Acoustic Design in Urban Development : analysis of urban soundscapes and acoustic ecology research in New York City

The world is urbanizing rapidly with more than half of the global population now living in cities. Improving urban environments for the well-being of the increasing number of urban citizens is becoming one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. Even though it is common that city planners have visions of a ’good urban milieu’, those visions are concerning visual aesthetics or practical matters. The qualitative perspective of sound, such as sonic diversity and acoustic ecology are neglected aspects in architectural design. Urban planners and politicians are therefore largely unaware of the importance of sounds for the intrinsic quality of a place. Whenever environmental acoustics is on the agenda, the topic is noise abatement or noise legislation – a quantitative attenuation of sounds. Some architects may involve acoustical aspects in their work but sound design or acoustic design has yet to develop to a distinct discipline and be incorporated in urban planning.My aim was to investigate to what extent the urban soundscape is likely to improve if modern architectural techniques merge with principles of acoustics. This is an important, yet unexplored, research area. My study explores and analyses the acoustical aspects in urban development and includes interviews with practitioners in the field of urban acoustics, situated in New York City. My conclusion is that to achieve a better understanding of the human living conditions in mega-cities, there is a need to include sonic components into the holistic sense of urban development.

Comportamento e ecologia acústica da baleia jubarte (Megaptera novaeangliae) na região Nordeste do Brasil

The acoustic ecology concept involve the relation between the live organisms and their sound environment and is applied in the present work to study the context in which the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) singing behavior, known as the most complex display in the nature, occurred in the northeastern Brazilian coast, outside the core area of Abrolhos Bank, between 2005 and 2010.I analyze the singer male occurrence , their spatial distribution and probable relations with oceanographic features, such as depth, tide regimen and moon phases. I also describe the acoustic structure and temporal variation of the singing behavior, based on song frequency and time measurements outside the Abrolhos Bank, and further compare the song complexity, registered in the same period, between Abrolhos Bank (16°- 19° S, 37°- 39° W) and the adjacent North Coast, herein considered from Itacaré (14° S, 38° W) to Aracaju (11° S, 37° W). Additionally, I look for describe and analyze anthropogenic noise sources in the marine environment of the study area, produced by the oil industry as well as by the whale watching operation, relating their frequencies to the acoustic niche utilized by the humpbacks. The results indicated a great plasticity in the singing behavior, evidenced by the occurrence of singer males in diverse social structures, from solitary individuals to other groups, even containing females and calves, as well as by the diversity which compound the song, when compared between two regions inside the same breeding area, which present distinct oceanographic characteristics. The singer male distribution may be related with the continental shelf extent along the study area. The anthropogenic noise presented frequency range, amplitude and sound intensity in potential to interfere acoustically in the singing behavior of the species, may resulting in disturbance during the breeding season in the Brazilian coast. Implications about the obtained results in the humpback whale mating system are discussed. In this way, I pretend to contribute with the acoustic ecology subject and provide information to subsidize humpback whale conservation

A Educação Musical Brasileira e Três Modelos Explicativos de Mundo: em busca de significados

In this paper we study the main modalities of music education in Brazil and how they can be compared to different views worldwide. Recognition that modern practices in music education are inserted in contemporary knowledge paradigms shows their relevance to a changing world. According to this contemporary paradigm the practices included herein point to alternatives in the relationship between men and themselves, men and other men and men and the environment. They also encourage cooperation, the relationship among the arts, the conduction of actions ruled by the principles of ecology and the recovery of values lost or weakened.

Sons e gestação: implicações no ambiente sonoro sobre a saúde da gestante e do feto

Pós-graduação em Música - IA

Educação sonora: encontro entre ciências, tecnologia e cultura

Pós-graduação em Educação para a Ciência - FC

Paisagem sonora: um estudo da voz humana como símbolo sonoro

Pós-graduação em Música - IA

Sonic Places: In Conversation with Peter Cusack

In this interview, Recomposing the City co-directors Sarah Lappin and Gascia Ouzounian talk with Peter Cusack about his recent work, reflecting in particular on relationships between sound, sound art, planning processes and urban communities. Cusack, a field recordist and sound artist, has been a leading figure in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies for more than two decades

Sonic arts portfolio and commentary

This research investigates the process of “opening out” spaces with sound as an approach to sonic arts practice, investigating the spaces that sounds articulate, reveal and imply in our encounter with them. It positions spatial aesthetics as a key consideration at each stage of the creative process and connects approaches to spatiality in sonic arts practices with contextual considerations drawn from, for example, phenomenological accounts of spatial and sonic experience, human geography, architecture and acoustic ecology. The portfolio consists of seven sonic artworks and two collaborative projects that each engage with these ideas from a different perspective, exploring a number of applications, contexts and outcomes in the investigation. This accompanying commentary discusses these works, providing an introduction to the portfolio followed by a discussion, in the subsequent chapters, of the practices explored and developed in the research process.

Use of acoustic telemetry techniques to understand the individual variability in movement ecology of juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris, in natural conditions, around Bimini Islands, Bahamas: a comparison study with preliminary personality traits observed in mesocosms

Dissertação de Mestrado, Biologia Marinha, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

Behavioural ecology of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus in the North Atlantic Ocean

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências do Mar, especialidade em Ecologia Marinha.

Visual and acoustic signaling in three species of Brazilian nocturnal tree frogs (anura, hylidae)

Visual communication seems to be widespread among nocturnal anurans, however, reports of these behaviors in many Neotropical species are lacking. Therefore, we gathered information collected during several sporadic field expeditions in central and southern Brazil with three nocturnal tree frogs: Aplastodiscus perviridis, Hypsiboas albopunctatus and H. bischoffi. These species displayed various aggressive behaviors, both visual and acoustic, towards other males. For A. perviridis we described arm lifting and leg kicking; for H. albopunctatus we described the advertisement and territorial calls, visual signalizations, including a previously unreported behavior (short leg kicking), and male-male combat; and for H. bischoffi we described the advertisement and fighting calls, toes and fingers trembling, leg lifting, and leg kicking. We speculate about the evolution of some behaviors and concluded that the use of visual signals among Neotropical anurans may be much more common than suggested by the current knowledge. © 2007 Departamento de Ciências Biológicas.

Biological invasions and the acoustic niche: the effect of bullfrog calls on the acoustic signals of white-banded tree frogs

Invasive species are known to affect native species in a variety of ways, but the effect of acoustic invaders has not been examined previously. We simulated an invasion of the acoustic niche by exposing calling native male white-banded tree frogs (Hypsiboas albomarginatus) to recorded invasive American bullfrog (Lithobates catesbeianus) calls. In response, tree frogs immediately shifted calls to significantly higher frequencies. In the post-stimulus period, they continued to use higher frequencies while also decreasing signal duration. Acoustic signals are the primary basis of mate selection in many anurans, suggesting that such changes could negatively affect the reproductive success of native species. The effects of bullfrog vocalizations on acoustic communities are expected to be especially severe due to their broad frequency band, which masks the calls of multiple species simultaneously.