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This article reviews the history, methods, engagements, and longstanding debates of the sonic medium of field recording. It considers not just standalone field recordings but diverse music and sound art genres where environmental sounds feature. Although they diverge in their approaches, field recordists (and those who apply these recordings in creative practice) are united in the belief that field recordings grant access to and precipitate emotionally heightened spaces. These positively-valenced emotions can potentially ameliorate the emotional toll of living through a time of socio-ecological crisis. In addition, some recordists claim that their field recordings provoke environmental reflection or inspire new environmental commitments – or both. Three exemplars – soundscapes featuring whales, birds, and a menagerie of creatures – guide a discussion on measuring field recordings' efficacy and impact. I argue that the robust link between nature connectedness (including soundscapes) and pro-environmental behaviour demonstrated in recent studies should be drawn upon more widely to bolster projects in fields like sound art, soundscape studies, and acoustic ecology. In linking art and activism, these trans-disciplinary collaborations reveal the emotional power of field recordings, the challenge of identifying qualitative results, and the promise of art-science alliances in stimulating urgent public conversations vis-à-vis environmental awareness and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mapping Sonic Futurities (MSF) combines sound art, listening practices, and ecological research to trace the present and future histories of ecological habitats. The project involves twenty-four-hour “sound vigils” in outdoor spaces and habitats with tenuous futures. During these retreats, the keeper of the vigil commits to being in one location for an entire day and night. For each of the twenty-four hours, they dedicate time to acts of ecologically engaged listening and sounding. This involves making field recordings of the space, performing music that responds to nearby sounds, and/or sitting in meditation with a focus on modes of listening outlined in a series of guided prompts.

This article examines three dimensions of Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett's practices for producing, sharing and listening to audio in collective and social ways for The World According to Sound's Outside In: the sonic strategies and soundscape design used to engage communal and collective listening, how Outside In adapts and transforms traditional paradigms using the broadcast medium of the podcast to aesthetically engage with liveness and the corporeality of sound, and how the COVID-19 pandemic afforded space for 'unpopular' soundwork based on everyday aural architectures (e.g., field recordings, ambient music, experimental music based on everyday sounds, soundscape collages) that are popular, as in, of the community. Using varied examples drawn from The World According to Sound's soundwork, I illustrate a particular set of sonic strategies to imagine sonic space, listen relationally to sound events, and enact a sociality of collective listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a leading article by Sir Percival Philips in the UK popular newspaper, the Daily Mail, July 16, 1928, came the following headlines: “Millions Lost by Noise – Cities’ Worst Plague – Menace to Nerves and Health – What is Being Done to Stop it”. The article was supported by research from Prof Henry J. Spooner, who had been researching and campaigning on the ill-effects of noise and its economic impact. The article sparked subsequent discussion and follow-up articles in the Daily Mail and its international partners. In an era of rapid technological change, that was on the cusp of implementing sound pressure measurements, the Daily Mail, in collaboration with the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd, experimented with sound recording technology and commentary in the field to help communicate perceived loudness and identify the sources of “unnecessary noise”. This resulted in the making of series of environmental sound recordings from five locations across central London during September 1928, the findings of which were documented and discussed in the Daily Mail at the time, and two recordings commercially released by Columbia on shellac gramophone disc. This was probably the first concerted anti-noise campaign of this type and scale, requiring huge technological efforts. The regulatory bodies and politicians of the time reviewed and improved the policies around urban noise shortly after the presentation of the recordings, which were also broadcast from the BBC both nationally and internationally, and many members of the public congratulated and thanked the Daily Mail for such an initiative. Despite its unpreceded scale and impact, and the recent scholarly attention on the history of anti-noise campaigning, this paper charts and contextualises the Daily Mail’s London Street Noise campaign for the first time. As well as historical research, this data has also been used to start a longitudinal comparative study still underway, returning to make field recordings on the site on the 80th and 90th anniversaries and during the COVID-19 lockdown, and shared on the website londonstreetnoises.co.uk.

This essay reports on the pedagogical and curricular decisions guiding the creative activities in the author’s university course incorporating field recording, soundscape-based composition, and digital technology. In keeping with the issue’s theme of 21st-century composition, the article includes critical reflection and a consideration of the influence of R. Murray Schafer. It contextualizes the course in the broader context of modern compositional activities in university settings. The author’s creative practice informs much of the pedagogical framework as a soundscape-based composer.

This audio-essay explores the relationship between soundscape recordings and property. Three field recordings of the author's family fruit farm examine the emplacement and territorialization of sound but also the means by which certain signals might dislocate the discourses of ownership; stereo recordings of the acreage have been displaced by a more connective topology, courtesy of the beehives. The accompanying essay deploys an auto-ethnographic approach to reflect upon how sound recording practice can negotiate foundational ideologies within late capitalist culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reports on the pedagogical and curricular decisions guiding the creative activities in the author's university course incorporating field recording, soundscape-based composition, and digital technology. In keeping with the issue's theme of 21st-century composition, the article includes critical reflection and a consideration of the influence of R. Murray Schafer. It contextualizes the course in the broader context of modern compositional activities in university settings. The author's creative practice informs much of the pedagogical framework as a soundscape-based composer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to document, investigate and analyse the soundscape of the analogue projection box before it passes into history, a series of audio recordings was made within functioning boxes, a selection of which have been released as an 'album'. The recordings, made in UK boxes that maintain both 35mm film projection and digital projection, also capture the shifting sonic texture of this environment as it changes from primarily analogue to primarily digital operation. This article explores the role of phonographic field recording as a practical methodology within a film historical research project that investigates the role of the film projectionist and cinematic projection throughout the history of cinema exhibition in the UK. It proposes a set of systematic principles for approaching the use of phonographic field recording in this context, and shows how they may be applied. Through an analysis of both the recordings themselves and the experience of making the recordings, it extracts some observations regarding the character, history and culture of the projection box as a lived environment and workplace. Just as cinema-goers seldom get to see inside this hidden room at the back of the auditorium, these sound recordings also reveal it to be a soundproofed box, a noisy environment in which the interface between operator and machine takes audible form, in which noise of one sort indicates smooth operation, while another sort indicates faults that need to be addressed. The article considers the legibility of noise and proposes that the relationship between projectionist and machine is significantly aural as well as visual and tactile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of technology in integrating acoustic instruments within soundscape composition in a live and interactive context, thus encouraging an engagement with the sonic environment. The approaches to two compositions that combine instruments with live electronics and pre-composed soundscapes –Cold Wood(bass trombone) andArcando(alto saxophone) – are considered. These pieces create unique live performance scenarios in order to investigate how acoustic instruments might be positioned within, and reframed by, soundscape composition practice. Potential pitfalls inherent in mixed media works are explored, proposing technological solutions through sound processing and use of microphones, whilst ensuring that 'liveness' remains moreaestheticthanprocedural. Aspects of field recording practice influence the behaviour of the instruments, and improvisation is encouraged in both pieces to ensure unpredictability. Consequently, it is also proposed that the process of listening to, capturing, and processing the sound of the instrument in a live performance scenario is analogous to the practice of field recording, in which there is little control over the sound events. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the author will argue that the act of listening through public soundwalks and other formal and informal exercises builds environmental and social awareness and promotes changes in social and cultural practices. By examining the act of listening as an alternative pathway and comparing the research, writings, and creative work of leaders of the acoustic ecology movement (i.e., R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Bernie Krause), the author hopes to shed light on these potentials. For purposes of comparison, projects that explore the sonification and audification of inaudible signals will be examined, including the work of Christina Kubisch. The process of audification and sonification of these signals will be examined in comparison to soundscape experiences in order to develop a theory of data sonification based on the soundscape. In order to build a community around the urban soundscape, in 2003, the author co-founded the New York Society of Acoustic Ecology. Through this endeavor, she co-created the ongoing NYSoundmap and Sound Seeker projects, which provide some practical research for this article. Thus, by comparing and contrasting theoretical writings with leading listening exercises, public soundwalks, soundscape-related brainstorming sessions, and presenting field recordings in various settings, new methodologies will be documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]