Project Description: Background Research

Soundscape composition is associated with the interdiscipline of sound ecology, which brings together sonic research in acoustics, communication studies, sound recording and production, music, and audio art with an emphasis on the relationships between the sound environment (or "soundscape", a term coined by composer and communications researcher R. Murray Schafer, 1977) and the sound producers inhabiting that environment (Truax 1984; Westerkamp 1988; Waterman 2000). The World Soundscape Project (WSP), which was established at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia in the early 1970s under the directorship of R. Murray Schafer, undertook ethnographic research projects to map the soundscapes of several communities, from an historical and contemporary survey of the Vancouver Soundscape (1974), to Five Village Soundscapes (fieldwork in 1975, published 1977b). The latter project consisted of recording the soundscapes of five European villages in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and Scotland. At the same time, the composers involved in the WSP composed a series of soundscapes about Canada, subsequently broadcast as a CBC Ideas series. Thus soundscape research and composition are internationally recognized as associated with Canada. The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology was established at a conference in Banff, in 1997. However, there has been no recent sound project that brings together a number of sound artists' approaches to different Canadian communities. This is what our project aims to do: to celebrate this Canadian development, and to hear the soundings of Canadian communities extending beyond the main urban centers, interpreted by artists from a number of different backgrounds (radio art, electroacoustic music, multimedia sound art, sound ecology).