Sharing Experiences Towards the Possibility of an Electroacoustic Ecology

Abstract

As I write this article, I am crossing Canada by train. Here I am even more aware than usual of my dependence on technology in order to do my work. I search through the cars for electrical outlets, and watch my battery level dwindling. Yesterday, while charging up the minidisk in the lounge car to do some more soundscape recording, I heard a group of urban twenty-somethings talking about the isolation they felt from their daily lives on this trip. They spoke of the comfort of a Walkman to avoid boredom and assert a connection to home through music, and wished that VIA Rail provided music inthe bar car. Then the conversation turned to the problem of musical choice, and how one person’s preferences might dominate the sound environment.

As an acoustic ecologist, I am concerned about the way mainstream popular music blankets almost all acoustic environments. One of my joys of the last day has been scanning the radio dial, and hearing mostly snow or white noise, like the snow that surrounds the northern Ontario track we travel on. This is one place that is not dominated by an American top forty sensibility, and like Murray Schafer, I am glad of the predominance of snow in this environment.