here in Italy, and in particular in North Italy, it is really
difficult to avoid anthropogenic noise.
In the large plain where I live there are no places far enough from
industries, towns, roads, highways or railways. I just concluded my
course with two field trips; in particular in the night trip my
students discovered how much noise we produce and for the first time
they also discovered how far our noise travels...
I try to teach about silence, about natural soundscapes, but it is
really difficult to find them out there... only on hills and on the
Alps we can hope to find places shielded enough to experience no low
frequency noise... until a flight passes just over there. I'm now
trying to get grants for doing noise measures to characterize the
noise levels, and acoustic biodiversity as well, in a number of
different places. What I hope is to convince the administrators of
natural areas, parks and reserves, that it is important to reduce the
noise whenever possible and to consider the noise (or quietness)
level as a quality parameter.
I agree with Walt: unfiltered recordings are important to demonstrate
how much invasive our noises are. And it is also highly educative to
show and compare recordings made in both noisy and (naturally) quiet
places. Of course smooth filtering could be a (sometimes) valid
attempt to simulate a quiet place, but too much filtering - for
example to remove an airplane noise - makes recordings unnatural. The
natural low frequencies contribute a lot to the perception of the
whole environment. Unfortunately, too often we need to cut out all
low frequencies...
Gianni
At 17.01 28/05/2007, you wrote:
> > I find this a little sad. The scenes at dusk are much different than
> > those at 2am, even though our anuran actors are still on stage (loving
> > that analogy). At dusk, other animals, like people, are wrapping up
> > the business of the day and they are all out. Capturing this without
> > human and machine sounds, especially in the North-East of North
> > America seems to be a huge challenge.
>
>Lately I have been thinking we are making a error in publishing
>recordings without man made noise. As we all know it's extremely rare
>you can record for long anywhere without picking up man made noise.
>Maybe what the public should be given is what's really out there. So
>they will learn just what people are really doing to the environment.
>After all people are just another species of animal, so are a subject
>for "nature recording".
>
>Keep at it if you want "clean" recordings, fieldcraft is not just
>sneaking up on the animals that are calling. It's surprising what you
>can do. For instance here at my house it's close to impossible to avoid
>man made noise, the sound of bulldozers tearing the forests up to make
>subdivisions and such like. Getting to be a pretty steady sound here. Or
>the gas turbine power plant only 5 miles from here. But, if I just go to
>the back of my place down in the creek bottom I'm largely shielded from
>all that. Hunt for places like that.
>
>Or try recording on sundays, generally the quietest day of the week.
>
>Walt
>
>
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Gianni Pavan
Centro Interdisciplinare di Bioacustica e Ricerche Ambientali
Universita' degli Studi di Pavia, Via Taramelli 24, 27100 PAVIA, ITALIA
Phone +39-0382-987874 Fax +39-02-700-32921
Email
Web http://www.unipv.it/cibra
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CIBRA organizes the XXI IBAC Congress, Pavia, 15-18 September 2007
http://www.unipv.it/cibra/xxi_ibac.html
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