Sound map

Sound maps are digital geographical maps that put emphasis on the sonic representation of a specific location. Sound maps are created by associating landmarks (streets in a city, train stations, stores, pathways, factories, oil pumps, etc.) and soundscapes.

The term “soundscape” refers to the sonic environment of a specific locale. It may also refer to actual environments, or to abstract constructions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an artificial environment. The objective of sound maps is to represent a specific environment using its soundscape as primary references as opposed to visual cues. Sound maps are in many ways the most effective auditory archive of an environment. Sound maps are similar to sound walks which are a form of active participation in the soundscape. Soundwalks and indeed, sound maps encourage the participants to listen discriminatively, and moreover, to make critical judgments about the sounds heard and their contribution to the balance or imbalance of the sonic environment. However, soundwalks will plot out a route for the user to follow and give guidance as to what the user may be hearing at each checkpoint. Sound maps, on the other hand, have specific soundscapes recorded that users can listen to at each checkpoint.

The theoretical framework upon which sound maps are based derive from earlier research on acoustic ecology and soundscapes, the later being a term first coined by researcher and music composer R. Murray Schafer in the 1960s. Looking to challenge traditional ideas of recording reality, Schafer, along with several college music composers such as Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, funded the World Soundscape Project, an ambitious sound recording project that led the team based in Simon Fraser University to travel within Canada and out in Europe to collect data on local soundscapes. The sounds that they recorded were used to build a database of locales not based on the visual, but on their acoustic particularities. The result of the project had been released to the public in the form of a series books entitled The Music of the Environment series which included narrative accounts of the soundscape recording activity (European Sound Diary) and soundscape analysis (Five Village Soundscapes). However, when those works were first published, the recordings were not available for the public to listen to as the project mainly aimed at building a database of sound over a long period of time. The World Soundscape Project also birthed major theoretical framework for future studies of acoustic ecology and soundscapes, among them R. Murray Schafer’s The Tuning of the World in which the idea of soundscape studies were first introduced as well as Barry Truax’s The World Soundscape Project's Handbook for Acoustic Ecology that presented the foundational terminology for research in the field.

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