Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

This work focuses on the recording and analysis of the Greek island Naxos soundscapes and presents an interactive application enabling their auditory exploration, using binaural listening. Over the last 20 years, soundscape research, being an important area in the field of Acoustic Ecology, has shifted its focus from noise abatement to a holistic study of the relationship between humans and their acoustic environment, forcing the International Organization for Standardization (2014) to define Soundscape as the “acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context” (ISO 12913-1). Today, soundscapes are increasingly associated with mental health, well-being, and quality of life (Kang, 2021). 

After several decades of development and reconstruction, Naxos has become one of the most popular destinations in Greece. As a result, tourism infrastructure has altered the natural landscape in several locations, raising concerns regarding the deterioration of the original soundscape and the high noise levels. Within this framework, the present study aims to answer the following research question: How and to what extent does the touristic activity affect Naxos soundscapes? In more detail, through a systematic recording, classification, and analysis of the Naxos acoustic environment,  this study aims to preserve historically the current soundscape of the Island, while providing an immersive listening experience of Naxos soundscapes by the means of an interactive application within the Max/MSP programming environment. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of tourism on the soundscape of the island, while bringing awareness concerning the environmental issues that emerge.

Naxos showcases a rich tapestry of sound, influenced by its diverse geomorphology, climate, domestic life, tourism facilities, and agricultural activities. For a thorough depiction of the island's soundscape diversity, 84 distinct locations were chosen for sound recording. These locations were carefully selected to cover the entire island and encompass different settings like small and large villages, beaches, popular tourist destinations, archaeological sites, and infrastructure projects. The soundscape of these locations has been captured using the 1st Order Ambisonics recording technique along with measurements of sound pressure levels.  The recordings utilized a Zoom H3-VR field recorder adjusted to the highest possible sample frequency (96 kHz) and bit depth (24 bit). To document the Sound Pressure Level (SPL), the INGCO HETSL01 digital sound level meter was employed, which facilitated the recording of average, maximum, and minimum sound levels for each session. A Zoom WSU-1 hairy windscreen and a customized sunproof setup were employed to mitigate wind noise during recordings and high temperatures respectively. The duration of the recordings ranged from 5 to 20 minutes and were realized from July 7th until August 21st, 2023, between 12:00 pm and 6:30 pm. Furthermore, each recording session was complemented by a photograph of the surrounding landscape and the precise coordinates provided by a GPS geo-tracking device.

All 84 recorded soundscapes were carefully inspected and their content manually labeled.  The identified sound sources were classified in 4 top-level groups: human, nature, mechanical and music, applying the taxonomy of Salamon, et al., (2014). Analysis methods include word clouds depicting sound sources per group based on their frequency of occurrences, percentage graphs showing the distribution of sound sources on the island, and bar charts of the average sound pressure levels per sound source. Sound source classification revealed that the mechanical group encompasses the largest number of unique sound sources. On the other hand, percentage analysis showed that the nature group displays the highest frequency of occurrences in the recordings. However, in the total distribution of the 4 sound-source groups, nature sounds are limited to 47% of the captured content, a fact which reveals that the sound sources from the 3 other groups combined, all deriving from human activity, are prevailing upon the soundscape of Naxos. 

The entire collection of recordings is accessible via an engaging interactive application that allows users to explore a map of Naxos and experience any of the 84 recorded locations. The auditory content is presented in binaural format, capturing the spatial essence of the soundscape and offering an immersive auditory experience.

The conclusions derived from this study are highlighting important issues that deserve to be investigated in the future, raising awareness to the island’s community, and motivating the local authorities to act accordingly. Furthermore, this work provides an interactive application that allows for the digital exploration of a location's soundscapes using 3D audio technologies, designed to enable the replication of the spatial characteristics of the soundscape, providing an enriched auditory experience that mirrors the original sound directionality.

Kang, J. (2021, August). Soundscape: Progress in the past 50 years and challenges in the next 50 years. In INTER-NOISE and NOISE-CON Congress and Conference Proceedings (Vol. 263, No. 6, pp. 132-139). Institute of Noise Control Engineering.

Salamon, J., Jacoby, C., & Bello, J. P. (2014). A dataset and taxonomy for urban sound research. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM international conference on Multimedia (pp. 1041-1044).