 From Barry Truax:
I would like to invite individuals who have access to an 8-channel sound system, along with teaching studios with the same format, to participate in my upcoming Special Topics course in Soundscape Composition this coming term, from January to April 2025. The course will start Wednesday Jan. 8 and go through to April 2, with a weekly two and a half hour Zoom meeting starting at 10:30 Pacific time, which translates to 8 hours later in the UK/Portugal and 9 hours later in Central Europe. There will be a two week break in February (Feb. 12 & 19), so 11 meetings in total in which I will survey the theory, history and emerging practice of soundscape composition. There is no course fee. I regard the octophonic component as essential to understanding the potential of studio-based soundscape composition, and although the webinars will feature many stereo examples, I intend to play one or two 8-channel pieces each week. How that will work online is that each week, I will send out a download link for the files involved, and then they will be played at the appropriate time during the following webinar in each location simultaneously on your own system, with a real-time Spectrogram display from my studio on the Zoom monitor. A stereo file will also be available for download. So, in summary, I am prepared to host and conduct a weekly webinar over 11 weeks, sometimes including guest composers. I will also prepare a package of supplementary readings related to soundscape composition that can also be easily downloaded in advance. In addition, the full resources of the WSP Database will be made available. In the case of participating studios, I will leave it entirely up to them as to who can take part in their studio, that is, whether they are treated as auditors or credit students and under what requirements. For individuals who have their own 8-channel access, they can join the Zoom meetings individually, and receive their own copies of the readings and soundfiles. Those individuals who do not have multi-channel access are probably best advised to wait for the next online Tutorial course starting in May that will depend only on stereo sound examples. However, those wanting to audit this course just in stereo will be welcomed. Those wanting academic credit for the course need to arrange this with your home institution. For those in the Pacific region and its time zones, this year for the first time, I have arranged a parallel version of the course, hosted by Jesse Budel from Australia who will present the same topics with my recorded audio and visual material. As a freelance individual, he will need to charge a fee for this service. More information on this version is available here. I have a provisional course outline with most of the specifics which I will send to anyone who is interested. Looking forward to your response Barry Truax ([email protected]), Professor Emeritus, SFU
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 2-4 October, 2025, University of the Sunshine Coast,
Kabi Kabi Country (QLD), Australia Submissions due 23 January 2025 Moving away from a traditional conference model, ANAT SPECTRA 2025 :: Reciprocity embraces an egalitarian approach, to showcase diverse interdisciplinary art practice and creative research produced through collaborations between Australian artists, scientists, and technologists. ANAT’s flagship triennial event, invites participants to gather to explore new experiences, foster collaborations and capture a moment in time. We welcome Expressions of Interest from Australian artists who work in any genre or medium and whose artistic practice intersects and deeply engages with science and/or technology. Artwork, performances, conversation topics and experiences will be considered for inclusion in the ANAT SPECTRA 2025 program. We are looking for existing artwork and creative contributions that align with the ANAT SPECTRA 2025 theme, “Reciprocity.” For more information, visit the link below:  A team of Finnish researchers, comprised of several FSAE members, is excited to announced the funding of their project, 'SOMECO – Sonic Mediations and Ecocritical Listening', by the Academy of Finland and Niilo Helanderin Säätiö.
From the project website: "In the Spring of 2025, the Someco research team will be documenting European villages and sharing their thoughts, images and soundscapes on its website. We are following in the footsteps of previous projects Five Village Soundscapes (1975) and Acoustic Environments in Change (2000), which were carried out in the same locations. The studies conducted in 1975 and 2000 examined the changing acoustic environments of six European villages: Bissingen (Germany), Cembra (Italy), Dollar (Scotland), Lesconil (France), Nauvo (Finland), and Skruv (Sweden). The original 1975 research, led by the World Soundscape Project, focused on documenting the unique soundscapes of five rural villages to explore the relationships between sound, community identity, and environmental change. In 2000, the follow-up study revisited these sites and added Nauvo, Finland, to investigate how modernization and cultural shifts had influenced their soundscapes over 25 years. The villages were carefully selected based on their diverse geographical, economic, and cultural characteristics, offering a broad representation of European rural life. Criteria included unique acoustic environments, distinct community structures, and contrasting economic activities, ranging from fishing and farming to tourism and industry. Fieldwork in these villages involved detailed sound recordings, soundwalks, and interviews with residents to capture both objective data and personal experiences of soundscapes. Fieldwork dates for the 1975 study spanned the summer and early autumn, while the 2000 revisitation was conducted over several months. Researchers carried out a variety of practical activities, including sound level measurements, creating soundscape maps, and engaging residents through interviews and sound preference surveys. These methodologies not only documented the soundscapes but also highlighted their role in shaping cultural memory and community identity. In 2025, our project SOMECO – Sonic Mediations and Ecocritical Listening will revisit these same locations to collect data comparable to the earlier studies. This research will explore sound mediation, ecocritical listening, and the dynamics of human voices within these evolving soundscapes. Stay tuned for updates!" More information can be found on the link below:  Leor Galil of The Chicago Reader recently penned an essay on MSAE Board Member Norman W. Long, chronicling his evolution from a clarinetist to a sound artist deeply engaged with field recordings, ecology, and experimental music. Long's journey spans decades, shaped by academic pursuits in art and landscape architecture, and his innovative soundwalks, particularly at Chicago's Big Marsh Park. Drawing from diverse influences like bell hooks and DJ Spooky, Long integrates ecological awareness and community engagement into his practice. His work fosters connections and inclusivity in experimental music, amplifying voices of underrepresented communities.
Read the full article at the link below. “Pantha Rhei on the Rhine” is an artistic and scientific research project designed to express the latent metaphors and materials carried by the River Rhine. As one of Europe’s largest and most important waterways, the Rhine features massive complexity of enmeshed industrial, cultural, and ecological systems conditioned by international politics, histories, and economics.
The project will commission narrative sound art works about different parts of the River Rhine. They are composed in part with a sound library compiled from the river itself. The sound artworks can be considered as radio plays. They will be played in sequence at the listening sessions to tell a story of the Rhine at each of our partnering institutions the Museum Rehmann in Laufenberg, Switzerland (headwaters of the Rhine), the University of Antwerp Ecosphere’s Mesodrome, a large-scale river simulation facility (the abstracted middle), _V2 Lab for Unstable in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (end of the Rhine into the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean). “Pantha Rhei on the Rhine” focuses on fostering a techno-poetics that meaningfully links scientific data with poetics drawn from art and art history. Pantha Rhei is Heraclitus’ ancient dictum that “everything flows,” summarizing his famous fragment that “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” The production of the commissioned artworks will be supported with scientific input from University of Antwerp’s Ecosphere group and artistic input from Studio Haseeb Ahmed. Submissions are due on Dec 20 2024. More information is available on the link below:  Following discussions with the WFAE community across 2023 and 2024, the WFAE Executive is proposing a governance restructure of the organisation.
This restructure is motivated by a desire to increase inclusion and diversity in the WFAE's oversight and operations, as well as resolve issues around decision making quora as the organisation continues to grow. Key changes include the election of Board members sourced from the general membership, a new Advisory committee (comprised of WFAE Affiliate Representatives and previous WFAE Executive members) and several new Action Committees (following from recommendations of the recent Acoustic Ecology Global Survey). Additionally, the category of Associate Membership would be dissolved, with an alternate membership model of Affiliate Member, Individual Member and Subscribers proposed. The WFAE Executive seeks feedback from the WFAE community around these proposed changes. Feedback is due by Friday 20 December 2024. More information and opportunity to comment on the proposed model can be found at the link below.  Remembering R. Murray Schafer
Tuesday November 26 2024, 12:15-12:45pm First United Church Noon Hour Series King St/William St, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada Performed by Inshallah, with Debbie Lou Ludolph, conductor Free Concert From the composer: "I started writing Silence to Silence in Algonquin, shortly after the death of R. Murray Schafer in 2021, my mentor who changed my life indelibly, to whom it’s dedicated. Rae Crossman, nature-loving, mystical Waterloo poet, wrote the text for this piece, and Debbie Lou Ludolph, founder and life-giving spirit of Inshallah, graciously agreed to have the choir Inshallah perform it! Because of covid, it is now finally receiving its premiere!"  23–26 September 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Submissions due 10 February 2025 Building on the 2023 Beyond Listening: Agency, Art, and the Environment symposium in Budapest and the rich range of subjects discussed there, we invite you to submit a proposal in response to this open call for a follow-up event in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 2025. How can we escape from listening paradigms that are based on expansive, colonial, violent, and extractivist approaches? What can we learn from current ethical and political applications of acoustic ecology, acoustic anthropology, and bioacoustics? What can we, as sound artists, scholars, activists, and listeners, do beyond simply witnessing another wave of reports on declining biodiversity and the ongoing collapse of our planet’s systems? How can these ever more tangible transformations taking place on a planetary scale be addressed locally and collectively, beyond the act of listening? Addressed in Budapest, these and similar questions remain relevant. Therefore, we invite scientists, philosophers, activists, artists, and others to continue listening-with these questions, rethinking them in a manner of being-with, and reposing them through walking-with, while focusing on changes that accompany our everyday lives, but also those that are less obvious and only surface as time passes. We are looking for topics that address the potential of sonic ecology in these areas: • Walking-with changes: rethinking walking as a method of inquiry, approaching listening-with your feet, soundwalking; • Listening-with and beyond disciplines: employing the convergence of art, science, and technology in sonic ecosystems; • Staying-with solastalgia: experiencing distress induced by environmental change in our home environment; • Resonating-with lessons learnt from listening to the Anthropocene, addressing inequality, discrimination, and social justice; • Being-with other-than-human sonic environments (ecoacoustics and bioacoustics) and engagement with environmental activism; • Rethinking-with local and regional, historical and contemporary epistemologies and ethics of environmental awareness. We welcome proposals for papers, presentations, peripatetic lectures, performative lectures, and other unconventional formats to be presented in person at the symposium. We especially encourage challenging, innovative—even provocative— contributions which go beyond traditional formats of papers and talks that dominate academic conferences and symposia. In the selection process, we will prioritise experimental, engaging, and hands-on proposals. We envision the symposium as a place for thorough and significant engagement with and dialogue about the issues that are in our collective interest. For more information, visit the link below:  International Conference on
Politics of Sound and Technology 2025 March 28-29, 2025 Music Research Center Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea Following the success of “Rethinking Sound” (2018) and “Differentiating Sound Studies: Politics of Sound and Listening” (2022), the Music Research Center at Hanyang University is pleased to announce “Audible Futures: Media, Ecology, and Art,” a conference exploring the complex interplay between sound, technology, culture, and politics in our contemporary world. This conference is scheduled to be held on March 28–29, 2025. We invite proposals for program content until 23:59 UTC +9 on December 31, 2024. This event is part of the groundbreaking research project “Politics of Sound and Listening: A Critical Listening of Culture and Technology,” conducted at the Music Research Center, Hanyang University. We invite scholars, researchers, artists, and practitioners to submit abstracts that critically engage with the political dimensions of sound and listening practices, particularly as they intersect with technological developments and cultural phenomena. This conference seeks to unpack the power dynamics, social implications, and cultural significance embedded in our sonic environments and listening habits. For more details, please visit the conference website below:  7-10 November 2024
Department of Music Studies of the University of Athens, Hellenic Society of Acoustic Ecology, Municipality of Epidaurus The Department of Music Studies of the University of Athens in collaboration with the Hellenic Society of Acoustic Ecology and the Municipality of Epidaurus organise the 7th Conference on Acoustic Ecology: Soundscapes, Biophony and Climate Crisis. The conference will cover topics related to acoustic ecology, special emphasis will be given on biophony (sound signals of birds, insects and other living organisms) and geophony, and the effect of climate crisis on them. Similar emphasis will be given on subjects related to new technologies employed in acoustic ecology studies, such as new processes in recording, mapping, analysis and detection of natural sound as well as the use of recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and machine listing. The submission of proposals (installations, acoustic works, etc.) that highlight issues related to the climate crisis are strongly encouraged. The three-day conference held in Athens will host both Greek and international researchers, artists and educators, members of the global acoustic ecology community. |
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