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Everyday Sounds Revealed: Acoustic communication and environmental recordings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

Heikki Uimonen*
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Yliopistonkatu 58–60 A, 33014 University of Tampere, FINLAND

Abstract

Environmental sounds give information to individuals who have learned to interpret them as members of their acoustic communities. Those living within a soundscape not only receive the acoustic information passively, but also construct their surroundings by their activities.

A lot of acoustic information escapes our conscious attention partly for perceptual psychological reasons, partly because of the amount of acoustic information. A method called sound/listening walk has been applied to enhance these everyday meanings connected to sounds and to emphasise the cultural and historical layers related to them.

The article introduces earlier research and methodology on the subject, applies the recording of acoustic environments to sound/listening walks and then proposes a preliminary method called recorded listening walk for acoustic communication research and soundscape education. The article draws theoretically on acoustic communication and acoustemology.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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