Acoustic Ecology

Today I read a few articles and watched a short film about acoustic ecology. Usually, when we think about pollution we don’t think about sound pollution all that much. Today I learned that it was more of a serious problem and less of an inconvenience and that there is legislation in several countries aimed at reducing it. Sound pollution has directly affected several species of bird. Noise pollution is causing new generations of birds to have trouble learning unique calls associated with their species. This has cause a drop in these species of birds.  Noise pollution has been a problem for humans even since the time of ancient Rome where poets often complained of carts coming into the cities early in the morning and waking them up. The articles also talked about the drone that the humans create. I found it funny because as I was reading about this drone I was experiencing the drone from several sources in my apartment. On the flip side, the articles also talked about the pure soundscape of nature and how it can affect humans on an emotional and spiritual level.  I have experienced this first hand. A while back I was in a choral concert by the name of Missia Gaia(Earth Mass). Several of the songs in this concert utilized recordings of nature, mainly animals in their composition. There were songs based around whale calls and wolf howls among other things. The composer had painstakingly transcribed the tones present in these animal calls into the music as well so parts of the songs would mimic the calls in the music notes that were sung.   This is just one example how natural soundscape and soundscape in general is important in art as well as life.