The music we choose to listen to not only allows us to retreat into a place of peace and privacy, but also helps frame our daily routines and interactions with others.
A good scream can stop us in our tracks.
Paramount Pictures
The sounds our ancestors made are important because they teach us about spaces and behaviour and rituals of the time.
One of the Klasies River spinning discs and the replica built for the recording studio.
Kumbani et al (2019), Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Working with bone artefacts from archaeological sites in South Africa's southern Cape region, we've been able to show that some implements might have been used for sound production in the past.
Do you think you could make an echo at Echo Point in Katoomba?
Flickr/Amanda Slater
When a sound is made, it spreads. And when it hits a hard surface that is far away, it bounces back and comes back to where the sound was made. That's what we call an echo.
The village bell was once a powerful symbol of sonic identity. Living in the noise of today’s global cities, what sounds exist that express our communal identity?
Eric Fidler/flickr
Sound, as a still relatively unexplored medium of urban design, provides an obvious starting point in the search for new relationships and identities in the contemporary city.
Noise transformation and community-led design projects are reclaiming unwanted spaces that lay adjacent to motorways.
rogiro/flickr
Communities have an increasing desire to be informed and included in local art, design and infrastructure projects. This has inspired new ways of dealing with noise-afflicted areas.
When they hear the music, some people want to dance. Other shoppers want to flee.
Justin/flickr
Unlike vision or touch, sound is much more difficult to control or avoid; music in particular spills across thresholds and intrudes into situations where it is unwelcome.
From Long Range Acoustic Devices used to disperse protesters to ear-splitting military drones to songs blasted on rotation to prisoners, ours is an age in which sound has been repositioned as a tool of terror.
It’s possible to create sound in a part of a room that only you can hear, but others elsewhere cannot.
Shutterstock/Syda Productions
Your own choice of music in a restaurant, your preferred language in a cinema, and a personal tour in a museum. All are possible if you can control the sound in almost any place.
A guard of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan outside Fatih mosque.
REUTERS/Murad Sezer
Unexpected calls to prayer from mosques in Turkey caught many off guard on the night of the attempted coup. An ethnomusicologist explains the political and social power of sound.
The author began hearing the sound at night, between the hours of 10 and 11 p.m.
'Street' via www.shutterstock.com
Shortly after Glen MacPherson started hearing strange humming noises, he created the World Hum and Database Project so people around the world could document their own experiences with the Hum.
The electronic band STS9 is known for having intoxicating light shows accompany their live performances.
Shannon Tompkins/flickr
Patterns are simple sequences that repeat over and over again in a certain order. Supporting children's ability to recognize patterns can improve mathematical skills.