A Very Quiet Soundscape Network

[Katherine (Kat) Krause]

As Bernie Krause and I often travelled together in the early days of our marriage and, as I began to accompany him alongside into the field on numerous recording adventures, we connected with people around the globe, in some of the world's most remote places.   Upon our return back home, we relied upon the occasional posted letter or rare e-mail from far-away places to keep in touch with some of the friends we made along the way.  As the early years of 2000 passed by, more friends and colleagues began to express interest in what this work was about - some wanted to know more about how to begin listening to the habitats and locations around them, or where a certain creature or habitat was thriving or threatened.  We have always tried our best to be helpful to others, to inform about soundscape, and to build community.  During this time, we began to dream of being able to help connect colleagues in diverse places who had something in common with their course of study, concern about their local environment, or were simply interested in sharing and enjoying awareness of the natural world with others of like mind or interest.  We began to perceive the development of a real community; a sort of friendly "Soundscape Society", and we often wished that there was an easy way to introduce people and have them get to know one another and share the inspiration of this work.  We had already envisioned and formulated the earliest iterations of "The Global Soundscape Project"  and shared plans to help launch the growing archive into an academic setting to provide a home for permanent programs and establish a "Center for Soundscape Study" that Bernie was envisioning, which would invite multi-disciplinary participation in sound-led inquiry.

In early 2006, I was exploring some of the new networks that were appearing on-line, with easy to use programs that could provide a way to share advocacy and awareness about the many ways in which wild soundscapes inform our lives when I happened to launch an early NING network page.  To test out the possibilities, we launched this small network, and have maintained it since that time for free participation by others.

The Soundscape Support Team began early, and over the past several years, we haven't changed it much from it's basic design and implementation.  What has changed is the grand increased awareness of soundscape and the community of those interested in it.  As far as keeping up with the network, we simply haven't had time - but, in the meantime, we have made great strides to help lead the way in developing and sharing soundscape awareness and soundscape ecology with the world.

In the past few years, exciting new territories were covered in the field, numerous speaking engagements, countless academic visits, Bernie's popular TED Talk, the early books published, followed by the splash of "The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places" (Little/Brown)  (now in 5 languages), The Great Animal Orchestra Symphony for Orchestra & Wild Soundscapes (with composer Richard Blackford) that sprang from the book, the Ballet "Biophony" (with the amazing Alonzo King LINES Ballet), a short video for scholastic distribution, "Nature's Orchestra", another new book "Voices of the Wild" (Yale Press), another new book "Wild Soundscapes-Reissue" (Yale Press) and soon a major exhibition in Paris (Summer, '16).  

So, if our quiet little network seems a bit rusty from neglect, please forgive us!  

 We've been pretty busy with all the work at hand.  As for our quiet little network - it still works – and the way to keep it viable is by adding your voice!...the participants themselves truly create the network and take it forward now!

So, please feel free to post related content, connect with others, add news about the soundscape, post questions, comments, or tell us about your own work, and invite others to join in.  Help the Soundscape Support Team thrive, enjoy, swap info, and feel connected.  You are among friends!

While all the creatures have a place in the choir, Inappropriate dialoge or content is discourage and may not be approved for inclusion.