IEEE Computer Society: Task Force on Computer-Generated Music

with physicians and scientists with performances by musicians, drummers, dancers and visionary artists. Those who wished to experience the power of sound for themselves attended the Deep Listening™ trainings designed and facilitated by Pauline Oliveros, composer and performer from Kingston, New York. Recognized worldwide via Oliveros's workshops and retreats, the trainings include attention to breathing as well as exploration of sound and listening as a vehicle for personal transformation and aural creativity. Sounds of old-growth forests on British Columbia's west coast comprised Westerkamp's recorded composition, "Beneath the Forest Floor" (1992). Steve Feld also visited the forest as part of his research project on the anthropology of sound in an isolated Papua New Guinea rainforest. Ajazz trombone /tuba player, he is also a sound engineer and has completed extensive studies in linguistics and anthropology. A survey of the soundscape ofJapanese daily life as expressed in haiku was presented by Koozoo Maeda in his paper "Reconstruction of the Historical Japanese Soundscape through Analysis of Haiku." Maeda is studying at Kyushu Institute of Design, concentrating on the acoustical environment. Randy Raine-Reusch, in his paper "From the Jungles of Borneo to the Temples ofJapan: 10 Years," told stories of his encounters with master musicians in the Far East. Raine-Reusch is a composer , instrumentalist, teacher and collector of musical instruments from around the world. He demonstrated a nose flute from Borneo, a Thai mouth organ and rare string zither from Japan. Sound found its place in the neardeath experience of R.1.P. Hayman, a composer from Pomona, New York. Hayman recreated his aural and visual experience in his video, On the Way . .., designed to inspire the contemplation of mortality and relax fears of dying. Death may not be silent, but what about silence itself? Toronto's Ursula M. Franklin, a specialist in experimental physics, discussed "Silence and the Notion of the Commons" in her presentation on the artificial acoustic environment and its relationship to silence as a spiritual experience and as a "common good." Breaking the silence of an expectant audience and concluding "The Tuning of the World" were the sounds of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, whose waves were recorded and analyzed by Schafer in the course of the World Soundscape Project. This recording served as the inspiration for Schafer's String Quartet no. 2 (''Waves,'' 1976), which immediately followed, performed live by Nancy Dahn (violin), Heide Sibley (violin), Nancy Enns (viola) and Thomas Heinrich (cello). Complex and haunting, the piece suggests the recurrent, asymmetrical pattern of the waves. Says Schafer in the score's program note, "Aside from this, I have sought to give the quartet a liquid quality in which everything is constantly dissolving and flowing into everything else." TOWARD A HEALTHY ACOUSTIC ECOLOGY Such is the very radiance and impermanence of sound itself. Similarly unfixed, "The Tuning of the World" proved successful in its attempt to further shape and reconfigure participants' perceptions and senses of the soundscape and to clarify their roles in working toward a healthy acoustic ecology. By the end of the conference, World Soundscape Project participants had formed a new international organization , the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE). Members are concerned with the scientific, aesthetic, ecological, philosophical and political aspects of the sound environment as they relate to technological effects, natural and ethnic sound preservation, and soundscape awareness [3]. Will there be a "International Conference on Acoustic Ecology"? The year-long dedication of Buell, Holmes, and others in planning and presenting the first certainly provides momentum for the possibility. Stay tuned. References 1. To obtain full "Tuning of the World" program details, contact Timothy Buell, Faculty of General Studies, University of Calgary, 2500 University Dr. NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N IN4, Tel: (403) 220-3493. 2. R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977). 3. For more information, contact the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, c/o World Soundscape Project, Simon Fraser University, Department of Communication, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A IS6, Fax: (604) 291-4024. IEEE Computer Society: Task Force on Computer-Generated Music Goffredo Haus The Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) has supported the founding of a task...