SPLP1: The Natural Soundscape: Listening to Bernie Krause, Evelien van den Broek and Barry Truax

In contemporary Western culture we seem to have lost an intimate connection with the land. More often than not we consider our surroundings as a passive backdrop in which humankind can take center stage: controlling the landscape, developing infrastructures, and extracting resources at will. This rather anthropocentric position has become unviable, however, as recent human-driven ecological crises – like climate change, the dramatic loss of biodiversity and large-scale destruction of habitats – are clearly indicating. If we wish to develop a more sustainable future, we urgently need to reconnect to our environment and restore a more reciprocal relationship with the earth. 

In the context of the project Land, studium generale commissioned the Radio ArtEZ series Sounding Places / Listening Places in which writer and music journalist Joep Christenhusz and creator of sound works, musician, writer, poet, and Deep Listener Sharon Stewart enquire how sound and listening can help us to do so.

In this first episode we focus on the natural soundscape with musician and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, composer Evelien van den Broek and soundscape composer and Acoustic Communication Researcher Barry Truax.

Shownotes:

In the audio examples from Evelien van de Broek’s Biophonica the following field recordings were used:

• on track ‘I Rainforest’, we heard recordings by Bernie Krause, PhD.
• the field recordings on track ‘III The Last Northern White Rhinoceros’ were provided by Dr. Ivana Cinková of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Palacký University Olomouc.
• the field recordings on track ‘IV The Blue Whale’ were retrieved from Freesound.org

This episode also uses a field recording of the Brazilian rainforest by Reinsamba: https://freesound.org/people/reinsamba/

 

Reading and Listening

• Krause, Bernie, The Great Animal Orchestra (Back Bay Books, 2013)
• LaBelle, Brandon, Background Noise, Perspectives on Sound Art (Bloomsbury, 2006)
• Schafer, R Murray, The Soundscape, Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Destiny Books, 1994)
• Truax, Barry, Acoustic Communication (Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1984)
• Van den Broek, Evelien, Endlings (album): https://evelienvandenbroek.bandcamp.com/album/endlings
• World Soundscape Project, The Vancouver Soundscape (album): https://www.soundohm.com/product/the-vancouver-soundscape

Links

• Bernie Krause: https://www.wildsanctuary.com
• The Great Animal Orchestra (website): https://www.legrandorchestredesanimaux.com/en
• Barry Truax: http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/
• World Soundscape Project: https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html
• Evelien van den Broek: https://evelienvandenbroek.com

Sounding Places - Listening Places was commissioned by ArtEZ Studium Generale. Interviews, texts and voice overs by Sharon Stewart and Joep Christenhusz. It is produced by Ondercast for Studium Generale ArtEZ. Studium Generale curator for this series: Catelijne de Muijnck