Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T19:08:01.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ethical Questions about Working with Soundscapes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2016

Andra MCcartney*
Affiliation:
Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal, QC, H4B 1R6, Canada

Abstract

When soundscape composers, documentarians and artists work with soundscapes, they are expressing relationships with the world, through their treatment of place, sounds and audience. A number of questions could be asked about these expressions about places, the ethics of these expressions, and the ways in which these ethics are informed by underlying ideologies of sound, of sound production and of sound ecology. One key question concerns a common distinction between ‘high-fidelity’ and ‘low-fidelity’. Are there some – possibly unintended or unexamined – ethical implications embedded in the dichotomisation of ‘hi-fi’ vs ‘lo-fi’ in soundscape theory? Is this really an essential or unavoidable concept and expression, or are there alternatives? One such possible alternative is found in the concept of the ecotone – a marginal zone, a transitional area or time where species from adjacent ecosystems interact. This leads us to an idea of ‘ecotonality’ that might offer a more flexible, less polarised, alternative to the hi-fi/lo-fi dichotomy. Finally, we will interrogate three themes around ideas of soundscape ’authenticity’: authenticity of place, authenticity of production and authenticity of connection.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cary, J. H. 1958. France Looks to Pennsylvania: The Eastern Penitentiary as a Symbol of Reform. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 82(2): 186203.Google Scholar
Drott, E. 2009. The Politics of Presque Rien. Sound Commitments 23: 145167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrari, L. 1971. Presque Rien No. 1. Deutsche Grammophon 2543 004, LP.Google Scholar
Frye, N. 1971. The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi.Google Scholar
Gosz, J.R. 1993. Ecotone Hierarchies. Ecological Applications 3(3): 369376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirschkind, C. 2006. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counter-publics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Keightley, K. 1996. ‘Turn It Down!’ She Shrieked: Gender, Domestic Space, and High Fidelity, 1948–59. Popular Music 15(2): 149177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, P. 1993. Electronic and Computer Music, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McCartney, A. 2002. Homing Ears. For CD, headphones, book and armchair. Re-Synthesis Show at Betty Rymer Gallery, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, December 2001–January 2002.Google Scholar
McCartney, A. 2008. Reception and Reflexivity in Electroacoustic Creation. Proceedings of the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network EMS 08 Conference. Paris, June.Google Scholar
Paquette, D. 2004. Describing the Contemporary Sound Environment: An Analysis of Three Approaches, Their Synthesis and a Case Study of Commercial Drive, Vancouver, British Columbia. MA thesis, Communication Studies, Simon Fraser University.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1969. The New Soundscape. Toronto: BMI Canada.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1977. The Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Schmid, M. 2003. ‘The Eye of God’: Religious Beliefs and Punishment in Early Nineteenth-Century Prison Reform. Theology Today 59(4): 546.Google Scholar
Thibault, J. 1982. ‘To Pave the Way to Penitence’: Prisoners and Discipline at the Eastern State Penitentiary 1829–1835. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 106(2): 187222.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. 2002. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
Wilson, A. 1998. The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. Toronto: Between the Lines.Google Scholar
Wrightson, K. 2000. An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology. Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 1(1): 1013.Google Scholar