italian only). In this soundwalk students of the Professional Institute for the Blind Aurelio Nicolodi (Florence) take a soundwalk to develop an awareness of the soundscape of the Parco Villa il Ventaglio. The walk follows a traditional format - introduction, walk and listening, and debriefing session. Source: YouTube.

Project: Searching for quiet spaces.

Hear A Pin Drop: Holly Rumble, Norwhich, UK, is an artist working with live performance and sound. In this project, Rumble sets out to see if she can find places within a busy acoustic environment in which a pin drop can be heard. The information is mapped and document on project special forms. This series of videos documents six days of field work with a good explanation of the project in the Day 1 video. Click2Read about this Edinburgh project.

Day 1 (3:57) 
Day 2 (4:05)
Day 3 (2:24)
Day 4 (2:51)
Day 5 (3:12)
Day 6 (3:36)

Click2Read more about Holly Rumble and her Hear A Pin Drop project.

Research: Acoustics and Your Environment

Basics of Sound and Highway Traffic Noise (48:37). This nearly hour long video looks at the basics principles of acoustics and then addresses issues of highway traffic generated noise and what factors determine how and what we hear when adjacent to roadways. Source: Federal Highway Administration and YouTube.

Noise Issues: Whales Shout Over Noise

Whales Shouting (0:48) Just like people in a bar or other noisy location, North American right whales increase the volume of their calls as environmental noise increases; and just like humans, at a certain point, it may become too costly to continue to shout, according to marine and acoustic scientists. Source: Penn State University and YouTube

Human Noise And Whale Communication (0:47) Whales communicate using melodic sounds or "songs" that can travel more than 100 meters. Oceangoing ships produce noise, mainly from their propellers, that interfere with the ability of whales to communicate. Other types of ships create additional layers of noise. Oil-exploration ships, for example, use reflection seismology to map the ocean floor. Research has shown that these additional noises can interfere with a whale's ability to communicate, causing confusion for the whale.

Lecture: Paul Roe - Listening to Nature

Listening to Nature: Acoustic Monitoring of the Environment (29:34) Professor Paul Roe of the Queensland University of Technology gives a presentation in 2009 about acoustic analysis research of the soundscape.

"The requirement to monitor the rapid pace of environmental change due to global warming and to human development is producing large volumes of data but placing much stress on the capacity of ecologists to store, analyse and visualise that data. To date, much of the data has been provided by low level sensors monitoring soil moisture, dissolved nutrients, light intensity, gas composition and the like. However, a significant part of an ecologist’s work is to obtain information about species diversity, distributions and relationships. This task typically requires the physical presence of an ecologist in the field, listening and watching for species of interest. It is an extremely difficult task to automate because of the higher order difficulties in bandwidth, data management and intelligent analysis if one wishes to emulate the highly trained eyes and ears of an ecologist. This paper is concerned with just one part of the bigger challenge of environmental monitoring – the acquisition and analysis of acoustic recordings of the environment. Our intention is to provide helpful tools to ecologists – tools that apply information technologies and computational technologies to all aspects of the acoustic environment.

The on-line system which we are building in conjunction with ecologists offers an integrated approach to recording, data management and analysis. The ecologists we work with have different requirements and therefore we have adopted the toolbox approach, that is, we offer a number of different web services that can be concatenated according to need. In particular, one group of ecologists is concerned with identifying the presence or absence of species and their distributions in time and space. Another group, motivated by legislative requirements for measuring habitat condition, are interested in summary indices of environmental health. In both case, the key issues are scalability and automation." Abstract Queensland University of Technology.  Click2Read