Mapping Sound

SPRING 2018 RESEARCH INCUBATION AWARDEES

Pl: Joanna Davidson, Anthropology, CAS
Co-Pl: Marie Abe, Ethnomusicology, CFA

Despite the importance of what people say and hear towards understanding complex variations in human perception, experience, narratives, and signifying practices, as of today, there is not a publicly available digital tool to explore and visualize auditory patterns across space and time. The project aims to provide ethnographers with an open-source digital mapping platform by which to store, organize, and analyze the spatial and temporal relationships among sounds. It will additionally yield a rich dataset that could be valuable in the disciplines of anthropology, ethnomusicology, and beyond. This platform and data will not only assist ethnographers at Boston University and other research institutions to investigate soundscapes with more rigor and sophistication, but will also raise awareness more generally about how the locations and temporalities of sound affect people’s perceptions, experiences, and understandings in and of the world.

This work is funded by a Research Incubation Award made in January, 2018.