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Threats derived from marine traffic are diverse, including noise pollution and collisions with air-breathing vertebrates. These specific issues are emerging threats around the Galapagos Archipelago, which is an important site for endangered green turtles (Chelonia mydas). The environmental authorities have committed to promote responsible navigation within the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR), prompting this PhD thesis. Chapter 1 provides an overview of vessel strikes and underwater noise pollution, highlighting the relevant policy frameworks. In Chapter 2, we characterised the marine traffic within the GMR using Automatic Identification System data, focusing on four high-use turtle areas. We determined: (i) vessel type, (ii) the number of transits per hour, and iii) vessel speed. Next, we constructed a collision risk model using AIS data combined with in situ information on sea turtle diving behaviour and density. The most effective measures to reduce collisions are either directing vessels away from high-use areas or reducing the number of vessels. However, where this is not possible, a compromise speed limit of 7.5 knots should be introduced to reduce the lethality of vessel strikes. Chapter 3 focusses on vessel traffic and its contribution to underwater noise. We recorded soundscapes over a diel cycle at locations which varied in their level of human activity. Differences were evident between locations and with time of day, corresponding with human activity and vessel type, providing important baselines to assess the extent of noise pollution. Chapter 4 considers the behaviour of free-ranging turtles in the presence of vessel noise. Using state-of-the art-devices, we simultaneously recorded ambient soundscapes and turtle behaviour in situ and found that the duration of travelling and the time spent scanning increased with duration of vessel noise exposure. Finally, Chapter 5 synthesises the salient points from the thesis to inform conservation strategies within the GMR and support sustainable eco-tourism practice.

Tropical coral reefs are ecosystems of great beauty and value, but are degrading at unprecedented rates. New approaches are required to monitor and manage reefs worldwide, and to motivate societal changes that reduce the threats facing these vulnerable ecosystems. Healthy coral reefs are alive with sound, as a wide range of soniferous organisms create vibrant soundscapes that reflect the composition of the local community. Many fishes and invertebrates develop as larvae away from reefs before using sound to detect and settle to suitable reef habitat as juveniles, replenishing local populations. In this thesis, I present four field studies that develop and demonstrate the value of bioacoustic approaches to understanding and mediating responses of coral reef ecosystems to degradation. After an introduction to coral reef bioacoustics (Chapter One), I present data showing that soundscapes in the northern Great Barrier Reef have been significantly altered by degradation. Young fishes are less attracted to these post-degradation soundscapes than their pre-degradation equivalents (Chapter Two). Following this, I show that reef recovery can also be measured using acoustic recordings. Previously-damaged reefs restored by rubble stabilisation and coral gardening sound quantifiably similar to nearby healthy reefs and different from nearby degraded reefs (Chapter Three). I then present evidence that loudspeaker playback of healthy reef sound can enhance restoration efforts by increasing fish settlement and retention; fish community development is accelerated by acoustic enrichment of coral-rubble patch reefs compared with unmanipulated controls (Chapter Four). Furthermore, I show that the response of individual species to acoustic enrichment differs in relation to other restoration conditions (Chapter Five). Finally, I discuss the implications of these data for reef monitoring and management, and the use of bioacoustics to inspire public engagement with reef conservation (Chapter Six). In conclusion, bioacoustics offers novel methods to monitor and manage coral reefs, and can motivate people to adopt environmentally-friendly lifestyles. In a world where reefs are changing at unprecedented rates, much can be achieved by learning to listen.

This commentary discusses the aesthetic and technical background of the six compositions that I produced during my period of doctoral study at the University of Manchester between 2015 and 2019. Four of these (Oriol, Pink Bourbon, The Piano of the Jungle and Vuelvo al Sur) are for stereo configuration and the remaining two (La Fiesta del Diablo and Memories of the Pacific) are 8-channel pieces. My portfolio of compositions brings elements of Colombian culture into conversation with the practice of acousmatic composition. These compositions engage with the aesthetics of working with culture-associative sounds (including sonic souvenirs and culturally familiar sounds), as well as with related concepts, such as Smalley s orders of surrogacy and morphological behaviours. I draw equally on culturally emblematic and environmental sources, including a range of Colombian folk music (tiple, marimba de chonta, chirimia, salsa etc.), soundscapes (Andean cityscapes and countryside) and iconic cultural elements (coffee production). At the heart of the creative process lies a desire to capture, through my own compositional perspective, the unique flavours of Colombia s cultural diversity. To achieve this, I explore collaborative approaches to generating raw sound material. For example, I have worked closely with Colombian folk musicians, as a means to capturing, not only the sound(s) of their instruments and voices, but also the flavour (sabor) of their cultural context and experience. Furthermore, I explore how a range of different narrative modes can be engaged compositionally, as a way of portraying elements of Colombian culture. Collectively, the works of this portfolio offer a range of new perspectives on working with culture-associative sounds, focussing especially on the engagement of Smalley s orders of surrogacy and James Andean s narrative modes as a creative framework.

Through a synthesis of critical and practical research, this thesis looks beyond semiotic approaches to film landscape which consistently view the representation of countryside in film as a metonym for the national. My research is concerned instead with an interaction with land which is experiential, embodied and felt. Considering the ways in which landscape imprints itself upon our physical and spiritual selves, the thesis investigates rural space through the sensorium of the body, engaging with both the elemental properties of soil and stone and the substrata of myth, memory and dream to formulate a model for an embodied and enchanted British landscape cinema. Within a framework of film phenomenology, the thesis questions aesthetic readings of film landscape borrowed from art history and looks instead to anthropological conceptions of landscape as dwelt space, the result of a persistent communion between occupant and land. Considering landscape and the natural sublime from gendered perspectives, as products of a male gaze reinforcing men’s domination over women and nature, the thesis proposes an alternative conception of landscape and sublimity which are rooted in material immanence rather than transcendental distance. Through this process, the work advocates a new kind of occupation of the British countryside which challenges human sovereignty over nature and resists the colonial hegemonies of ownership and possession. My practical enquiry into landscape and rurality is informed by my work as cinematographer, sound recordist and sound editor. Through this multidisciplinary approach, the research questions the primacy of vision in cinema’s representation of countryside. Contributing to discourse on soundscape, film sound and field recording, the thesis contends that ocularcentric interpretations of landscape often estrange and exile us from the land whilst sound-led filmmaking approaches invite us towards it. The thesis enquires about cinematic rural space from perspectives of film realism and proposes an alternative, hybridised model of realism to account for our occupancy of the countryside. Drawing from diverse magical realist film texts as well as existing discourse on magical realism, my work speculates that the imbrication of realism and fable grants access to long repressed systems of thought within the countryside and, crucially, places human creative imagination at the centre of our sensorial engagement with rural space. In their different approaches to sounding and visualising the countryside, the two films which comprise my practical research enable us, as filmmaker and viewer, to consider how imaginary, non-naturalistic representations of the rural help to reclaim the British countryside for ourselves.

Large areas of the tropics have been cleared of forest and converted to agriculture. The consequent human-modified landscapes (HMLs) comprise a heterogenous mix of habitats; forest fragments and riparian strips are embedded in a matrix of cattle pasture, non-native timber plantations, and urban centres. These habitat changes can have dramatic consequences for wildlife, leading to range shifts and extirpations. In turn, this can influence the integrity of ecosystem services such as frugivory and seed dispersal. Understanding how habitat conversion affects natural ecosystems is critical to inform conservation interventions, but requires long-term biodiversity monitoring and detailed knowledge of species-level responses to HMLs. The research presented in this thesis was conducted in the Emparador HML, in central Republic of Panama. In Chapter 2, we show that the regional avian community is shaped by extent of forest cover across the landscape, and to a lesser degree, extent of forest fragmentation and distance to core forest. Effects of forest cover and fragmentation were examined at local (10 ha) and landscape (500 ha) scales. Species-level responses to these factors varied widely; while abundance of many species increased with greater local-scale forest cover, greater landscape-scale forest cover was often associated with declines. Generalist species that readily persist in HMLs still responded positively to local-scale forest cover, suggesting that even smaller forest fragments in these landscapes are important for maintaining diverse avian assemblages. Critically, we found that species’ responses were not associated with particular traits such as dietary composition or forest dependence, highlighting that species may often exhibit idiosyncratic responses to landscape structure. Chapters 3 and 4 address the wider issue of long-term monitoring, and the potential for data collection over large spatiotemporal scales using remote audio recorders. Ecoacoustics, the study of environmental sound is a relatively new discipline, and as such there is still considerable uncertainty surrounding best-practice for collecting and processing recordings. One of the most straightforward means of utilising audio recordings for environmental monitoring is via acoustic indices. These are objective measures of sound based on features such as pitch and amplitude. To date, attempts to use these indices have been hindered by inconsistent or inappropriate methodologies. In Chapter 3, we determine how many recordings are required to comprehensively capture a soundscape, the acoustic energy of a location. Furthermore, we demonstrate that there are habitat-specific patterns in acoustic indices values, suggesting that these indices reflect differences in vegetation structure and wildlife. We develop this further in Chapter 4, where we show that avian species richness and abundance are clearly linked to patterns in acoustic indices values. Critically, these patterns were coherent among habitat types emphasising their potential for monitoring. Acoustic indices sensitive to the frequencies occupied by bird song have the greatest potential for monitoring an avian community. The results from these two chapters suggest that acoustic indices can be effective tools for monitoring biodiversity, with values reflecting consistent differences across habitats, and among avian assemblages. Audio recordings are a source of permanent, verifiable evidence that can be collected at much greater spatiotemporal scales than traditional biodiversity monitoring data. As the use of audio recorders grows, it is important to compare their efficacy with standard methods of data collection. In Chapter 5, we contrast data derived from audio recordings with that gathered using standard point count methods, and consider whether recorders are a feasible means of surveying antbirds (Thamnophilidae), a disturbance-sensitive avian taxon. Both approaches revealed species’ responses to landscape structure, with qualitatively similar patterns in response to forest cover and vegetation quality. We show that common species can be readily monitored using audio recorders, with greater levels of detectability compared with point counts. However, rarer species were more likely to be detected using point counts. The work presented in this thesis helps to explain the patterns seen in avian responses to Neotropical HMLs. In particular we emphasise the importance of forest cover for maintaining bird assemblages in these landscapes. We demonstrate the utility of audio recorders for data collection, and highlight their potential for future biodiversity monitoring. In the face of human population growth, and ongoing habitat disturbance and agricultural intensification, conservation efforts are essential to avoid widespread species extinctions and ecosystem collapse. Interventions must take place in HMLs, to bolster ecosystem services, provide buffer zones for protected areas, and improve connectivity in the wider landscape.

The noise emissions from aircraft negatively impact the quality of life for those in areas around airports. Excess noise levels can cause stress-related complaints, leading to adverse health effects. Although newer aircraft are significantly quieter than older models, aircraft noise pollution remains a problem. Literature suggests that the level of aircraft noise annoyance people experience is equally dependent on the level of disturbance induced by the sound and individuals' perceived level of their own ability to cope with and control it. Traditionally, noise prediction models are used to determine the noise load around airports. If levels are deemed too high, building restrictions are put in place, and house owners are either bailed out or receive funding for acoustic insulation. However, literature on road traffic noise shows that the design of the environment that surrounds individuals has a great impact on their perception of noise annoyance. For instance, the design of buildings, streets and cities influence the propagation of sound around buildings. This can reduce or amplify the sound levels locally. Furthermore, the presence of natural features, such as trees and moving water, can evoke a more positive auditory sensation in areas exposed to traffic noise. Without changing the sound exposure levels, the sight and proximity of vegetation improves the individuals' assessment of the soundscape quality and reduces the level of noise annoyance. Like landscapes, the perception of the acoustic environment, or soundscape, is the result of design choices. Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether the design of the built environment can yield a similar effect for aircraft noise. The doctoral research focused on this question, from both an acoustic and soundscape-perception perspective, and comprised four separate studies. The first study presents the results of a systematic in-situ measurement study, in which the sound attenuating effects of buildings exposed to aircraft noise were assessed. In the second chapter, the results from the first study were used to develop and test a method to predict the propagation of aircraft noise around buildings in a numerical acoustic model. The third study used the numerical model to compare the noise attenuation effects of building design parameters, namely height, form and cladding. The fourth chapter explored the perception of aircraft noise in urban areas with or without moving water and vegetation, using virtual-reality. Together, the four studies provide tools that can be used by architects and urban designers to improve the soundscape quality in areas affected by aircraft noise. Depending on the location and local acoustic situation, different alternatives are possible, which are supported by the results presented in this thesis.

The thesis explores how painting is affected by its sonic environment. The research stems from an artistic response to noise in the environment and how this can be explored through artistic practice. The boundaries of art have and continue to be challenged as visual art has embraced an increasing range of approaches. This research explores the visual experience of viewing a painting alongside the all-encompassing time based nature of a sonic experience and readdresses the way painting operates within its own sound environment. It asks how these different elements can affect the reading of one another and in particular focuses on installations in extreme acoustic spaces, such as anechoic and reverberation chambers. It investigates how introducing sound to the painting arena can affect the reading and also transform the parameters of the painting. The research is practice-based and takes the form of a series of exhibitions, latterly in the form of site-specific installations, which have been evaluated, interpreted and responded to. This has led to a fundamental investigation, both practical and theoretical, into the way that sound and vision work together and how they relate within the context of art. Through the research the format of the painting developed in tandem with the temporal and audio considerations, resulting in all-encompassing installations bringing together panoramic paintings and 3D soundscapes.

This thesis surveys the sounds of everyday street and work life to argue for a reassessment of the way historians have understood community, space, materiality and identity in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Germany and Britain. It will demonstrate that sound played an important role in the organisation of urban space and social order. Furthermore it will show how the historical subject as listener emphasises the volatility of identity, place-making and community. Sounds either defined a community through positive responses or created conflict where one group heard the sounds of another group as noise. Sound helps to define the social groups that this thesis focuses on, such as experts, intellectuals, local administrators, immigrants or factory labourers. The ephemeral nature of sound and the subjectivity of listening, however, also pull apart such neat definitions and reveal the fractures within each of these social groups. Throughout this thesis, differing reactions to everyday sounds in the conurbations of Manchester and Düsseldorf will demonstrate how communities sought to define themselves and their environments through the production and reception of sound. What emerges is a re-composition of everyday life in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century that challenges examinations of it based on images of class, sociability and culture. Düsseldorf and Manchester were substantial cities that grew during the period studied here and underwent similar processes of technological change that affected both the social order and the physical environment. This thesis demonstrates that the audibility of specific technologies, buildings and machines physically affected listeners, and that working classes, middle-class professionals and local administrators all created regimes of noise intent on controlling behaviour in streets and workplaces. One of the key tropes within studies of sound is that listening places the historical subject at the centre of their environment while seeing places them outside of it. Using this idea, this thesis will make an original contribution to a number of debates. First of all, sounds broke down visual boundaries between street and workplace and this dissertation examines how that changes historical notions of place and space. Secondly, this thesis establishes how sound exposes the lines of fracture and cohesion within and between social groups that historians of popular street culture have tried to emphasise through class relations. Thirdly, sound allows for a re-examination of the power structures in which factory labourers and immigrants worked and lived as it presents practices of listening and sound production that breathe new life into ‘histories from below’ and challenge the top-down approaches associated with governmentality. Finally, this thesis will challenge the notion of noise as unwanted sound, prevalent in the growing number of histories on urban noise by demonstrating the diversity of everyday and medical reactions to ‘noise’ and exploring the problem of ‘silence’ in negotiations of migrant and worker identity and the development of road technologies. Overall, this thesis will determine that the role of sound in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century complicates historical debates on the physical and social organisation of urban space. Different communities transformed their identities around shared listening practices and adapted their rhythms of everyday life to sounds that resonated between street and home, work and leisure.

Through its portfolio of practical case studies and its engagement with critical thinking from a range of disciplines, the PhD investigates the following key question: what are the technical, aesthetic and conceptual impacts of using binaural technology to create a soundscape? ‘Using binaural technology’ implies users and users are essentially at the heart of this impact because users mediate the technical and aesthetic aspects of binaural technology and also inherently shape the theoretical ideology of this technology. By analysing users’ interactions with binaural technology from a social constructivist perspective, this thesis gains rich insights into the impact of using binaural technology when creating soundscapes. Chapter One explores sound artists’ and field recordists’ work that use binaural technology for the shared purpose of documenting urban soundwalks. The first case study “Audio Postcards” is also informed by questions drawn from acoustic ecology, socio-political theories on the practices of everyday life and the challenges that arise in finding, recording and preserving ‘soundmarks’. Chapter Two outlines practitioners’ applications of binaural technology to create an intimate connection to an art piece such as theatre director David Rosenberg’s productions. Peter Salvatore Petralia’s concept of headspace is applied to the chapter’s case study: “From Austria To America” to further understand binaural technology’s psychoacoustic effects. Chapter Three studies the impact of social groups who use binaural technology to record classical music performances. Traditional stereo and binaural classical music recording conventions are shaped in a new direction in two case studies: “Point of Audition” and “From Page to Stage”. Questions of ‘fidelity’ also arise from this creative practice. The outcomes of this reflective binaural practice unearth deep layers of understanding. This thesis discovers the impact of binaural technology moves beyond the effect it has on a listener to realise this recording practice also impacts a recordist’s decisions in the field and a sound artist’s creative choices when crafting soundscapes. The beneficial impact of binaural technology including its inconspicuous nature, the ability to imprint an artist’s subjective signature on recordings and its lifelike immersive qualities in playback are revealed through practice and reflection. Representing the real, the role of artist and point of audition are also themes explored throughout each chapter. Ultimately, insights gained are woven together as a means of constructing an original theoretical framework for an under-theorised subject: understanding how social user groups shape the impact of using binaural technology when creating soundscapes.

The focus of the compositional approach presented in this folio is the sounding environment. The term sounding environment is used in this context to refer to the whole of our living experience in the world which we might register as relating to sound. It might include everything that is sounding, seemingly sounding, imagined sounding, remembered sounding, sensed as sounding, composed to sound. It includes thus the actual sound environment, all that is sensed or interpreted as sound and imaginary sounds. This dissertation accompanies the seven acousmatic and the two sound installation works included in the folio. It is divided into two parts. In the first part relevant ideas and theories both from the literature of electroacoustic music composition and soundscape composition are discussed while in the second the compositional approach to the sounding environment is presented as applied to the works.

Through interrelating the Acoustic Communication concepts of soundscape with contemporary collective memory studies, this research project explores the relationship between commuters and the London Underground (LU) soundscape in order to create an interactive sonic environment on the Internet. The methodology combines fieldwork and artistic work, focusing on commuters’ perceptions of time and space, and on their sonic memories, as elements through which to interpret the space. The objective of the fieldwork is to investigate commuters’ aural memories of the LU soundscape, including the feelings and sensations that it stimulates. The artistic objective is to facilitate the interaction between the soundscape and its users through an interface that allows a creative combination of sounds to assemble aural memories into a sound-driven multimedia experience. Twenty-four commuters participated in the ethnographic study during the three phases of the research; they followed the researcher’s model, which combines the processes of listening and remembering. The researcher thus developed an interactive sonic environment where commuters can experience a non-linear virtual journey through the soundscape of LU, then apply this as a means of reflecting on the original commuting experience. The interactive nature of the process makes it possible for individual memories to be linked in a creative shared experience; it fosters the development of on-line sound-driven narratives.

This is PhD submission is both practical and theoretical. The practical element consists of nine electroacoustic compositions. The dissertation acts as a discursive accompaniment to the compositions, addressing many of the contextual and philosophical issues that have arisen during the compositional process and the perfannance of the works. It charts out discourse surrounding the different genres of electroacoustic music that the works relate to as well as examining models of work in the respective genres (i.e. sonic art, text, sound, acousmatic composition, inusique concrite and soundscape composition), and places them into a broader cultural and historical context. Chapter 2 is concerned with the impact of the advent of, and subsequent rapid development of electroacoustically mediatized sound on society and the individual. It relates a diverse mix of conjectures on disembodied sound from different fields, practices and cultures, including sonic art. Chapter3 explorest he emerging genre of soundscapec omposition. After dealing with the genre's lineage and accompanying discourse by composers of soundscape, it develops a relationship between the practice of soundscape composition and contemporary ethnographic practice and theory on ethnographic methodologies. The final section develops a soundscape compositional process with the practice of thefldneur. Chapter 4 relates the aesthetics of acousmatic music to philosophical, physiological and spiritual notions of the sublime throughout the ages. It concludes that acousmatic music has a distinct role to play in imparting sublime experiences. Chapter 5 documents and comments on those projects, which were undertaken with the following performers/ writers/ collaborators: Alaric Sumner, Alice Oswald and Tony Lopez. These projects demonstrate a number of different collaborative relationships between composer and writer and different configurations of acousmatic music and poetry

The histories of acoustic ecology, field recording, and soundscape composition are intertwined. This combination of disciplines has lead to the potential for powerful insights, but an over-emphasis on music composition using recorded sound has to led to some problematic tendencies in the study of soundscapes. I begin by tracing the development of acoustic ecology and related disciplines, leading to a proposal for a practice of acoustic ecology that centers the study of all sounds from an ecological perspective and incorporates the insights of creative practices. I include the results and data from my acoustic surveys in Patagonia, Iceland, and Texas. These three locations are varied in their climate, and they are all threatened by noise pollution or human interference from one source or another. Each survey plots out the daily sound activity in a given location and then includes information such as decibel level and the amount of anthropogenic noise. Using the field recordings from my acoustic surveys, I composed a non-linear piece, Resonance Ecology, that generates soundscapes by combining sounds from different locations based on connections such as geography or weather patterns. There is also the option for acoustic performers to perform alongside the electronics, creating an unpredictably evolving soundscape. The structure of the piece mirrors the ecosystems that serve as the foundation and inspiration of the piece. Importantly, the composition is not meant to represent the real ecosystems, but rather serves as an surreal ecosystem portraying my experience in these locations.

This thesis aims to examine various soundscapes in the novel Don Quixote of La Mancha to demonstrate that the author's use of acoustic elements goes beyond mere aesthetic considerations. Instead, these elements serve as a means to understand the intricate social fabric of imperial Spain, shedding light on their relationship with Cervantes' life and overall literary work. To achieve this goal, the research adopts two distinct approaches to the acoustic phenomenon. Firstly, it conducts an in-depth analysis of sound elements in specific chapters that pertain to Cervantes' biographical events, such as "La historia del cautivo" and the "Retablo de Maese Pedro," exploring their impact on memory, testimony, and trauma. Secondly, the study delves into the concept of "acoustic regime," elucidating how soundscapes are organized and regulated within a particular cultural context and timeframe. This perspective provides valuable insights into the social and political practices of early modern Spain, encompassing aspects like imperial political propaganda and the patriarchal regime. By focusing on sound as a revealing and unexplored aspect of the novel, this dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of Don Quixote of La Mancha and its broader significance in the context of Spanish society during the era of its creation.

Disputing the Acoustic Territory examines the importance of urban sounds—such as bell ringings, town criers, market bustles, and street musicians—in marking communal rhythms, controlling individuals’ sense of time, and defining colonial Mexico City’s identity. Throughout my dissertation, I analyze architectural treatises, maps, town ordinances, laws, chronicles, diaries, and literary texts to show that Mexico City was designed in accordance with acoustic principles of space, which helped Spaniards impose order upon the territory. I also demonstrate that, by shifting our attention to the aural experience of colonial settlements, we can enhance our understanding of the modern and contemporary struggles of Mexico City, as well as uncover power relations unaddressed by traditional approaches that look at colonial literature and urban culture only from visual and textual perspectives. My research intervenes in debates regarding the urbanization of Mexico City and its long-term consequences on the region’s social and economic inequalities. In my dissertation, I propose the concept of “acoustic territory” as a tool to explore the interactions between urban planning and sound, and to show how an acoustic approach to literature can be used to examine past and current social and political conflicts. By examining the organization of the city and cultural and literary polemics through an aural perspective, my work not only advances a more complex and accurate reimagination of the colonial period but also contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between sound, space, and politics in contemporary Mexico City. In Chapter One, I examine the rebuilding of Mexico City after the fall of Tenochtitlan in August 13, 1521. More specifically, I analyze the process of replacing the Mexica drums, which previously regulated everyday life in the territory, with Spanish bells. By focusing on the acoustic aspects of the dispute over the territory, I show the symbolic and political consequences of this acoustic change in the Mexican Valley. In Chapter Two, I study the acoustic practices of Indians in the territory during the first two centuries of Spanish hegemony and the role of such practices in bounding the crowd of rioters during the tumult of June 8, 1692—arguably the most consequential uprising during the colonial period in Mexico. In Chapter Three, I offer two readings of Bernardo de Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana. On the one hand, I use Balbuena’s poem as a guide to reconstruct the acoustic aspects of the colonial city’s public life; on the other hand, I examine the acoustic intensities of Grandeza mexicana to explore one of the most crucial debates of the colonial period: the polemics of the possession of New Spain, a debate between Criollos and Peninsulars, as well as Indians and Mestizos. Finally, in Chapter Four, I focus on the acoustic experience of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the convent of San Jerónimo. While focusing on Sor Juana, this chapter aims to provide a glimpse of how individual experienced sound during the colonial period. Together, the four chapters of this dissertation serve to reimagine colonial life in Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and propose a new perspective through which to examine the colonial period and the life in the region.

Metaphor and Mimesis in an Animal Soundscape serves as a supplementary document for two pieces of contemporary concert music; HOWL, for viola, saxophone and fixed media, and Pastorale for viola and fixed media. Both works quote the second movement of Antonio Vivaldi's violin concerto, La Primavera. This quotation is used to support a musical program which explores the larger topic of metaphor in music. In addition, both pieces play with contemporary trends in music including, but not limited to, acoustic ecology and spectralism.

Kommunalka: A Thin-Walled Memory Palace in Sound is an anthology concept album of soundscapes, sound art, and documentary vignettes which explores the Soviet communal apartment as a sonic memory palace. As an audio-only narrative, it presents collective and personal memories in a format which engages the listener’s active imagination. The kommunalka, a type of Soviet residential building with famously thin walls, serves as both content and form, as it provides a setting for disparate stories, ideas, and motives.

This document will seek to define the socio-political soundscape, radical openness, and musical style of Ted Hearne’s choral music. Background will be given on the composer, each choral work, use of text sources, and provide definition to the phrases “socio-political soundscape” and “radical openness.” It will provide context as to how Hearne’s choral works fit in the social and political climate of the United States from their inception to today. An analysis of text setting and compositional style will be explored to showcase the similarities and differences contained within Hearne’s choral compositions. A brief analysis of fifteen choral works by Hearne will provide the fundamental survey for his compositional style. Performance considerations and application related to style will be examined and discussed to inform conductors, performers, and scholars of Ted Hearne’s music and encourage his works to continue to be added to the choral canon.

While urban greenspace is widely recognized as important for human health and well-being, research on this topic of urgent importance is regularly not scaled for landscape planning and design applications. Here we propose a spatially explicit, deep-learning-based method to assess auditory stimuli within an important area of healthcare supply and we predict and map emotional responses to its soundscapes. Decomposing soundscape emotion by its dimensions of pleasantness and eventfulness, we find that both pleasantness and eventfulness are significant correlated with greenspace. Pleasantness is positively associated with greenspace whereas eventfulness is negatively associated with greenspace. The direction of emotional response to urban greenspace comports with current understandings of restorative landscapes. Our findings indicates that restorative soundscapes for hospitals may be insufficient due to potential impacts of urban contexts. Our spatially explicit framework helps to inform understandings of landscape restorativeness at the landscape planning scale and can be replicated to help ensure landscape design reaches its restorative potential, particularly in critical urban applications where populations and public health needs are increasingly concentrated.

Soundscape ecology is a rising field in recent years as the effects of anthropogenic sound pollution are widely discussed. Nowadays, scientists are trying to find the best way to describe environmental health using quantitative acoustic measurements. In search of the best acoustic index/indices that can be used for real-time and long-term underwater acoustic monitoring, we tested five different acoustic indices for their effectiveness and suitability for distinguishing and differentiating various types of sounds. One dataset with anthropogenic noises (boat, ship, and diver noises), natural ambient sounds (wind, water turbulence, and reef background noises), and biotic sounds (damselfish Dascyllus reticulatus and snapping shrimps sounds) was analyzed using Raven Pro and R. Our results suggest that acoustic richness (AR) and acoustic complex index (ACI) are capable of separating sound types with the consistency of subjective impression. We also find a strong positive linear correlation between sound exposure level (SEL) and average power spectral density (PSD). The AR exhibits a polynomial relationship with the increase of SEL. Acoustic entropy (H) does not have a significant difference between the three types of sounds. These results agree with the previous studies that AR can be used for differentiating random noises and pure tones, and ACI is capable of quantifying sound complexity.

This dissertation examines the technologically mediated developments in the relationship between the Party and the People in Mao era China (1949-1976). With a focus on audio technology (radios and loudspeakers), and drawing from sound studies, media studies, and 20th century Chinese history studies, it explores the soundscape of the period, in order to understand how the proliferation of amplified sound, combined with the unique nature of the Party’s propagandizing, to forge a new form of sonic politics for New China. Chapter One focuses on Tiananmen Square parades and rallies, and the ways in which a new political culture was shaped by the Party’s application of sound media at these events, and the emotionally charged vocal responses from the People. Chapter Two broadens the scope of the inquiry by examining the nationwide construction of the Party’s sonic infrastructure in the 1950s, and considering the Party’s aspirations as well as the challenges it faced in attempting to transmit its new political culture through sound media. Chapter Three turns to the actual content that was broadcast across the sonic infrastructure, paying attention to the usage of loudspeakers in the education system, as well as the Party’s manipulation of sound effects and noise to spread propaganda and provoke appropriate emotional responses from listeners. In Chapter Four I explore the ways in which individuals reacted to extreme loudness and targeted sonic harassment in the soundscape, and consider the specific qualities of the loudspeaker that made it a useful tool for maintaining control over bodies, space, and time. Chapter Five broadens the scope of the soundscape study once more to analyze international perspectives on the Party’s usage of sound media, which centered on accusations of “brainwashing,” as well as the Party’s attempts to construct a “sound wall” around the People, by campaigning against the Voice of America. The dissertation, as a whole, constructs an overview of the Mao era soundscape, which illustrates that despite various points of failure and weakness in the PRC’s sonic infrastructure in this period, the application of sound media was integral in shaping and circulating a new political culture, and in forming new bonds between the Party and the People.

Amphibians are among the world’s most endangered vertebrates, especially in the tropics. Land-use change remains the most significant driver of amphibian declines worldwide; natural history information on most tropical species is severely lacking, rendering conservation strategies difficult. Human actions have become one of the dominant forces driving the outcomes of a classic question in ecology: Why are species found where they are? Some frog species are tolerant to habitat disturbance, inhabiting urban areas or various types of agriculture, while others are only found in relatively untouched habitats like primary forests. Still other species are so understudied that we are unable to assess their distributions. This dissertation investigates the role of natural history traits in disturbance tolerance, as well as in the discovery of undescribed frog species and behaviors in Ecuador. Chapter 1 introduces these concepts in more detail. Chapter 2 investigates the effect of land management and species traits on pathogen prevalence, specifically the aquatic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd)—another major driver of global amphibian loss. At the community level, body size and lifetime aquatic index (level of water dependence for breeding) were the strongest predictors of Bd infection. The results introduce nuance to the theory that amphibian populations experience higher disease risk in natural habitats. In Chapter 3, I investigate how land-use change influences sound propagation, which has direct implications for amphibian communication. If the change in vegetation causes a habitat to become acoustically inhospitable, frogs with certain call properties would be rendered unable to attract mates. I found that species with high-pitched calls in some families (Hylidae and Strabomantidae) were more likely to be found in disturbed habitats—as hypothesized—but, unexpectedly, species with high-pitched calls in Centrolenidae were more likely to be found in undisturbed habitats. This work highlights the need to consider the acoustic environment when assessing a species’ vulnerability to habitat disturbance. In Chapter 4, I describe the call and visual signaling behavior of Sachatamia orejuela, an elusive glassfrog species that occupies a noisy acoustic niche. Documenting these new natural history traits provides a fascinating example of behavioral convergent evolution and further evidence that signals are shaped by their environment. Finally, Chapter 5 describes two new glassfrog species that are phenotypically very similar to other glassfrog species but are genetically and acoustically distinct. We recommend that both be listed as Endangered, given the rate of deforestation in their only known habitat. Chapter 6 discusses conservation challenges in the Ecuadorian Andes, especially for amphibians.

Categories of spatial experience and inner experience are explored through an inquiry into phenomenology, phenomenal art, spatial theory, contemplative practice, and eastern philosophy. An intuitive research process guides the creative practice as it materializes as immersive and sensorial installation and sculpture. The creative work is centered in the embodied perception of space and awareness of self. Perception is heightened by elements such as sound, light, and a sculp- tural environment.The aesthetic and archetypal form of the labyrinth and its paradoxicality, is contemplated philosophically and physically through readings and renderings. The space within a drawing of a lab- yrinth is transposed into a space which the viewer may enter into. The drawing of an artist momentarily assumes the role of proposal drawing for another artist's installation. This relationship between the artist's drawing and another artist's space are reimagined in an expanded field. One's creative work becomes a platform to contemplate and make space for the work of others. A sculptural object becomes a hybrid of another artist's processes or a meditation on the connection between language, drawing, and sculpture.

ABSTRACT In the mid 1960s, almost 100,000 Egyptian Nubians, people Indigenous to the Nile River Valley, were removed from their ancestral homeland due to the creation of the Aswan High Dam. In the years surrounding their displacement, Nubian musicians in Cairo and villages in new settlement areas gathered traditional Nubian songs and composed new songs to form a distinctive Nubian musical repertoire. This thesis addresses contemporary Nubian musical performance and the role of these reclaimed and newly-written songs in maintaining and revitalizing not only Nubian languages and culture, but especially senses of self in relation to place and, above all, to the Nile River. Using frameworks of Arabization, settler colonialism and Bhaba’s concept of re-membering (1994), I show how songs re-create Nubian communal ways of knowing and being that reconnect Egyptian Nubians to the material homeland they left behind, or, in the case of so many young disenfranchised Nubians, have never even known.

The connection between memory, identity, and landscape transcends much of human experience. When nations engage in the creation of memories and landscapes, the resulting memory work upon identity and the narratives and discourses of a nation can influence sense of belonging and other cultural criteria. This research identifies three national institutions of heritage and memory work in Wales to track these processes through a landscape analysis. I place the role of the Welsh Government, minority voices, and economic processes within the broader economic, historical, cultural, and political landscape of Wales. Through a series of successes and failures, some Welsh national heritage institutions have expanded their understanding of Wales to include the pluralistic historiography which guided and continues to impact the development and composition of Welsh society. It is also my hope that this study presents a viable extension to landscape analysis through a transoptic understanding which includes, yet reaches beyond the material into the sonic, experiential, or even spiritual. In Wales, this transoptic and multicultural understanding of Welsh history, memory, landscape, and identity may illuminate future pathways of inclusion and empowerment throughout the nation’s minority populations. Wales, as a nation embedded with its industrial, colonial, and linguistic legacies, faces significant challenges as it navigates the rapidly shifting geopolitics of Europe, the United Kingdom, and its own heritage institutions. This demonstrated transoptic understanding of landscape may be applied not only to Wales’ complicated geographies but to those nations and peoples facing similar challenging memory work across Europe and the globe.

This thesis is two-fold as the researcher is writing a creative thesis containing analysis as well as the art product itself. The first half consists of an analysis of a musical the researcher has been writing for two years. The analysis includes the intent of telling this specific story, as well as two songs from the musical and the surrounding scenes. In the analysis the researcher explains the musical purpose of melodic structure, lyrical devices and soundscape. The second half contains a full scene synopsis as well as a collection of detailed scenes, cast list, and an appendix attached with sheet music. This demonstrates the researcher’s ability as a writer as well as a story teller.

RESEARCH QUESTION: How can polyphonic soundscape ideals be the primary driver in the design of post-industrial environments? Sound Landscapes poses the question, how can polyphonic soundscape ideals be the main driver in the design of post-industrial environments? A hypothetical Master Plan for future development at Onehunga is used as a framework to answer this question. The plan provides a location for the implementation of underestimated acoustic techniques, which will add to the discourse regarding harmonious soundscapes within the urban landscape. The discourse currently focuses predominately on the undesirable influences of the imbalanced soundscape that is universally known as noise pollution. The potentials of the sonic aesthetic are undermined. This investigation seeks to address this issue and demonstrate that the sonic landscape is a valuable resource awaiting its discovery and that there are opportunities for this invisible aesthetic to foster and enrich a sense of place. Polyphonic elements can occupy a privileged niche within the landscape. Significant social, cultural and ecological needs of key stakeholders have been identified and these are acknowledged and reflected in the sound-driven principles and interventions that are a result of this project. Analysis of design precedents has identified possibilities for addressing issues of noise pollution from a position of inspiration and positive influence. It is common for disciplines to reside in silos. This research project seeks to raise awareness of the potentials of integration - the confluence of acoustic theory and normative landscape architectural practice. This process, which is polyphonic by nature, has produced a variety of strategies and spatial arrangements that aim to transform sound from a problem to a design resource

Passive acoustic monitoring is a transformative tool for increasing the scale of ecological monitoring. The biggest challenges remain in analyzing large volumes of recordings to produce ecological information useful for decision making. Ecoacoustics, a holistic, quantitative analysis of soundscapes and their emergent properties is an appealing way to distill information from many recordings, but new tools require rigorous studies to measure their efficacy tracking ecological patterns. This thesis contains three studies testing the efficacy of ecoacoustic approaches to monitoring species and communities. The first study uses simulations to test if a variety of indices of soundscape complexity, intensity and differences can measure realistic bird community changes in simulated dawn choruses. In addition, I explore combining indices to increase predictive power, and how the addition of anthropogenic noise and changes in bird behavior impact the usefulness of acoustic indices. The second study examines the acoustic monitoring of Cassin’s Auklets (Ptychoramphus aleuticus), a chorusing colonial seabird that is notoriously challenging to monitor. I test how a traditional automated call detection compares to a novel approach based on energy spectrums of the entire soundscape to index auklet activity. I discuss how for some species, this approach may be more effective in indexing activity, and in this case is a reliable predictor or relative burrow density, and could be applicable for other nocturnal, vociferous seabirds. In the third study I move from single seabird species to seabird communities. I apply acoustic indices of soundscape differences, complexity and intensity to measure seabird restoration outcomes in the Western Aleutian Islands. I find that acoustic richness, and the spectral differences from a pristine reference island are predicted by years of seabird recovery and other factors that promote seabird recovery. Acoustic indices provided similar information to traditional and more laborious approaches. In summation, ecoacoustic approaches are a valuable part of the acoustic monitoring toolbox. Across all three studies, acoustic indices reflected meaningful ecological patterns, at a fraction of the time and effort needed for other approaches. This can greatly improve the scale and speed at which monitoring programs can inform management decisions and iteratively improve conservation outcomes.

When George Du Maurier’s infamous mesmerist Svengali performs on his elastic penny whistle, the instrument produces a sound “more human almost than the human voice itself.” The suggestion that a voice could be more, or conversely less, human calls attention to the precariousness of a category under threat in the nineteenth century. My project confronts the enigmatic nature of voices in transatlantic Gothic fiction in relation to definitions of the human, attending to figures that frustrate taxonomic classification in sonic as well as visual terms. Discussions of stethoscopic listening, physiognomy, vivisection, and mesmerism in Britain and the United States frame my chapters, underscoring a nineteenth-century preoccupation with embodiment foundational for both literary and medical knowledge. Through an analysis of bodies as soundscapes in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H.G. Wells, among others, my project discovers an attention to voice as a recalcitrant force that subverts scientific authority over bodies. Michel Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic famously establishes the authoritative gaze as rendering bodies knowable, but I contend that the audible world remained a contested and occulted space that resisted classification. Sound was central to nineteenth-century investigations of the human. In the texts I examine, characters confront the sonic qualities of corporeal beings, which challenge them to listen in unconventional ways. Although the listening practices necessary to interpret these qualities are often disorienting, they enable characters to recognize networks of influence that reshape the conditions of embodiment, which had become what William A. Cohen describes as the “untranscendable horizon of the human.” These connections offer the possibility of meaningful interaction yet simultaneously endanger the listener. In the unsettled realm of Gothic fiction, sound is framed as a force that can both empower and disempower bodies as it circulates within and between them. Establishing a new awareness of bodies as soundscapes in their own right, Sounding Bodies and Voices elucidates how Gothic works draw on nineteenth- century scientific practices to reimagine the contours of the human.

This is a written defense of Destination Freedom, a radio opera and narrative soundscape composition that begins in the cargo hold of a ship trafficking Africans to the Americas and traverses time in search of freedom. Narrative soundscape composition is a classification of electroacoustic music and a research method used to engage historical events and social issues; it is a way to bridge creative practice and scholarship. Radio opera is a type of electroacoustic composition designed to be experienced in darkness in order to animate the theatre of the mind and, as such, borrows strategies for immersion from American radio drama. This text begins with an autoethnographic account of how narrative soundscape composition became my primary praxis followed by an explanation of radio drama as a model for using text, darkness, and spatialization in electroacoustic composition. After a description and analysis of Destination Freedom, the conclusion suggests broader applications for narrative soundscape composition beyond my personal practice.

Abstract: This dissertation explores the impact of everyday soundscape on cultural identity formation by considering the experiences of one neighborhood of Tehran, Iran before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Being home to a majority of Jews before the Revolution, Udlajan is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Tehran. Through interviews with a select group of its current and past Jewish and Muslim residents, this research considers changes to the everyday soundscape of the neighborhood in order to examine the role of sounds and silences in the social construction of space. This dissertation proposes that sonic experiences are closely related to the ways people make sense of their cultural identity. By narrating sound memories along with other ones, people express their understanding of space, communications with other residents, sense of identity, self and otherness, norms of inclusion and exclusion. Their narratives as well as the sound observations made in the neighborhood help to create a sonic map and the sonic changes Udlajan has gone through in the past several decades. This thesis argues that through the sonic memories, the residents are able to share their thoughts and feelings about their Jewish and Muslim neighbors and manage to express their sense of identity as members of a religious community or citizens of Udlajan. Udlajan Sonic Visual Map supplementary files are located here: https://doi.org/10.7939/R3PR7MX1B

Music scholars have devoted significant attention to the vast repertoire of chant, the cults from which it is said to have sprung, semiology, or its place in Western Christian worship, but a limited number of studies address the chanter and how chant renders affective and cognitive processes. The monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery are engaged four hours a day, every day, in the antiphonal rhythm of psalmody, constructing its expressivity and sculpting, from forty members, one voice. Here, the Divine Office, as prescribed by St. Benedict, is strictly followed. The monks repetitive and synchronized practice, suffused with chanting, cultivates deeper levels of personal awareness and authenticity. I explore introspective and inspirational aspects of the desert soundscape and its ability to cultivate acute awareness and sharpened attention. Drawing upon ethnographic research with the community, I argue that the brothers' singing is a transformative pathway that leads to strong group cohesiveness and well-being.

This paper uses the concept of mimesis to clarify the debate concerning the representation of reality in music. Specifically, this study defines the audio reality effect and the three main practices of realism as a way of understanding mimetic practices in multiple artistic media, in particular regarding the multimedia works of the "Landscape series." After addressing the historical debates concerning mimesis, this study develops a framework for the understanding of mimesis in sound by addressing the writings of Weiss, Baudrillard, Barthes, Deleuze, and Prendergast and by examining mimetic practices in 19th-century European painting and multimedia performance works. The audio reality effect is proposed as a meaningful translation of Roland Barthes' literary reality effect to the sonic realm. The main trends of realist practice are applied to electroacoustic music and soundscape composition using the works and writings of Emmerson, Truax, Wishart, Risset, Riddell, Smalley, Murray Schafer, Fischman, Young, and Field. Lastly, this study mimetically analyzes "2 seconds / b minor / wave" by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto and the works of the "Landscape series" in order to demonstrate the relevance of mimesis for understanding current musical practice.

Present in Panama since the 19th century, the Chinese diaspora in Panama City, Panama represents an empowered community of individuals who identify as both Chinese and Panamanian. These Chinese Panamanian hybrid identities emerge within sonic environments through an engagement with transnational media and digital technologies, notably within retail stores. Specifically, music surfaces as an especially important sonic marker of the Chinese Panamanian hybridity. Within the mall of the Panamanian Chinatown of El Dorado, an interesting mixture of both Chinese and Latin American popular music genres sounds throughout the various stores. This mixture of music genres demonstrates Chinese Panamanian agency in asserting and reaffirming the diasporic community’s status as both Chinese and Panamanian. Based on fieldwork conducted in Panama during the summer of 2014, I argue that the Chinese diaspora within Panama City shapes and asserts to its hybrid identity through its technocultural use of global, mass-mediated musical genres in the creation of soundscapes. Through a careful examination of sound studies and the transnational relationships between music technologies and the communities that use them, this study contributes to knowledge in the fields of ethnomusicology and diaspora studies. It offers a better understanding of how people in transnational and diasporic groups use and experience music to form hybrid identities. Additionally, the findings from this project open the door for further research in Chinese and East Asian studies within a Latin American context, with specific regard for music and technology.

Scholars often speak of Olivier Messiaen’s (1908-1992) use of birdsong as inspiration in his compositions. The avian vocalizations he dictated and catalogued while traveling throughout France and the world make appearances throughout his oeuvre. Other well documented influences upon his music include landscape and religion. In order to better comprehend the ecological, religious, and political underpinnings of Olivier Messiaen’s musical output, one must deduce how he drew upon nature and religion as inspiration. I propose that such an understanding can be reached through an in-depth examination of Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles . . . (1971-1974). Through analysis of Messiaen’s composition and cultural context, this study sheds light on the fundamental relationship between Des canyons, natural soundscape, and American environmentalism. It thus provides a culturally relevant, interpretive framework for understanding issues of soundscape, landscape, and place within his work. Messiaen’s use of animal and geological inspiration demonstrates not only his interest in adapting the music of nature for artistic purposes, but also his advocacy for a sustainable relationship between humanity and the non-human world. In so doing, Messiaen utilized his subjective experiences in wild locations as a symbol for this peaceful human-nature relationship. Des canyons aux étoiles . . . contains a coded environmentalist political message informed by Messiaen’s own experiences of nature and a spiritual imperative to glorify God’s creation.

This thesis uses a mixed qualitative methods approach to investigate how Tamil culture transmits and maintains ties to the cultural home. It examines concepts of diaspora to situate identity, ideas of cultural landscape, and how these manifestations enhance an understanding of the transmission process. This thesis incorporates ethnographic and autoethnographic procedures such as interviews, journaling and positionality, as well as visual and aural methods including photography and soundscape analysis. These methods reveal the complexity of transmission in four significant findings: the importance of soundscape in landscape analysis, the role of the individual to understanding culture, fluidity of `identity’, and the significance of regional distinctions within the `Asian Indian’ category.

"Biomes" is a 45-minute sound structure composed for electric guitar and electroacoustic soundscape. The debut performance of the work occurred on April 22, 2013 (Earth Day) within the Meyers Gallery at the University of Cincinnati. During this presentation, as well as on the debut recording of the composition, I functioned as electric guitarist and electroacoustic soundscape composer / performer.The electric guitar presents 6 songs during the electroacoustic soundscape. The melodic / harmonic material utilized within each song is primarily "fixed". The rhythmic / pulse material utilized within each song is primarily "fluid".The electroacoustic soundscape is comprised of 7 shifting biome soundscapes. The following biomes are represented: urban, desert, tropical forest, grassland, temperate forest, tundra, and aquatic (freshwater / marine). The complete soundscape incorporates 104 audio files (many of these audio files were accessed via the Macaulay Library at Cornell University). 52 of these audio files have been electronically processed in some fashion often utilizing MacPOD (developed by Chris Rolfe and Damian Keller). The remaining elements of the soundscape were constructed utilizing Logic Pro 9 (developed by Apple Incorporated).My initial creative intention was to compose music that I needed to hear (and hopefully music that needs to be heard). This creative intention has been realized through the completion of "Biomes". I have been intensely involved with music for over 27 years - sacrificing many other aspects of my life in order to pursue what I am deeply passionate about and to live fully as an artist. This extensive experience as an artist has informed my conclusion that "Biomes" is possibly the best work I have ever completed. The only way to understand my composition "Biomes" is to literally experience my composition "Biomes" (similarly, the only way to understand the taste of an apple is to literally experience the taste of an apple). There is no other way to achieve this quality of experience. For the person who desires this quality of experience, the following URL will allow you to download a WAV audio file of "Biomes":http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1393236887While experiencing "Biomes", please listen as follows:•in the morning (before any type of "professional" day has begun) or at night (after any type of "professional" day has ended).•in a silent, activity-free space.•while your body is sitting or reclining in a stress-free position.•utilizing high quality headphones / a minimum of 2 stereophonic loudspeakers.•from beginning to end without intermission.Thank you for listening.

This dissertation contains five chapters: 1. Introduction, 2. Basic Digital Processing Used in Summer Rain, 3. Part I Summer Rain - Dawn, 4. Part II After the Summer Rain and 5. Conclusion. Introduction contains a brief historical background of musique concrète, Electronische Musik, acousmatic music and music for instruments and tape, followed by basic descriptions of digital technique used in both parts of Summer Rain in Chapter 2. Also Chapter 2 describes software used in Summer Rain including "Kawamoto's VST," which is based on MAX/MSP, to create new sounds from the recorded samples using a Macintosh computer. In both Chapter 3 and 4, Kawamoto discusses a great deal of the pre-compositional stage of each piece including inspirational sources, especially Rainer Maria Rilke's poems and Olidon Redon's paintings, as well as her visual and sound imageries. In addition Chapter 3 she talks about sound sources, pitch, form and soundscape. Chapter 4 contains analysis on pitch in the piano part, rhythm, form and the general performance practice. Chapter 5 is a short conclusion of her aesthetics regarding Summer Rain, which is connected to literature, visual art and her Japanese cultural background.