Author: Marc Weidenbaum

These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the June 11, 2024, issue of the Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound. This Week in Sound is the best way I’ve found to process material I come across. Your support provides resources and encouragement. Most issues are free. A weekly annotated ambient-music mixtape is for paid subscribers. Thanks.

▰ ELEPHANT TALK: Quite remarkably, it appears that elephants may very well have individualized names. “‘They have this ability to individually call specific members of their family with a unique call,’ said Mickey Pardo, an acoustic biologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and an author of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.” That’s from the New York Times article (gift link) about the Nature article, which notes the following conclusion: “if non-imitative name analogues were found in other species, this could have important implications for our understanding of language evolution.” And yes, as with so much such news these days (such as the marvels being unearthed — “unsea’d?” — about whales), the work involves artificial intelligence: “To decode these rumbles, Dr. Pardo and George Wittemyer, a professor of conservation biology at Colorado State University and chairman of the scientific board for the nonprofit Save the Elephants, analyzed 469 vocalizations made by family groups of adult elephant females and their offspring recorded at Amboseli National Park and the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves in Kenya.” 

▰ LISTENING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE: Nick Sowers, a friend, recounts in an op-ed for archpaper.com how as an architecture student he visited Japan and had his ears opened to the role of sound in the design of buildings: “In the year following my building science course I visited Nijo Castle in Kyoto, Japan, home to Ninomaru Palace, a building housing a series of large tatami-floored rooms where shoguns would meet with advisors and visitors. Long hallways of bare wood floors surround the rooms and connect the outermost public spaces with private interiors. There is no way to walk on the specially attached boards without triggering them to squeak or ‘chirp.’ Our professor explained that the sound of the floorboards served as an ancient ninja proximity alert system. The legendary floors became known as the uguisu-bari, or nightingale floors.” There is far more about the topic in Nick’s article, so be sure to read it in full before drawing any conclusions. “Each visual component of architecture has a sonic counterpart,” he writes. “Think about a programmatic study, for example. Through the lens of sound (even our metaphors cannot escape the visual bias), we can have meaningful conversations about user groups, demands on space which are time-based, and ideal adjacencies among building users.”

▰ RING RING: Earbuds may have gone into overdrive, according to an NPR report: “According to the World Health Organization, over 1 billion young adults, ages 12 to 35, are at risk of permanent, avoidable hearing loss due to ‘unsafe listening practices.’ By 2050, the WHO predicts that 1 in 10 of us will experience ‘disabling hearing loss.’” A study, done in coordination with Apple, has revealed “that 1 in 3 participants are exposed to excessive noise levels.” (Thanks, Rich Pettus!) … Also part of that University of Michigan study was analysis of tinnitus; via the Verge: “More than 77 percent of people who participated in a big Apple-sponsored study have experienced tinnitus at some point in their lives, according to preliminary data. Around 15 percent say they’re affected daily by tinnitus, perceiving ringing or other sounds that other people can’t hear.” More work is ahead: “The study could ‘help develop new products to optimize your hearing experience and reduce the likelihood of hearing loss.’”

▰ BUZZ OFF: One type of pollination is called “buzz pollination” (which means “bees use vibrations to remove and collect pollen from flowers incidentally fertilising them”). A fellowship is available (UK students only) for the study of buzz pollination, seeking to answer questions such as “What is the relationship between vibration properties (amplitude, frequency, and duration) and pollen release and fruit quality across different varieties of soft fruits?” and “What are the properties of the vibrations used by buzz-pollinating bees while visiting experimental plots of different varieties of soft fruits?”

▰ SOUND BITES: Voices Carry: A deep dive into the science of how people might distinguish deepfake voices from real ones. ▰ Head Banned: Ella Glover, in the Guardian, writes about ditching her headphones and learning to really listen. ▰ Star Struck: NASA, back in February, released Listen to the Universe, a half-hour documentary about its experiments with sonification. ▰ Hops to It: The Belgian beer Leffe’s sonic brand draws from its abbey history. ▰ At Play in the Field: Mat Eric Hart, in Sonic Tapestries, writes about exploring the landscape beloved by Cézanne — but through sound rather than painting. ▰ Keeping Score: Are video game companies “leaving money on the table” when it comes to game music? ▰ Multi-Core: Apple announced a lot this week, including Enhanced Dialogue (improving voice isolation) and new approaches to captions, haptic sound in Apple Music, and new “gestures” for AirPods. ▰ Blade Runner: The New York State Senate has approved a “noise tax” on helicopters.

The cover image for this issue is by Bernard Dupont and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.