NOISE POLLUTION

It’s almost 30 years since R. Murray Schafer, Canada’s foremost composer and author of the seminal study in acoustic ecology described in The Tuning of the World (New York: Knopf, 1977), fi rst drew our attention to the way an increasing number of natural sounds were disappearing into clouds of homogeneous, unwanted, anonymous noise of modern life with its ubiquitous keynote – traffi c. With society becoming increasingly noisy and antisocial, his message has never been more important. Schafer argued that, in an increasingly visual culture, such a sound-wall of white noise was responsible for the deterioration of our listening skills and, by implication, our ability to listen to one another’s needs and, therefore, the breakdown of the community. He noted that, ever since the harnessing of electricity and the invention of the internal combustion engine, sounds have become more continuous (lo-fi ) and, where they overlap, they create noise or non-sound, which masks more natural (hi-fi ) discontinuous sounds (see box on page 46). Discontinuous sounds allow for the echoes and reverberations that express an environment’s size in relation to the listener. In a pre-industrial society, the sound of church bells, the clank of the farrier’s anvil, the river rushing along and the clatter of horses’ hooves would all be recognised as ‘soundmarks’ (analogous to landmarks) forming a distinctive local soundscape which, just like the local architecture, customs and dress, expressed a community’s identity and helped to create feelings of belonging. For example, in small villages, bells would frame daily, seasonal and cultural time – both those ringing from church towers and those hanging from the sheep returning from the hills. With the visual sense less dominant, people could tell the difference between different locations by their distinctive sounds. Today, sitting in an offi ce, one could argue that the opposite is true. The fl icker of fl uorescent lights, the drone of traffi c outside and the hum of a computer all merge to pollute the natural acoustic environment, which might otherwise foster a sense of place. In the countryside, too, natural soundscapes of birds, animals, insects and weather have been eroded by the loss of natural habitats, but also by the impact of human-induced noise. According to acoustic ecologist Barry Krause, in the wild, all animal and insect vocalisations

We have become so conditioned to aural blight that many need sound to feel comfortable with themselves

tend to occupy different frequency bands, leaving ‘spectral niches’ into which the calls of other birds, animals and insects can fi t. Krause suggests that the increase of urban sprawl and its associated continuous, lo-fi noise might block out or mask specifi c frequency niches, resulting in mating calls going unheard. The idea that all of nature is like a symphony playing in harmony has never been fully corroborated but, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the population of fi nches, warblers and orioles in London is in rapid decline. City noises seems to be interfering with the birds’ learning of their own mating calls so that, rather than a melodious song, some youngsters can only manage a generic sort of chirp. Indeed, the underlying sense of acoustic ecology is that the more we become enveloped in a blanket of relentless background noise, even to the point where we can’t hear our own footsteps on the street, the more insular we become. The psychological signifi cance of using sound as a controlling force is that both the environment and the community become the enemy. By example, boom-car stereo-makers Sony’s Xplod is advertised as having subwoofers that are ‘your biggest allies in making the sound that your neighbours fear’. Dr Michael Bull, a media lecturer at Sussex University who writes about sound in urban cultures, says sound becomes the mediator by which people control the space in which they are living at any particular time. He says: ’In a world in which we control very little, mobile phone and iPod users are controlling the visual by indicating they are not available to talk to. It allows us to look at others without inviting their communication back.’ He adds that we have become so conditioned to aural blight from such an early age that many people actually need sound to feel comfortable with themselves, and to mediate and construct their thoughts: ‘People come in from work and switch on the TV to avoid being in a quiet house. We become conditioned to ambient background noise through different media and so, if you switch it off, people feel uncomfortable.’ Kendall Wrightson, a freelance writer and expert in music technology, is more pointed in his remarks, saying that, fundamentally, we are afraid of quiet. He says: ‘We use sound as a form of audio analgesic, or acoustic perfume, to drown out a critical inner voice and the associated feelings it creates. Despite an increased awareness of psychotherapeutic principles, the belief that emotion is somehow controlled through distraction prevails. The quiet reality of how I feel now is devalued and ignored. The cost to society of

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044 THE ECOLOGIST