Presentations and abstracts of the Koli conference online

Some keynote lectures and individual paper presentations together with abstracts and some full papers from the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Koli 2010 conference have been recorded and added online. Check out the Post-conference page at the Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology website and the Keynote panel discussion III:


Five Village Soundscapes – Acoustic Environments in Change from 1970s to 21st century.
Chair Dr, composer R. Murray Schafer.
Participants:
- Professor, composer Barry Truax (Simon Fraser Univ.): The specific model of the Acoustic Community and the 1975 Five Village Soundscapes
- Composer Hildegard Westerkamp: Listening to recordings - Five Village Soundcapes imagined
- Professor Helmi Järviluoma-Mäkelä (Univ. of Eastern Finland): Studying change and non-change in European villages
- University lecturer Noora Vikman (Univ. of Eastern Finland): Cembra all around the world
- Researcher Heikki Uimonen (Univ. of Tampere): Last of the Blacksmiths - The diverse pasts of Scottish village of Dollar

WFAE conference 2010: Ideologies and Ethics in the Uses and Abuses of Sound

Koli, Finland June 16-19, 2010

The conference will be held at Koli in Eastern Finland and organized by the Department of Finnish Language and Cultural Research (University of Eastern Finland), the Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. Koli is a plausible site for reflecting upon ideologies, ethics and soundscapes, since it was amongst the key places of the national romantic artist pilgrims in the late 19th century Finland. 

Invited speakers:

Steven Feld
Charles Hirschkind
Bruce Johnson
Anahid Kassabian
Andra McCartney
R. Murray Schafer
Barry Truax
Hildegard Westerkamp

Acoustic Environments in Change and Five Village Soundscapes appear as a joint publication!

"I think about listening and what it means more and more...and that’s why I found this book enthralling."

Professor Simon Frith, University of Edinburgh

ACOUSTIC ENVIRONMENTS IN CHANGE

How are the soundscapes of European villages doing? Can you still hear the factory hooters in the Swedish Skruv? What about the echo and children’s voices in the old part and the new residential areas in the Italian Cembra? The writers are interested in both the disruption of sonic order, and the listening experiences of the members of the communities who wish to preserve equilibrium. How willing are the villagers to open up to the outside world and tourists? What about the process of becoming more aware of the noise and silence in their lived environment? The writers also delve into the dynamics of social memory and nostalgia, and the relationship between human and non-human materialities in these villages. The twelve articles take you to six European places, five of which were visited by the World Soundscape Project in the mid-1970s. The starting point in both studies has been to research acoustically and culturally diverse sonic environments. The study strives towards making us aware of local interpretations about soundscape.

Writers: Dr Helmi Järviluoma, professor of cultural studies at the University of Joensuu; Dr Heikki Uimonen, ethnomusicologist and researcher of the Academy of Finland, Dr Noora Vikman, lecturer of musicology at University of Joensuu, MPhil Tero Hyvärinen and FM Meri Kytö, junior researcher at the University of Joensuu.

FIVE VILLAGE SOUNDSCAPES

This re-publication of the World Soundscape Project’s seminal Five Village Soundscapes study not only brings this landmark case study back into print, but, perhaps for the first time, allows a longitudinal comparison over 25 years of community soundscapes in transition. The result of the original study, apart from its detailed documentation of the soundscapes of five contrasting villages, was a model of the “acoustic community” characterized by their variety, complexity and balanced state, yet vulnerable to social and economic change in the form of noise. This model serves as a reference point for contemporary communities by showing the highly varied ways in which sound can play a positive and cohesive force at a social level, while subject to inevitable change. The studies are complemented by extensive audio examples on the accompanying CDs.

Editor: R. Murray Schafer, composer and founder of the World Soundscape Project. With a new introduction by Prof Barry Truax, School of Communication & School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University.

The book and CDs are published in co-operation with the World Soundscape Project, Simon Fraser University, Canada.

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