Acoustic ecology and the world soundscape project

Barry Truax

pp. 21-44

in: Milena Droumeva, Randolph Jordan (eds), Sound, media, ecology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

The emergence of the World Soundscape Project (WSP) in the late 1960s and early 1970s has been widely regarded as creating a foundation for the study of "acoustic ecology," with composer R. Murray Schafer as its "father." This chapter documents the evolution of Schafer's concepts as practiced by the WSP during the decade of its most active research and from the perspective of the present day, including both its theoretical development and its, at the time, ad hoc research techniques for documenting and analyzing the soundscape. The author concludes with a comparison to the remarkable development of sound studies today, which includes a renewed emphasis on the soundscape as being perceptually based and acoustic ecology being based on an integrative systemic model closely tied to cultural contexts.