Community of Sounds – Community of Culture. Sound in Social Situations

Abstract

This paper proposes a look at the community of culture from the viewpoint of the community of sounds, which is its immanent part. The sound environment is a significant element which builds a feeling of national, local, group, generational, and other affiliation and identity. Sounds may function as symbols, be a part of rituals, and carry values. Treating the audiosphere as an indicator of a community opens us to a new dimension of reflecting on the meaning of the sound landscape, understood, after R. M. Schafer, as the whole or a part of the sound environment with its perceptual, social, and historical-social context. Sound is the reflection of social organization systems created by people; therefore, social changes are reflected in the sound environment. In the analysis of this issue, I have used field recordings and their descriptions made by pedagogy students from the University of Lodz. The students’ observations confirm that it is worth reflecting on the sound in the ocularcentric world, which seems more than before dominated by sight, considered a sense of distancing by Wolfgang Welsch.

Keywords

• audiosphere
• feeling of community
• acoustic ecology
• soundwalks
• field recording