Breathe
By Jimena de Gortari
"The way to improve the global soundscape is simple ... We have to learn to listen" (Schafer, M. 2006).
The International Day of Listening was celebrated on July 18 and seeks to promote awareness of the importance of listening and the effects that noise has on our lives. In this space we have mentioned how this pollutant is a public health problem and how little is done to counteract it. This celebration was proposed by Canadian composer, writer, educator and acoustic ecologist Murray Schafer.
Acoustic ecology is the discipline that studies the relationship of sound between living beings and their environment, and began in the 1960s at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. It formulated a new way of understanding sound environments by coining the term soundscape- soundscape, paysage sonore - which refers to the totality of sounds that make up a specific environment, both natural and human, and how the population perceives them. This concept has had a profound impact on various disciplines, including music, architecture, environmental psychology and cultural studies.
