Online Lightening Talks
Songs of Northern California: Sound-Ecology and the Music of Nature
Virtual Lightning Talk Nicholas Virzi
In a world where technological advancements and the manifest destiny approach to societal expansion dominate, moments of undisturbed nature have become truly rare, even in preserves like Yosemite National Park – a location of particular interest in my work as a field recording artist and environmental activist. To experience the beauty of untouched nature, one must often travel far abound in search of the few places which still remain to us, and even these are fast disappearing. In order to understand humanity’s impact on the environment, visual means are simply not enough. Sound often tells us more about how ecological systems are impacted than sight alone, allowing us the ability to perceive the differences in the behavior of species caused by human intervention even when visually it might appear as if nothing has changed at all. This session features original natural soundscape recordings from my ongoing series, Songs of Northern California, alongside interactive aural exercises intended to illustrate the ecological significance of both scenes of undisturbed nature and those in which species have reacted and adapted to an evermore invasive human presence. Passing through such idyllic locations as Yosemite Valley and the Santa Cruz Mountains, participants experience an immersive, guided tour of natural splendor, learning essential perspectives and techniques for listening to and appreciating natural sound, such as the ability to discern auditory illusions and phenomena, note adaptations in species’ behavior in response to changes acoustic environments, and identify oscines through musical analysis of birdsong.
The Land That Could Be Project: After Twenty Years and Ten Iterations
Virtual Lightning Talk Vincent Canizaro
The Land That Could Be Project (LTCBP) began in 1997 with a modest request for students to participate in envisioning how to best support students on a university campus through design. The LTCBP has embraced its role through ten iterations to listen to and provide for community constituents by offering design expertise and vision. The program has worked with neighborhood revitalization projects, urban design groups, and city programs to improve the built environment via the maturing methods of public-interest design / live projects. Based in an ethical vision it frames public-interest design on three levels. 1. Self, aims at providing future professionals the opportunity to learn through striving to make a difference, engage communities by proposing possibilities about its physical, spatial, historical, and ecological future. 2. School, fulfills the responsibility of urban and regional Universities to foster local engagement, education, and benefit. 3. Community, seeks to expose future architects to community engagement on a professional, personal, and site-specific manner - that buildings and the landscape/context in which they are situated, are inextricably linked and must be understood socially, physically, and ecologically. Students learn to understand their role as future professionals not as experts but as participant/residents within communities. Secondarily, they learn how this revised role recast them as participant/resident/empathetic guide in the making of our shared, meaningful communal landscape. They share how the city/neighborhood/place might be better otherwise. The paper focuses on the methods of the LTCBP and its relation to public-interest design / live projects via consideration of ten iterations.
