Soundscape Peru, an audiovisual 360° installation
Comparative analysis on the meaning of environmental sounds in different sound communities and their public facilitation
By Robin F. Wiemann
The installation "Shucuyariy - An Audiovisual Journey in 360°" processes various themes within the framework of Acoustic Ecology in a 360° audiovisual installation. The interview, sound and video recordings on which the installation is based were created during a research trip through Peru and deal with the question of how communities from different regions of Peru perceive their acoustic environment and whether environmental sounds in the communities studied have a special meaning or a significant influence on the structuring of everyday life. Based on Barry Truax's remarks on the meaning of acoustic environments in "Acoustic Communication" (Truax, 1984), the installation "Shucuyariy - An Audiovisual Journey in 360°" deals with Peru's different soundscapes. Special attention is paid to the soundscapes of the cities, the coast, the Andes and the Amazon region. Shucuyariy means translated from Quechua, another auditory perception and is composed of the words shuc - other and uyariy - auditory perception.
The result of the Artistic Research can be summarized as follows: In the different communities of Peru there is a big difference in the perception of environmental sounds. This difference is not necessarily due solely to Peru's different geographical regions. There are different sounds in the foreground depending on the region, each containing one or more specific meanings or information for the community living there. The biggest difference, however, is due to the difference in lifestyles between people living in Peru's cities and those living in village-like communities in more remote regions. The relationship of the communities to the pre-Columbian traditions and the importance of nature in them plays the most important role. The quote: "Todo Canta. Everything sings. The plants, the stones in the river, the fields and the streams have their music. The hills, the night and the birds sing anyway. The whole earth sings, and man has learned to sing with it."(Mires & Quevedo, 2002) sums up the relationship of the more traditional village communities to their acoustic environment. The natural acoustic environment is considered just as relevant as the human-made acoustic environment. All communities in Peru that regard nature as a person equal to man, with equal rights, and interpret it as a kind of language through the sounds it produces, have a comprehensive understanding of the acoustic environment. Sounds are thus not only perceived as the sound itself but can also always contain a message or information which in turn can have an impact on community life. Of course, even these smaller communities outside the big cities are not unaffected by the advancing technological developments that make some information transmitted by nature superfluous. As a result, the traditional relationship with the acoustic environment is gradually diminishing in these communities as well. In the cities of Peru, the significance of environmental sounds is hardly recognizable. The always present traffic noises and the overlapping of these with other sounds together form a permanent soundscape characterized by a "Lo-Fi" character. The acoustic horizon moves closer to the hearing person, making it more difficult to hear individual, informative or meaningful sounds. Even informative signal sounds such as horns or whistles are often used randomly and for no apparent reason, thus losing their actual signal effect. The consequence of the permanent and meaningless acoustic environment in Peru's cities (here I take up Schäfer's criticism of such a soundscape) can be, among other things, a slow disappearance of the ability to hear, the loss of the ability to listen in a concentrated way, and the loss of the associated ability to communicate in a concentrated way („Sonic Research Studio SFU“, FiveVillageSoundscape.pdf). Truax similarly addresses the danger that through an uninteresting soundscape without meaning, people will turn away from engaged and sensitive listening(Truax, 1984, S. 14). Interviews and own observations confirm this danger. When walking in the cities, a feeling of stress quickly arises, which leads to getting from A to B as quickly as possible without paying much attention to the immediate surroundings.
Another result of the work is that the larger cities of Peru, even in different geographical locations, all sound very similar. On the one hand, this can be attributed to the strong focus on traffic noise, which is generated by the similar means of transport in each city, and on the other hand to the fact that globally active industries offer similar products in similar sales areas and thus also create a similar acoustic environment (Breitsameter, 2015, S. 9). In Peru there are still many individual shops and the markets in the different cities and districts still have their own dynamics with an independent acoustic environment, but these are gradually replaced by the same supermarket chains.
In summary, it can be said that on the one hand, the audible environment in the cities of Peru does not play a significant role in living together. Nevertheless, the soundscape has a great influence on the well-being of the inhabitants of the cities, albeit in a negative sense. On the other hand, in smaller communities away from densely populated areas, the soundscape still has a great importance for living together, but it is decreasing due to various factors. The collected data of the investigated regions and the corresponding soundscapes and landscapes, as well as various statements of interviewees have been incorporated in the form of a 3D audio soundscape composition, a 360° video and several projection mappings in "Shucuyariy - An audiovisual journey in 360°".
In the form of my 360° audiovisual installation, following the pioneers of soundscape research, I would like to play my part in sharpening awareness of our own acoustic environment. At the same time, when working with 3D audio and Fulldome media, I am concerned with the question of how these also affect every day social life and interpersonal communication. Based on Neil Postman's statement "Our language is our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture"(Postman & Kaiser, 2018, S. 25) creates the use of immersive media such as 3D-Audio, Fulldome, Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality in extreme cases a culture in which own worlds encapsulated from reality and adapted to individual needs can form the center of our attention. Or even more drastically expressed, that we, due to an increasingly information-poor real environment, take an escape from reality to virtual worlds. It remains to be seen to what extent the increased turn to virtual realities as a society harms or benefits us and requires a targeted discussion in the sense of a comprehensive media ecology, in which acoustic ecology and the approaches of this work represent an important sub-area, which has the task of investigating the interaction between the soundscape of virtual reality and the protagonist acting there. What is the meaning of environmental sounds within a virtual community? What are the acoustic properties of these sounds when the creators of these virtual worlds can determine for themselves how they are to be heard? Similar to the attempt to show the diverse acoustic environment of real existing communities in the form of a work of art, art enables us to stand at the threshold of technological developments and to illuminate this from different perspectives.
Breitsameter, S. (2015). Ordering of Sounds: The Homogenization of Listening in the Age of Globalized Soundscapes.
Mires, A., & Quevedo, J. V. (2002). ¡Música maestro! Instrumentos musicales en la tradición Cajamarquina. Cajamarca: Red de Bibliotecas Rurales de Cajamarca.
Postman, N., & Kaiser, R. (2018). Wir amüsieren uns zu Tode: Urteilsbildung im Zeitalter der Unterhaltungsindustrie (20. Auflage, Januar 2018). Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl.
Truax, B. (1984). Acoustic communication. Norwood, N.J: Ablex Pub. Corp.
