hello my name is Stine Johansen and I'm happy to present our paper Characterizing
Soundscape Research in Human-Computer Interaction on behalf of my co-authors
Niels van Berkel and Jonas Fritsch and myself this research was prompted by
continuous personal experiences of working within the area of soundscape research noticing a common
trend of an unclear use of the term soundscape soundscape research fits into a broader area
of sound and sound design in HCI early steps within this area were taken by among others
Bill Gaver whose seminal paper on using auditory icons to convey information has been well cited
within the most recent decade the emergence of sonic interaction design as a particular
sub-discipline was prompted to investigate sound beyond merely signaling functions in interaction
sonic interaction design highlights the importance of designing for embodied and multimodal
experiences building on this participatory techniques have also been developed to aid
designers in using sound in novel ways in parallel to new technological possibilities sound driven
experiences research on soundscape in HCI has also expanded for example by hair sedal who investigate
the creation of personal soundscapes through different types of audio technologies however
the use of the term is still unclear soundscape research has a broad multi-disciplinary history
soundscape research today both within and beyond hci is heavily anchored in the world soundscape
project this project was established in 1960s by among others Schafer and Truax Schafer in
particular is often attributed for his definition of soundscape which draws on the features of
landscapes he also wrote on soundscapes as phenomenon of the mind created by music more
recently Schafer's definition has been criticized for being vague which leads to methodological
disagreements furthermore Kellmann has pointed out that the ideologies behind Schafer's work is
often overlooked by current research based on this brown at all have provided further precision of
the term by defining it as something which exists through human perception of acoustic environments
from their work an eso standard has now been published which emphasized the soundscape as
a perceptual construct despite this research effort to form a foundation for soundscape
research in a broad spectrum of domains this has not yet found its way to hci research in this
paper we argue for the necessity and relevance of relying on more common conceptualizations
therefore in our study we aim to investigate how soundscape is conceptualized in hci research
papers and what this is based on either through prior research or through definitions by the
authors we therefore included conferences that are either sponsored or co-sponsored by the ACM SIGCHI
23 conferences in total were included searching for the term soundscape resulted in 416 papers
we screened these papers for any that only use soundscape in relation to related work
or where the term only appeared in the name of a product for example microsoft's
soundscape this resulted in 235 papers which were analyzed in depth as can be seen in this graph
the number of papers using the term is steadily increasing highlighting the importance of
creating common ground further this table shows an overview of the collected data from each paper
we search for references to previous soundscape research and definitions whether or not authors
provided their own definition how they documented the soundscape if the soundscape
was modifiable through sensor input and which words were typically associated with soundscape
we also investigated what supplementary material authors shared in the following,
I will present our findings which relate to one the fact that very few rely on a definition
two that there are two main conceptualizations of soundscape three that soundscape is applied
to a wide spectrum of research four that few researchers document the acoustic environment
they are studying and five that few share supplementary materials to their study
first we found that most papers do not rely on either a definition from prior research nor on a
definition formulated by the authors themselves 15 papers refer to a definition from prior research
most of these refer to schaefer as we expected this leads to many different
applications of the term 16 papers offer their own definition of a soundscape or provide an
example these 31 papers can be broadly categorized into three ways of using the term
as a digital overlay to the physical world as an auditory or acoustic environment that is either
real or virtual and as a composition made of either a combination of natural and synthetic
sounds or a mix of natural sounds but what about the remaining papers where no definition was given
we analyzed all 235 papers to make clear how they used the term soundscape and based on this
we distinguish between two main categories papers that refer to a soundscape as an acoustic
environment and papers that refer to soundscape as a composition each main categories further
distinguish in three subcategories as can be seen in this table the first subcategory within
acoustic environments real world refers to a soundscape as a real acoustic environment
for the subcategory simulated with speakers a real acoustic environment has either been
recorded or composed with the purpose of simulating it in other settings
finally within the third subcategory for virtual reality applications the creation of soundscapes
is either done by mimicking the spatial properties of real environments or by playing isolated audio
sources from perceptually different directions for augmented reality applications digital layers of
sound are added to the existing acoustic environments the other main category is
compositions for the first subcategory musical iambian soundscapes consist of digitally created
sound either composed before users engage with it or composed by users as part of a study the second
subcategory mix of real world recordings includes 27 papers where soundscape is perceived as a mix
or composition of real world recordings the final subcategory mix of real world and digital sounds
includes papers where soundscape is perceived as a mix of real world recordings and digitally
generated sound our cohort analysis shows that the most common biograms are ambient soundscape the
mystic soundscape and nature soundscape the list of all diagrams aligns with our previous findings
that the term is applied in a broad sense ambient soundscape is used both to refer to an acoustic
environment for example for mixed reality systems where the audio is used for navigation
and as a composition for example to provide background for a primary activity
when designing soundscapes it's argued by schaefer that designers should engage with
real-world acoustic environments in which the intervention will take place we found 19 papers
in which methods for documenting an existing acoustic environment were utilized this mostly
involved audio recordings three papers included asking participants to observe their environment
to later reflect on it when looking at the papers chronologically we found that audio recordings are
the most utilized tools in recent papers whereas earlier work mostly includes methods such as sound
walks and interviews due to the audio focused nature of soundscape research supplementary
material that goes beyond the textual description of the audio material is often highly helpful
we found that 62 papers include a video in which study soundscape is presented these videos are
most often included as supplementary material but they also share those links to youtube vimeo
and other platforms we propose that researchers investigating or designing soundscapes include a
position on soundscape theory we summarize the key aspects of each conceptualization in this table
within the conceptualization of soundscape as an acoustic environment soundscapes are perceived as
perceptual constructs that emerge when a listener hear sounds from a physical environment it's not
merely the physical act of hearing itself but rather the experience of all sounds in combination
with each other a key phenomenon is embodiment as is also essential for sonic interaction design
within the conceptualization of soundscapes as compositions soundscapes are viewed as a
collection of sounds that are organized in an intentional way and played to listeners
the end goal is an auditory experience which either supports a primary activity
or is the primary activity itself based on our review of the literature we identify a number
of gaps on best practices in prior and current research first making the definition on which
the work is grounded explicit to the reader will help position the intended contribution
second reporting the characteristics of the environment established as a common foundation
for researchers and designers which can be further utilized in investigating listeners experiences
third engaging participants in recalling memories of sounds can be highly beneficial approach to
designing richer interactions with sound fourth we urge researchers to include audio or video
material with their submission to illuminate the textual descriptions of the soundscape
fifth we argue for more public sharing of research results with this i would like to
say thank you for watching this presentation and please reach out for any questions or discussion