Collaborative mapping of the noise level in Guayaquil during COVID-19

The SARS-CoV-2 virus triggered a never-before-seen scenario worldwide. Ecuador declared a state of emergency to contain coronavirus transmission by applying social isolation policies and mobility limitations. During this period, noise pollution decreased in Guayaquil city. This study proposes the use of smartphones to collect noise data and generate soundscape maps of Guayaquil during different time slots. The results revealed traffic as the predominant type of noise, followed by vehicles, buses, and people´s voices. This article demonstrates the feasibility of crowdsourcing for the collection of environmental variables. © 2022 National Institute for Space Research, INPE. All rights reserved.

Lockdown Sound Diaries

Infants and children with positive PCR test results have been forcefully separated from their parents—unless their parent(s) also test positive and can therefore accompany them to a quarantine facility. On 29 March 2022, a headless robotic dog, carrying an electronic loudspeaker on its back that broadcast a pre-recorded message, walked along an empty, sunny street inside a residential compound in Shanghai (Figures 1 and 2). The app specialises in promoting podcasts (播客) and fostering podcast communities, distinguishing itself from other audio apps such as Ximalaya.FM, which feature a wide variety of audio programs such as audio books, music, comic dialogues, and news briefs (McHugh 2022: 223–25;Xu and Morris 2021). [...]a sound diary contains many elements that are hard to communicate in a written form, such as changes in pitch and volume, laughter, background music, ambient sounds, and even equipment noises from phones or recorders—all of which are open to the aural and affective perceptions of podcasters and listeners.

The new soundscape after the Covid-19 lockdown

We present a pilot study on the perception of noise and noise annoyance from various environmental sources after the COVID-19 lockdown in Serbia. We used an online platform to conduct an anonymous survey on about 190 respondents aged 15 to 75 years from all over the country. After the lockdown, there was a significant increase in the proportion of respondents who were highly annoyed by noise from the typical environmental sources, such as road traffic, air traffic, industrial facilities, and construction works on the streets, compared to the time during the lockdown. At the same time, the proportion of respondents who were highly annoyed by the sirens of ambulance vehicles decreased significantly. However, the most annoying environmental sound during and after the lockdown was that emitted by the ambulance vehicles, which respondents described as "unpleasant”, "horrifying” and "irritating”. The perception of the sounds of nature and church bells dropped significantly after the lockdown, whereas the perception of noise from the neighbors, household members, and indoor sources remained the same. In summary, after the lockdown, respondents perceive the new soundscape as louder, burdened with a cacophony of noises, and subsequently more annoying. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

Objective and perceived acoustic environments during the COVID-19 lockdown: An overview of evidence

The COVID-19 pandemic took a heavy toll on population health directly, but also triggered profound changes to social life, daily mobility patterns, and activity spaces. At the beginning, public health measures for limiting the spread of the virus mandated home confinement and limited outdoor activities, which in turn reshaped typical acoustic environments for many people. This overview provides a synopsis of the evidence of changes to residential noise exposure and perceived soundscape quality and components across different contexts. Most studies reported sound level reductions in the range of 4-10 dB. Reductions were larger on weekends compared with weekdays, and in previously socially active areas compared with traffic-dominated locations. People had a clear preference for the new lockdown soundscapes. Traffic noise levels reportedly declined across various settings, allowing for natural sounds, hitherto masked, to become more prominent. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

Results from The Quiet Project- UK Acoustic Community's response to COVID19

The COVID-19 Lockdown created a new kind of environment both in the UK and globally, never experienced before or likely to occur again. A vital and time-critical working group was formed with the aim of gathering crowd-source high quality baseline noise levels and other supporting information. The acoustic community were mobilised through existing networks engaging private companies, public organisations, and academics to gather data in accessible places. A website was designed to advertise the project, provide instructions and to formalise the uploading of noise data, observations, and Soundscape feedback. The data was collected at 99 locations by 80 acousticians (64 male, 16 female) using professional grade calibrated instrumentation with 83% of measurements including spectral data. The locations covered 19 urban, 61 suburban, and 19 rural sites. The Lockdown 1 dataset consisted of a total of 1.6 GB of measurements and material (video, photos) covering 834 days between 1st April and 14th July 2020. This makes the award winning Quiet Project the largest ever noise and soundscape database ever recorded. The paper presents the quietest places in the UK and Ireland. As a government funded research project the databank will be made publicly available to assist future research. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

"You are on mute”: the impact of indoor soundscape on sexual well-being during the COVID-19 lockdown

Sexual well-being is a fundamental facet of the overall well-being of most individuals and implies the ability to have safe and pleasurable sexual experiences, beyond the absence of disease or disturbance. The extent to which people can achieve sexual well-being depends, among other aspects, on whether they live in an environment that promotes and support it. The present study focuses on the unexplored impacts of the perceived acoustic environment (i.e., the soundscape) on human sexual activity carried out in domestic settings. Verbal descriptions have been gathered from open-ended questions included in a survey administered to 848 respondents living in the UK (London area) and in Italy in January 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdown. Thematic analysis was used to extract a framework detailing the positive and negative impacts of the acoustic environment on sexual activity. The results show the mechanisms by which the acoustic features of the environment can impact on the sexual experience in terms of privacy, distraction, disruption or support, up to trigger coping strategies (e.g., controlling windows, playing music) and behavioural changes (e.g., lowering the volume of the voice) that can in turn limit or enhance the freedom of sexual behaviour, affect or foster sexual well-being. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

Citizen Science and Soundscape Perception during COVID restriction in the UK

Winchester Science Centre in Southern England hosts a significant number of informative exhibits pertaining to principles of acoustics;one such example being on the subject of euphony, which seeks to collect evidence from the visiting public by asking questions about their sound environment. In a period of time between the first and third COVID lockdowns, visitors to this exhibit were asked what sounds they noticed more or less of, and what their favourite and least favourite sounds were during this period. The results are shared with two-fold benefit: to assist the public perception of noise and euphony, and to capture the aural response of the public to the 2020 COVID restrictions. This paper explores these results, but also the potential for conducting research from a larger cohort of visitors using a citizen science approach to deliver big data sets, to further explore the perception of sound in the environment with regard to its context. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

The Acoustic Environment and University Students' Satisfaction with the Online Education Method during the COVID-19 Lockdown.

The acoustic environment has been pointed out as a possible distractor during student activities in the online academic modality; however, it has not been specifically studied, nor has it been studied in relation to parameters frequently used in academic-quality evaluations. The objective of this study is to characterize the acoustic environment and relate it to students' satisfaction with the online learning modality. For that, three artificial neural networks were calculated, using as target variables the students' satisfaction and the noise interference with autonomous and synchronous activities, using acoustic variables as predictors. The data were obtained during the COVID-19 lockdown, through an online survey addressed to the students of the Universidad de Las Américas (Quito, Ecuador). Results show that the noise interference with comprehensive reading or with making exams and that the frequency of noises, which made the students lose track of the lesson, were relevant factors for students' satisfaction. The perceived loudness also had a remarkable influence on engaging in autonomous and synchronous activities. The performance of the models on students' satisfaction and on the noise interference with autonomous and synchronous activities was satisfactory given that it was built only with acoustic variables, with correlation coefficients of 0.567, 0.853, and 0.865, respectively.

Sounding the Polyphonic Cacophony of Macbeth with a Young Jozi Ensemble

Digital theatre-making initiatives that had emerged during Covid-19 lockdowns urged an interrogation of the languages of live theatre when, in South Africa, as the public arena reopened and social interaction resumed, reconfigured notions of theatre-making seemed apt. Reformulating and reimagining the operations of the medium, and the processes through which stage productions evolve, not only applied aspects of successful digital theatre but also aligned with the ideological imperatives of decolonisation. The Joburg Theatre Youth Development Programme production of Macbeth (2021) offered an opportunity to explore soundscape through the interplay of spoken word and non-semantic avian and animal calls. As a point of entry to staging the play, ensemble-based improvisation around developing a soundscape led to a more considered mapping of ornithological images, their connotations and theatrical efficacy. Extended play in generating birdcalls was instrumental in building performers' confidence in transposition and spontaneous translation from English to vernacular languages to give this rendition of Macbeth an edgy, contemporary, local tone. This article documents and addresses the rehearsal processes and some outcomes of the approach that was adopted.

Conceptualising sound making and sound loss in the urban heritage environment

Human existence is complemented by environmental sounds as by-products of people's activities as well as intentionally generated sounds that allow human society to function, including transport and traffic sounds and notification sounds. The resulting soundscapes surround and permeate people's daily existence. Technological, as well as behavioural change causes some of these sounds to become extinct at the local or universal level. While expressions of human communication through spoken words (language) and song are deemed to be heritage and thus formally collected and documented, there is a general lack of consideration of the heritage potential of anthropogenic environmental sounds. Focussing on examples from the state of NSW (Australia), this paper discusses sound loss in the urban heritage environment and advances two variations of a conceptual framework to assist heritage practitioners in decision-making to assess heritage potential in order to safeguard some of these sounds for the future.

Listening to the Urban Fracture: Co-Creating Soundscapes, Partnerships and Futures in the French Periphery during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic with its social distancing measures changed the course of many anthropological projects involving fieldwork, rendering many unfeasible but also opening up new possibilities. The cancellation of a participatory filmmaking project is the starting point of the aural collaborations discussed in this article. These consist in a series of podcasts I co-created with an environmental journalist who specialized in radio, podcast, and soundscape production. In these sound pieces the research participants-a musician, a bird specialist and activists mobilized against territorial inequalities-build on their perception of the aural environment during the first coronavirus lockdown of 2020 to reflect on the present and on possible, perhaps more livable futures.

Exploring the perceived restorativeness of natural soundscapes under the global pandemic of COVID-19: A moderated mediation model

Although emerging studies have discussed the potential benefits of soundscape in mental restoration, few have investigated how soundscape renews and re-energizes people, especially in facing the current public challenge of the COVID-19 crisis. We established a moderated mediation model to examine the relationship of the four restorative components of soundscape: being away, compatibility, extent and fascination. The data were collected in Xixi Wetland National Park, China, before the outbreak of COVID-19 (n = 562) in October 2019 and post COVID-19 in October 2020 (n = 341). The results revealed that natural soundscapes have great restorative benefits for visitors. The inter relationships of the restorative components are moderated by the perceived stress level which show significant different before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The post-COVID-19 visitors reported a higher level of stress while natural soundscapes had greater effects on their mental restoration. The direct effects of extent and fascination as well as the mediating effects of fascination were stronger among the post-COVID-19 group. However, the path coefficient from being away to compatibility were higher in the pre-COVID-19 group. This study improves the current understanding of the interactive mechanism among the restorative components of soundscape. Knowledge about natural soundscape encourages practitioners to consider it as a guideline for the creation of sustainable environments, especially under the COVID-19 crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Soundscaping Learning Spaces: Online Synchronicity and Composing Multiple Sonic Worlds

The Covid-19 pandemic has occasioned many epistemic shifts in our lives and work practices, not the least of which has changed the contours of the field of education and learning. While this special issue explores constructions of the postdigital in relation to learning spaces my focus will be exclusively on ‘soundscaping’ nonverbal sounds. Nonverbal sound may include any category of sound removed from speech or lyrics, such as the sound of a voice, instrumental music, or the beeps, buzzes, screams, and silences of human, animal, machine, object, or environmental sound. Soundscaping will refer to intentionally ‘planting,’ designing, or intervening within a landscape of sound. By returning to a framework for evaluating physical classroom spaces, I consider here how planting sound within synchronous video meetings for online learners can offer productive potentials. Furthermore, I argue that to overly rely on the ‘mute’ button or ignore those productive potentials is not only a missed opportunity, but could unintentionally do harm to learners. Finally, I offer some concrete suggestions for ‘planting’ nonverbal sound. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Relaxing and working from home: Associations between heating, ventilation and cooling system typologies and indoor soundscape evaluation

Data from an online survey conducted in January 2021 by 464 participants living in London and working from home (WFH) after the COVID-19 outbreak were analysed, focusing on: (1) types of building services at home, (2) perceived sound dominance of building services, and (3) the perception of the indoor acoustic environment (i.e. the indoor soundscape) in relation to two main activities, i.e. WFH and relaxation. Results show that most of participants' houses had radiators for heating and relied on window opening for ventilation and cooling. Air systems (e.g., HVAC systems) resulted in higher perceived dominance compared to other systems, but only when evaluated for WFH. Sound dominance from building services was in turn related to soundscape evaluation. Spaces with less dominant sounds from building services were more appropriate for both WFH and relaxation, and spaces with fewer dominant sounds were assessed better, but just for WFH. Participants' evaluations generally did not differ according to building service typology. The presence of air-cooling systems was associated with better perceived sound environments, most likely due to better acoustics conditions in newly built or retrofitted dwellings, more probably equipped with air cooling systems. Preliminary findings point out the importance of carefully considering the dominance of sounds by building services, especially for air systems, in relation to traditional and new uses of residential buildings. © 2021 Institute of Physics Publishing. All rights reserved.

Changes to an urban marina soundscape associated with COVID-19 lockdown in Guadeloupe.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to government-enforced limits on activities worldwide, causing a marked reduction of human presence in outdoors environments, including in coastal areas that normally support substantial levels of boat traffic. These restrictions provided a unique opportunity to quantify the degree to which anthropogenic noise contributes to and impacts underwater soundscapes. In Guadeloupe, French West Indies, a significantly lower number of motor boats were recorded in the vicinity of the major urban marina during the peak of the first COVID-19 lockdown (April-May 2020), compared with the number recorded post-lockdown. The resumption of human activities at the end of May was correlated with a maximum increase of 6 decibels in the ambient noise level underwater. The change in noise level did not impact daily sound production patterns of vocal fishes, with increased activity at dusk seen both during and after the lockdown period. However, during the lockdown vocal activity was comprised of a reduced number of sounds, suggesting that anthropogenic noise has the potential to interfere with vocalization behaviours in fishes.