Soundscape Sensibility

Abstract

This thesis mainly describes the research, design and evaluation of an activity for improving soundscape beginners' sound awareness -- Sound Detective.

For new students who are just beginning to learn about soundscape, or researchers who have just entered this field, in addition to mastering basic soundscape knowledge, it is equally important to improve their sound awareness. Sound Awareness, to be specific, is Listening to sound (hearing sounds in the soundscape), Experiencing sound (knowing what feelings the soundscape will cause and how to describe it), Understanding sound (knowing the characteristics of sounds and how we use/react to different sounds), and finally Organize sound (adjusting the sound for a better experience).

However, the current learning methods have limitations. To be specific, the limitations are lack of practice (lectures), lack of flexibility (workshop), lack of guidance (research studying), and heavy use of teaching resources (workshop). It is worth mentioning that Sound Walk, as a very pioneering soundscape learning activity, can indeed enhance sound awareness, but it is limited to the first part "listening to sounds" and ignores other parts.

Thus, Sound Detective, which is the main outcome of this thesis, is designed to act as a supplement and improvement that focusing on training beginners' awareness of sound during their studies of soundscape, in combination with other learning methods.

The thesis starts with a survey of soundscape, serious gaming, and existing soundscape-related activities and educational methods, interviews experts in the field of soundscape, and proposes three different activity designs. Following this, the paper conducted a selection of concepts based on the given benchmark and performed multiple optimizations, resulting in the final output. An evaluation of this output was then carried out. The conclusion of the paper provides a summary, discusses the limitations, and offers suggestions for future work.