The Rest Is Just Noise: Recent Episodes
Andrew Mitchell, Francesco Aletta, Tin Oberman
The Rest Is Just Noise is a monthly podcast exploring the relationship between sound and our cities. Each episode our passionate and excitable hosts (three soundscape researchers) are joined by an expert guest from fields such as acoustics, architecture, and environmental psychology, to discuss their latest work and introduce our audience to the science, beauty, and noise of urban sound.
Welcome to the Episode 6 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have Professor Mariana Lopez with us. Mariana is a Latin American researcher based in the UK, specialising in sound design and accessibility, as well as acoustical heritage and historical soundscapes. She has a background in music and sound design and we were very excited to chat about medieval video gaming!
Find Mariana at University of York.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
For today's episode, our hosts Francesco and Andrew met up with Prof Catherine Guastavino in Ottawa, during the May meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.
They will be talking about the science and beauty of Sounds In The City - la ville sonore - easily one of the most famous research projects in the soundscape community that has been running for 10 years now. So, how it all started? What's the role of music here? What's the role of noise? And what does the rest have to do with international standards? Stay tuned to find out.
Find Catherine at McGill University.
Checkout The Sounds In The City project, including blog posts and published research outputs.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Welcome to the Episode 5 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a very special guest with us - Reena Mahtani. Reena is a Senior Acoustic Engineer at Sandy Brown Associates. We shall delve into Reena's personal and professional experiences, her international travels, and everything which helped her develop as an expert in occupational noise and sound measurements and a working mother, balancing her work life with her family.
Find Reena at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/reenamahtani/?originalSubdomain=uk
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
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Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
...If you're sitting, come to me...
In today's episode we meet the soundscape trespasser and researcher, Dr Bethan Prosser, who is resisting the never-ending waves of gentrification on the English seaside through sound and participatory listening.
Find Bethan at University of Brighton.
Follow her on X: @bethanmathiasp and LinkedIn.
Check out Bethan's upcoming chapter Listening to Gentrification and her PhD Thesis.
Also a paper on community-university collaborations.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Welcome to the Episode 4 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a wonderful guest with us - Professor Alice Eldridge from University of Sussex. Alice is a Professor of Sonic Systems (Music) and a musician. We are going to talk about her love for music and her curious mind which has led her to a foundation interest in sound, and moving in between the strictly defined academic disciplines.
Find Alice at:
https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p127749-alice-eldridge
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN+ brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
For this episode, Andrew recorded an interview with Maggie McMullin, a researcher at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Indeed, this episode is about complex (natural) auditory scenes, but - what makes them so complex? Why we need machine learning tools to analyse them? How to start looking into them in the first place?
This conversation took place at the ASA May event in Chicago, Illinois, but it's about everywhere and everything you can hear from Nevada to Wisconsin.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Sounds, and then soundscape and planning and then urban sensory planning.
We are expanding on our usual scope on sounds towards smell and sensory environments.
Today's guest is Jieling Xiao, a Reader in Architecture and Sensory Environments at Birmingham School of Architecture and Design, Birmingham City University.
Find Jieling at Birmingham City.
Read Jieling's paper about a participatory soundscape planning framework.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Welcome to the Episode 3 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a very special guest with us - Helen Sheldon from RBA Acoustics. Helen is a charted engineer and Director at RBA Acoustics, who actively promotes acoustics as a STEM subject speaking in schools and universities and promoting engineering to a wider public.
Find Helen at:
https://www.rba-acoustics.co.uk/team/helen-sheldon/
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN+ brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
In today's episode we have some big words in the title and with Usue Ruiz Arana, a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at Newcastle University, we are going to revisit some of concepts we have talked about very often:
What is a soundwalk?
How should we use soundwalks?
How do we bring this concept to the cities?
Is landscape a superior format to portrait?
Find Usue at Newcastle University.
Check out Usue's chapter on Soundwalking in the Phonocene: walking, listening, wilding.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Welcome to The Rest Is Just Noise, a monthly podcast about what do architects & acousticians, researchers & artists, engineers & academics have to say about the science and beauty of sounds in cities and landscapes. So, is there a better place to look for those answers than in the Laboratory of the Future, the 18th edition of the world-famous exhibition on architecture that’s being held every even year in Venice since the 1980, the Venice Biennale of Architecture 2023?
For this episode, we have sent Tin to travel to the north of Adriatic to visit the Radio Utopia, a laboratory of sound that took place first week of August inside the French pavilion and this year’s project the Ball Theatre. There, we found Carlotta Darò and Nicolas Tixier, the curators of Radio Utopia, and talked beyond just the glamour of multimedia at world exhibitions, discussing the importance of architectural atmospheres.
Carlotta is a Lecturer at ENSA Paris Malaquais and a researcher at ETH Zürich, and Nicolas is the director of the CRESSON, Grenoble. So, in this episode, we are bringing you first a brief audio runthrough the program with Carlotta and finally the conversation with Carlotta and Nicolas, taking place within the soundscape of Les Nouvelles du Monde, News of the World, a collaboratory sound installation.
More info about Radio Utopia.
After Venice, Radio Utopia will be live in Paris in mid October.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Welcome to the Episode 2 of the special series of Women in Acoustics podcast. Today we have a very special guest with us - Ms Angela Lamacraft from Sustainable Acoustics. Angela is working on how to make buildings acoustically pleasing for people who are working in them and the people who are living in them. She looks at the different types of materials that are used and how to better the performance of buildings. She is also a working mum, working part time, trying to balance her life as a mother, spending time with her children, as well as becoming a successful acoustician in industry.
Find Angela at:
https://www.sustainableacoustics.co.uk/our-people
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/angela-lamacraft-65017a29
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
For today's episode we went on a walk through a maze of alleyways in Central London to meet Stuart Fawkes, the founder of Cities and Memory, and to learn firsthand about this fantastic international platform for promoting urban sound and its impact on society.
Check out Cities and Memory webpage and consider taking part in many exciting projects, whether as a recordist, a composer, or both.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Your hosts Francesco, Andrew and Tin went to the 3rd edition of the Urban Sound Symposium, locally organised by researchers at La Salle Campus Barcelona this April.
As expected, it was a truly lovely event featuring the protagonists of the most recent developments in the field, some of which we have already had the honour of hosting in our previous episodes, such as Aural Diversity with John Drever, Ep.No.9 with Prof Gascia Ouzuonian and Dr Ruth Bernatek, Ep.4 "Musikiosk, Misters, and More!" with Dan Steele and Edda Bild and Up and Down the Soundscape Scales with Sarah Payne!
So for today we are giving you 9 short interviews with some fantastic presenters in the poster section (Richard Yanaky, Josep Lorca-Bofi, Merel Ursem, Trond Maag, Sven Anderson, Marc Freixes, Laura Estévez-Mauriz), Rosa Alsina Pagès as the organiser and Edda Bild as the organiser of the Early Careers Professionals in Sound Workshop... with Pierre Aumond and Tin on the piano.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Today we celebrate the #INWED23 with the first episode in our new special series Women in Acoustics #WiA, led by Dr Hasina Begum, EDI Champion for the UK Acoustics Network (UKAN+).
But what have bubbles to do with it? Apparently everything.
We talk with Eleanor Stride about what bubble acoustics are and how being an exceptional woman has set her career in acoustics.
Prof. Eleanor Stride is the Statutory Professor of Biomaterials in the Departments of Engineering Science and the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. She specialises in the fabrication of nano and microscale devices for targeted drug delivery.
https://eng.ox.ac.uk/people/eleanor-stride/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Stride
https://raeng.org.uk/about-us/fellowship/new-fellows-2017/eleanor-stride
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Stop - listen to the sounds around you!
Our today's guest is Marcel Cobussen, Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy at Leiden University. Marcel has recently published his book 'Engaging with Everyday Sounds'. It's a journey to rediscover sounds around us and transform how we listen.
We'll talk about what is an everyday sound, the politics and philosophy surrounding urban sounds, and how Marcel has integrated his own sonic experiences into a book.
We begin with a collection of sounds from Marcel's own journey from Rotterdam to London to bring you this episode. Bon voyage!
Find Marcel at Leiden University.
Have a look at the Journal of Sonic Studies.
Find Marcel's new book at Open Book Publishers.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
How do we implement soundscape design in practice? What tools are available for a soundscape designer? And when should it even be considered? And what's the difference between a landscape design approach and an engineering approach? All this, and more, we're going to discuss with today's guest, Gunnar Cerwén. Through his work looking at the soundscape of Japanese gardens, we're going to explore just how soundscape actions can be considered in practical design.
Have a look at Gunnar's Soundscape Design Tool.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Today we talk with Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art, John Drever, about what aural diversity is in the first place and how it all started, from paper towels to Kafka.
Find John's and Andrew's book Aural Diversity @ Routledge.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Recently Andrew defended his PhD thesis so we came up with this episode to celebrate him. Andrew has stepped down from his hosting role, for this episode only, and came along carrying his jazz trombone to record one or two licks and talk his coding work, predictive soundscape modelling, promote his rigorous probabilistic approach to soundscape - enabling engineers to finally start using it.
Check out Andrew at his webpage.
If you're into visualising soundscape data, download Andrew's soundscapy, a python library for soundscape assessments.
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
In early July 2022 Tin attended the Acoustics of Ancient Theatres Symposium in Verona, Italy. In today's episode, we took a nostalgic look back and talked Greek and Roman ancient theatres in modern cities, Italian Opera, British parliament and beyond! If you bear with us, you'll also find that the episode features some binaural samples depicting a summer in Verona - headphones recommended!
We recorded this a few weeks after the conference and obviously can't cover everything - if you think we missed something important be sure to let us know on Twitter @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
We've talked about "musical drones" in one of our previous episodes. Well, this time we decided to investigate this idea a bit further as we look into Melbourne's underground and seek out the soundscape potential a humble air conditioning unit (well, four of them actually) can offer.
We had a chance to put our hands on Jordan Lacey during his busy research tour and speak about sonic ruptures and stitches, and also his new book Urban Roars.
Check out Jordan's books:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/urban-roar-9781501360596/
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/sonic-rupture-9781501309977/
Check out hidden Jordan's sounds:
https://hiddensounds.bandcamp.com
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Today we're bringing you right into the conversation with us by recording the episode on a binaural head.
We're going to be speaking with a Professor in Psychology Mats Nilsson about his work on studying sound perception and psychoacoustics of blind and sighted people.
Find Mats at the Stockholms universitet.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
How much is a decibel worth? Can you put a price on sound quality?
From house prices to heart attacks, from airplane noise to church bells, sound costs us money and years of our lives but can also bring value. How to quantify the value of that is difficult.
Today we're speaking with Like Jiang, a Research Fellow at University of Leeds, about how we value soundscapes. We are getting deep in the weeds about how to quantify the cost of noise, what methods are used and why it matters anyway.
Find Like at the University of Leeds.
Find the latest Like's paper - Ten questions concerning soundscape valuation published in Building and Environment.
More details on transport noise valuation here.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
The lockdowns due to COVID-19 had a huge impact on our urban environments and the sounds of our cities. In one of our recent publications we wanted to have a look at not just how much did those sound levels decrease but how would people have perceived this change in their urban soundscape.
Come along with us as we take a little deviation into our own research and talk about the computer model that we've built, based of the recordings made in London and Venice to predict how people probably would have perceived these soundscapes during the lockdown.
Read the papers we are talking about in JASA and in Noise Mapping.
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Notre-Dame de Paris is famous for its music - from the famous bells to its three pipe organs. But did you know the building itself has influenced how Western music developed? Today (actually nearly five months ago, but who's counting?) we're speaking with Sarabeth Mullins, a researcher at Sorbonne Université about her research into how the cathedral of Notre-Dame has shaped vocal music through the centuries.
Following the fire of 2019, we've seen a renewed interest in understanding and conserving the cultural heritage of the cathedral. Much of this work has tracked the various stages of development and construction that the cathedral has been in over the years. Building on this, Sarabeth is experimenting with how the acoustical characteristics of the cathedral at different periods may have shaped how singers and composers adapted their music to the building and how music and building evolved together.
We hope you enjoy this special episode, recorded in November 2021 at the ASA Conference in Seattle!
Follow Sarabeth on Twitter: @SarabethMullins
Read more from Sarabeth: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9610851
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
In early December 2021 our host Andrew attended the Seattle meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and now walks us through the highlights of the conference. We talked about electric vehicles additive sounds, deep learning for audio classification, social isolation for older people with sensory loss during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and more! The proceedings of the ASA meeting can be found at this link: https://acousticalsociety.org/program-of-181st-meeting-of-the-acoustical-society-of-america/
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Throughout the last year, we've seen a whole bunch of articles, projects and research about how much urban noise was reduced due to COVID-19 lockdowns. This is our 2nd episode in a series looking at the impacts of those lockdowns worldwide on sound in cities.
Today we're speaking for the 2nd time with Pamela Jordan, a researcher at University of Amsterdam, about her project looking, in a very interesting way, at how the soundscape at the Berlin Wall Memorial changed during lockdown, as it shifted from this tourist space, to a public space.
Find Pamela at the University of Amsterdam
Read Pamela's and André's paper in the Special Issue about Historical Acoustics.
Change Over Time - Sounding Heritage - https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/44786
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
This week Andrew is at the Acoustical Society of America conference in Seattle. Throughout the week, our goal is to bring you some highlights about the talks he found most interesting. At the end of it we'll put together a full episode with that run down, but Andrew is also sitting down for some short mini-episodes with the acousticians, architects and researchers presenting to dig deeper into their fascinating work. We're really excited about all of the guests we have coming up so, let's get into our first of this series of special interviews!
Ronald Altoon has been an architect for nearly 50 years, 30 of those leading his own firm. He has given lectures at places like Harvard, USC, and Columbia. If you missed his talk at this year's acoustical society meeting, you missed out one of the best presentations Andrew has seen yet. But thankfully for you we sat down with him for an extended chat about the importance of context in architectural and acoustical design, and on ethics in acoustics. Enjoy!
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
We've talked a lot about soundscapes: how we perceive them, how we measure them, how we can predict them... but all of these soundscapes existed. What about the ones that - like purgatory - are just somewhere in our minds or floating out there in space? These are historic soundscapes - ones which used to exist but no longer do.
So the question is - how do we talk about those? How do we measure those?
Today we are speaking with Pamela Jordan, a researcher at University of Amsterdam, about historic soundscapes and her experience in measuring and describing them.
Find Pamela at the University of Amsterdam
Change Over Time - Sounding Heritage - https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/44786
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
In our very first episode, we learned that not all natural sounds are equal, and not all of them are pleasant. In today's episode, we'll talk about how not all mechanical sounds are equal and not all of them are necessarily bad. As we move into the "age of the future" we expect to see drones flying around our cities, dropping off packages and making our skies look like those of Coruscant from Star Wars. But what do these drones sound like? Are they good or bad? What do they mean for the soundscapes of our cities?
Today, we're speaking with Antonio Torija-Martinez, a Lecturer in Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford about the noise of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. He'll take us through his recent research on whether we can design drones to sound pleasant (or at least, less annoying), and how these drones impact urban soundscapes. And, if you'll indulge us a bit, I hope you enjoy some rambling off into our thoughts on how we measure and describe complex soundscapes. Enjoy!
Follow Antonio on Twitter @ajtorija
Psychoacoustic analysis of contra-rotating propeller noise for unmanned aerial vehicles - https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/10.0003432
Make drones sound less annoying by factoring in humans at the design stage - https://theconversation.com/make-drones-sound-less-annoying-by-factoring-in-humans-at-the-design-stage-151421
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
This month we're kicking off a new series of episodes looking at how the COVID-19 lockdowns impacted urban soundscapes around the world! Throughout this past year, we've seen countless articles, podcasts, and twitter threads about how cities went quiet as people were forced to stay at home. We hope to bring you the in depth stories directly from the scientists who were conducting this research. Hopefully we'll be able to answer questions like 'What do our cities sound like when people aren't using them?' 'How did people's perceptions of urban sound change throughout this period?' and 'Just how quiet could our cities be, and would it actually make a difference?'
For the first of this series, we're speaking with Romain Rumpler, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, about the effects Romain and his team measured under Sweden's unique lockdown conditions. Make sure to subscribe to keep up with our future lockdown-focussed episodes!
Resources:
An observation of the impact of CoViD-19 recommendation measures monitored through urban noise levels in central Stockholm, Sweden - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670720306892
Noise measurements as a proxy to evaluating the response to recommendations in times of crisis: An update analysis of the transition to the second wave of the CoViD-19 pandemic in Central Stockholm, Sweden - https://asa.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1121/10.0003778
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Number 9, number 9, number 9...
As promised, today we're back where we left as we talk with Associate Professor Gascia Ouzounian, joined by her colleague, a Bartlett alumna Dr Ruth Bernatek. They reflect on their ongoing ERC project Soncities at University of Oxford that brings together sound theorists, urban sociologists, architects, urban designers and sound artists to develop critical approaches to sonic urbanism. Their goal is to foster socially conscious approaches to sonic practice in forms of research, analysis and design.
Oh, and there's a chat about the unavoidable John Lennon, oops I meant Xenakis.
Shall we continue?
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Today we understand sound is inherently spatial. It interacts with and informs us about the space it - and we - exist in. But as recently as 1900, scientists held that sound itself could not relay "spatial attributes" and that the human ear had physiological limitations that prevented it from receiving spatial information. How did we go from there to our current understanding of spatial sound?
In her new book, "Stereophonica", Oxford Associate Professor of Music, Gascia Ouzounian, traces the development of this spatial understanding from its modern birth, through science, war, music, and finally to our cities. In this month's episode, we sit down with Gascia to talk about some of the episodes she tells which we found particularly interesting. Enjoy!
Buy Gascia's book, "Stereophonica - Sound and space in Science, Technology, and the Arts": https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/stereophonica
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
This month we return to one of our favourite topics - how do you actually measure perception? We trace the development of the circumplex model of affect from it's start in 1980, to it's first application in soundscape in 2010. Finally we speak with Simone Torresin, who has done the most recent expansion of this idea by deriving a soundscape circumplex model for indoor environments.
Are you just confused about what a 'circumplex' even is? Well, listen along and we'll walk you through it!
Resources:
- Indoor soundscape assessment: A principal components model of acoustic perception in residential buildings - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132320305266
- A principal components model of soundscape perception - https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3493436
- A circumplex model of affect - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-25062-001
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Happy May the Fourth!
In this episode, we're speaking with Linda O'Keeffe, a sound artist and head of the School of Art at Edinburgh College of Art. Her work on gender inclusion in the sonic arts has led to the development of the organisation Women In Sound, Women On Sound, whose goal is to make visible women who work in the multitudinous areas of sound - from music technology to sound art, sound & society, the politics of sound, and every are in between.
Today we'll talk with Linda about her journey in sound, her research on the under-examined cultural and acoustic impacts of renewable energy sources, and her latest album, titled 'Silent Spring' which focuses on the new sounds associated with renewable energy.
Find Linda's album here: https://flamingpines.bandcamp.com/album/silent-spring
Find more of Linda's research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Linda-O-Keeffe/research
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
This week marked the second Urban Sound Symposium, held virtually! Featuring keynotes with 30 speakers, panel discussions, and 27 posters, the Symposium brought together some of the leading researchers in urban sound and soundscape. In today's bonus episode, Andrew and Francesco discuss their personal favourite bits from the week as well as talking, once again, with Edda Bild about the extended discussion around representation, inclusiveness, and fairness in urban sound research that was sparked at the Symposium.
We recorded this very quickly right after the final day and obviously can't cover everything - if you think we missed something important be sure to let us know on Twitter @JustNoisePod
If you'd like to be a part of the working group on urban sound EDI, reach out to Edda at edda.bild@mcgill.ca
Keynote talks mentioned:
"Urban trends and their impact on soundscape" - Dick Botteldooren, Arnaud Can
"Public space soundscapes - three continents, three approaches" - Sarah Payne, Jin Yong Jeon, Daniel Steele
"Smart city sound monitoring and its applications" - Juan Bello, David Bernfeld
"Mapping and prediction" - Pierre Aumond, Maarten Hornikx, André Fiebig
"Participatory approaches" - Lisa Lavia, Mattia Cobianchi, Nadine Schütz
Music used with permission from Jack Mac
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Urban Sound Symposium 2021
Today we have a just-long-enough chat with Drs. Edda Bild and Dan Steele from McGill University about their various soundscape intervention projects. They'll take us through installing free-to-use speakers in a small park in Montreal to testing out different water feature installations, with many rambling rants in between!
Papers discussed: Soundtracking the Public Space: Outcomes of the Musikiosk Soundscape Intervention
Find more from Dan and Edda here: https://www.sounds-in-the-city.org/en/overview/
@villesonore
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
In light of the UK's newly proposed policing bill which aims to impose noise limits and other new restrictions on protests, we bring you a special episode. Recorded a month before news of the bill came out, our host Andrew spoke with sociologist and soundscape researcher Edda Bild about 'sonic appropriation' - how people, particularly protesters and those in marginalised communities, can exert control over their sonic environments. Find out why it matters that people can exert this sonic appropriation over their spaces and some of the history of how it has been regulated and restricted.
This episode was intended to be a short follow up to our main episode in April, when it would've been very cleverly titled a 'Background Noise' episode, but it was so topical we decided to release it early. Make sure to check back in for that main episode about Edda's work with the Musikiosk project!
Read more about the UK Policing Bill here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56400751
See what it might mean in practice in a blog post by Susan Witterick, at DBX Acoustics: https://www.dbxacoustics.com/protest-noise/
Find more about Edda and her team here: https://www.sounds-in-the-city.org/en/team/
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
The International Year of Sound is a global initiative to highlight the importance of sound in all aspects of life and to promote an understanding of sound-related issues at the national and international level.
2020 was the International Year of Sound, but it may have been just a tad overshadowed by certain other events that year. Luckily, it carried on and adapted, and has been extended into 2021. This episode, we speak with the steering committee behind it and learn why the Year of Sound is important and what to look forward to in 2021!
Find the IYOS at their website here: https://sound2020.org/
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
International Year of Sound 2020-2021
The IYS is a global initiative to highlight the importance of sound in society
How do we measure sound perception? How can scientists quantify something so subjective?
Dr Sarah Payne walks us through how scales for soundscape are adapted from visual research. We'll discuss a whole range of scales and theories, like Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Perceived Restorative-ness Scale (PRS), Restorative Components Scale (RCS). But really, the highlight might just be her tips on creating a great acronym, like DESTRESS - (Designing and Engineering Soundscapes To enable Restorative Environments for Sustainable Societies) - bravo!
Find more from Sarah at @ThinkSnowflakes
Follow the DeStress project at @DeStressRestore and https://destress.hw.ac.uk/
Find Sarah's paper here: The Production of a Perceived Restorativeness Soundscape Scale
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Today we speak with Dr Ellie Ratcliffe, "Queen of the Birds"!
Can bird sounds help us recover psychologically? What do we even mean by that? And what is it about specific sounds that we find pleasing?
Ellie will walk us through all that and more as we discuss her paper Predicting the Perceived Restorative Potential of Bird Sounds Through Acoustics and Aesthetics.Find more from Ellie at @el_ratcliffeFind our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
UK Acoustics Network
UKAN brings together the internationally leading, but disparate UK acoustics research community.
Meet our hosts and our podcast! In this introductory episode we introduce Andrew, Francesco, and Tin and clue you in to what you can expect to hear about on The Rest Is Just Noise.
You'll hear about how each of our hosts found their way from architecture, physics, and music into the world of sound and some of the interesting stories about sound that they have encountered along the way.
Stay tuned for the first episode "The Birds" with Dr. Ellie Ratcliffe, coming out January 5th!
Find our website: https://www.justnoisepod.com/
Twitter: @JustNoisePod
Papers and projects discussed
Historic soundscape in Naples: https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.4708901
Zadar Sea Organ: http://www.sonicwonders.org/sea-organ-zadar-croatia/
Soundscape research at UCL: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/research-projects/2020/nov/soundscape-indices-ssid
This podcast is supported by the UK Acoustics Network (UKAN).