The WFAE is delighted to endorse this year's World Listening Day activities facilitated by the World Listening Project.

Since its inception in 2010, thousands of people from six continents have participated in World Listening Day. July 18th is the birth date of renowned Canadian composer, music educator, and author, R. Murray Schafer. With the World Soundscape Project he developed the fundamental ideas and practices of acoustic ecology in the 1970s. These inform the current, burgeoning interest in our changing acoustic environment. Thus, World Listening Day honors Schafer’s contribution to understanding our world.

In 2020 we were forced to pause by an invisible virus. This brought countless consequences to the environment, and to the sonic environment in particular. New acoustic horizons emerged, signaling times of unquietness and global change, and requiring our listening awareness to evolve.
The theme for 2021 “The Unquiet Earth” is an invitation to reflect on and engage with the constant murmur of the Earth, sounds beyond the threshold of human hearing, to remind ourselves that we share this mysterious and awesome planet. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity. Listening as activism encourages us to question our attitudes as listeners as we aim to construct a more inclusive and empathetic new world. Join the unquiet revolution!
Listeners of all kinds are invited to host and participate in three activity types:

• 24-hour #WLD2021 streamed program hosted by the World Listening Projects. You are invited to submit audio and video works.
  
• Local events that are self-organized and led by groups or individuals for the public. Soundwalks, installations, workshops are examples. The WLP will help promote and celebrate your activities on their platforms.
  
• Personal celebrations. You are invited to share media and writing about private responses to the prompt of World Listening Day 2021: The Unquiet Earth.
  

Deadline for 24-hour Steamed event: June 19, 2021.
Deadline for local and personal events and celebrations: July 17, 2021.

The World Listening Project also welcomes everyone to share news, ideas, and questions about participation on their Facebook Page and Facebook Group.

​Visit the World Listening Day 2021 page on the World Listening Project website for more information. 

The WFAE Library is now live at https://wfae-library.librarika.com/, cataloguing a diverse range of acoustic ecology resources and activities!

​To make further submissions to the Library, please visit wfae.net/library or contact WFAE Secretary Jesse Budel at secretary@wfae.net

The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) is pleased to announce that its first online Annual General Meeting will take place on Friday 22:00 UK time / UTC 21:00 on 23 April, 2021 during BEAST FEaST 2021: Recalibration, a festival of phonography and sonic art with a focus on our changing global soundscape in pandemic.

Please register for access to the Zoom meeting at https://adelaide.zoom.us/.../tZYsf-igrj4oGdK9y8DwI...

We invite all WFAE Individual members, Affiliate Organization members and their representatives, and Associated Organizations to participate.

​We are honored to be partners with BEAST FEaST and UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (UKISC), our UK/Ireland affiliate. This international event will provide our membership and leadership of our Affiliate Organizations an opportunity to learn and inform one another of ongoing efforts, recent achievements and future planning.

The festival takes place online in partnership with the WFAE, BEAST and the UK/Ireland Soundscape Community (UKISC), 22 April - 24 April. Featured artists are Hildegard Westerkamp, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Chris Watson, Pete Stollery, and Yang Yeung.

Following COVID-19 lockdowns around the globe, there have been numerous observations made on the impact of reduced human activity in acoustic environments:

• In the May 2020 issue of The Monthly (AUS), Nicola Redhouse's article, 'Quiet Life', discussed the work of various acoustic ecologists during the pandemic.
• The interactive New York Times article, 'The Coronavirus Quieted City Noise. Listen to What’s Left' by Bui and Badger compares urban soundscapes pre- and post-lockdown.
• Tom Banse's article, 'The Pandemic Gives PNW Whales A Break From The Din Of Underwater Noise' for OPB investigates the impact of reduced ocean traffic during lockdown.
• Douglas Quan's 'Listen up: In these disquieting COVID-19 times, hushed cities are making a loud impression on our ears' for The Star (CAN), discusses pandemic soundscapes with input from acoustic ecology pioneers Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, amongst others.
• Ian Sample's 'Wave of silence' spread around world during coronavirus pandemic' in The Guardian considers the seismological impacts of decreased traffic and machinery use.

Many podcasts, recordings and multimedia projects have also been released, including:

• Interiorities: Sonic Experiment and Documents from Lockdown, by Kate Carr
• Soundscapes Under Fear of COVID-19, a series of recordings made by Koji Nagahata in Japan's Tohoku region during the lockdown
• 'The Last Sound' on NPR's Invisibilia, hosted by Hanna Rosin and Alex Spiegil
• 'Human Life Is Literally Quieter Due To Coronavirus Lockdown', a short feature by NPR
• Cities and Memories' #stayhomesounds project, inviting people from around the globe to submit sound recordings from where they live during COVID-19.
• Window-Swap features 10-minute audiovisual snapshots from people's homes in isolation.
• Contributions of sounds in isolation on Radio Aporee

If you are aware of any further projects or pieces investigating our acoustic environments in the time of COVID-19, please email WFAE Secretary Jesse Budel at secretary@wfae.net to add to this resource.

Over the past year, many AFAE members have been involved in creative and research activities, Visit our blog post on the AFAE website to read about:

 - Ros Bandt, who received the Distinguished Services to Australian Music Award at the Art Music Awards
 - Vicki Hallett on her project Habitat, and collaboration with Ros Bandt on the Barwon Listening project
 - Tristan Louth Robins on his album Waves, the Fleurieu Sound Map, a new installation called Sternere in Angaston (SA), and new blog exploring ecoacoustic analyses.
 - Jesse Budel on his recent activities as WFAE Secretary and his new album, Cathedrals
 - A member profile on Clare Hall
 - An essay by Prithvi Varatharajan on his experience soundwalking through Melbourne with Anthony Magen.

In spite of the challenges of the pandemic, the AFAE was also involved in a variety of projects in 2020, including: 

• The Reveil 2020 broadcast on International Dawn Chorus Day (2 May Saturday 2020)
• Voices of Nature 2020, a national arts celebration in collaboration with the Australian Earth Arts Alliance and Arts Front.
• Share news of soundscapes observations around the globe during COVID-19 lockdowns

More recently, a new ecological sound art exhibition, Site and Sound, has launched at the McClelland Gallery in Victoria, featuring works by AFAE members Ros Bandt, Leah Barclay and Nigel Frayne, as well as sound artists Jana Winderen and Chris Watson and acoustic ecology pioneer Barry Truax.

Visit our recent post for more information on each project. 

The Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology held its annual general meeting in late February 2021.  Upon the retirement of long serving WFAE board member Simo Alitalo, Ari Koivumäki was elected as the FSAE's new board representative.

The WFAE expresses its deep appreciation and thanks for the many years of service that it has enjoyed from Simo, and welcomes Ari to the Board.

Rob Mackay - Flight of the Monarch

Rob has co-produced and presented a 30 minute radio programme for BBC Radio 3's Between the Ears called Flight of the Monarch. It was Pick of the Day in the Radio Times and is available to listen to online here:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qyhz

​It partly documents Following the Flight of the Monarchs, an acoustic ecology project in which streamboxes are being installed across monarch butterfly migration routes for ecosystem monitoring and the creation of artworks and telematic performances. https://followingtheflightofthemonarchs.com 

Nikki Sheth

Nikki Sheth presents:

• 'Binaural Soundscapes of South Africa' as part of the We're All Bats Listening Arts Channel (weekly, Wednesdays throughout February 2021). 
• Debut album 'Sounds of Mmabolela', released on Rummage Records.
• Nikki was commissioned for Land Lines Project to create a soundscape work based on nocturnal wildlife in the UK. Listen to Nocturnal Insights here 
• In 2020, SOUNDkitchen released two new soundwalks: the B37 Soundwalk and the Stirchley Soundwalk. The B37 Soundwalk by Annie Mahtani and Iain Armstrong explores the green spaces of the B37 postcode area in Solihull. It was created in association with B37 Project and was commissioned by Eastside Projects in 2020 as part of their Link & Shift Artist Walks series. The Stirchley Soundwalk was created by Nikki Sheth and commissioned by Ten Acres of Sound, encouraging a deeper connection with the natural environment and a new awareness of the hidden sounds around us – both natural and man-made. Listen on the SOUNDwalker app, more info here: https://soundkitchenuk.org/ 

Alex De Little - Sonic Acts of Noticing

Engaging with practices of field recording in Sheffield, Sonic Acts of Noticing proposes careful listening as a way to (re)think and (re)make the spaces of the high street in ways that draw attention to forms of collectivity, and support productive and agonistic relations, intensities and concerns. 

​This project will be shown as an installation at the British Pavillion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, and through an audtio-textual web listening environment (https://sonicactsofnoticing.org/).

The project is based in and supported by the School of Architecture at Sheffield Hallam, and a collaboration with Julia Udall and Jon Orlek.  ​

Aki Pasoulas
A new research project started in September 2020 at the University of Kent, which investigates the role of sound in influencing our experience of spaces and places. It focuses on heritage sites and it aims to recreate soundscapes of bygone ages based on historical documentation. The project will run until the end of 2022 and is led by Dr Aki Pasoulas, a board member of UKISC. Further details: https://research.kent.ac.uk/sonic-palimpsest

David de la Haye - Land Lines Project: Nature Revealed

David has created an 'ASMR Edition' EP, which was released alongside his Land Lines commission:

In times when personal connections often take place online, the concept of digital intimacy gains value. This EP, released to complement my 'Land Lines Project: Nature Revealed' commission, explores the sound of freshwater soundscapes in the context of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). The close-up recording, repetitive patterns and binaural production techniques align with the genre's aesthetics, bringing ecological listening to our home environments. 

More on the project can be found at: https://landlinesproject.wordpress.com/hidden-sounds-nature-revealed-by-david-de-la-haye/

The Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) out of the United States is excited to join the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology as official affiliate. In early 2020, MSAE board members worked with the Chicago-based arts group NON:op Open Opera Works to organize Hear Below: Listening to the Chicago Underground. This underground pedestrian walkway sound walk and active listening artistic intervention was curated as part of the annual College Art Association conference. Read and hear more about this listening experience online at: https://mwsae.org/hear-below-listening-to-chicago-underground-3/

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MSAE needed to adjust it’s scheduled summer programming but was able to successfully do so and offer the annual Night Out in the Parks programming as a series of virtual soundwalks presented as an online screening of video and sound works that emphasized the relationship between natural and non-human worlds in Chicago parks. The virtual event featured nine teaching artists who created five videos to address diverse themes and interests including nature, queering in the parks, disability, and citizen science.

​In addition to the five videos screened at a virtual event hosted by the MSAE, two of the videos premiered in the Chicago Park District’s new Your Night Out At Home program in October 2020. Learn more about this program on the MSAE website: https://mwsae.org/virtual-soundwalks-2020/

Please check out the MSAE website for more info and follow them on Instagram and Twitter.