Soundscape

[2] There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science.

[6][7] Pauline Oliveros, composer of post-World War II electronic art music, defined the term "soundscape" as "All of the waveforms faithfully transmitted to our audio cortex by the ear and its mechanisms".

It is often miscredited as having been coined by Canadian composer and naturalist, R. Murray Schafer, who led much of the groundbreaking work on the subject from the 1960s and onwards.

Southworth, a former student of Kevin Lynch, led a project in Boston in the 1960s, and reported the findings in a paper entitled "The Sonic Environment of Cities" in 1969,[1] where the term is used.

[7][13] Soundscape composer Petri Kuljuntausta has created soundscape compositions from the sounds of sky dome and Aurora Borealis and deep sea underwater recordings, and a work entitled "Charm of Sound" to be performed at the extreme environment of Saturn's moon Titan.

The work landed on the ground of Titan in 2005 after traveling inside the spacecraft Huygens over seven years and four billion kilometers through space.

Irv Teibel's Environments series (1969–79) consisted of 30-minute, uninterrupted environmental soundscapes and synthesized or processed versions of natural sound.

[18] These settings make it possible for discrete sounds to be heard clearly since there is no background noise to obstruct even the smallest disturbance.

[20][21][22] Research has traditionally focused mostly on the negative effects of sound on human beings, as in exposure to environmental noise.

Noise has been shown to correlate with health-related problems like stress, reduced sleep and cardiovascular disease.

[28] Soundscapes from a computerized acoustic device with a camera may also offer synthetic vision to the blind, utilizing human echolocation, as is the goal of the seeing with sound project.

This body of knowledge approaches the sonic environment subjectively as well, as in how some sounds are tolerated while others disdained, with still others preferred, as seen in Fong's 2016 research comparing the soundscapes of Bangkok, Thailand and Los Angeles, California.

The character and quality of the soundscape influence human perceptions of an area, providing a sense of place that differentiates it from other regions.