Taiwan Soundscape

Happy New Year!

I saw a news about the voice of Taipei Railway Station today. I am talking about the voice of the staff, Chu-Wei, who was in charge of the public announcement. Surprisingly, she had been doing this job for 22 years! I guess more or less you all have some impression of her voice, right? What I don't understand through all these years is that why she always pronunced the term 'zei-chia' (means 'taking a train' in Taiwanese) as 'zuei-chia'. It sounds very strange to me, Haha!

I wonder if you guys have recorded her voice? I have! If the number of people is high, perhaps we can release an album based on her voice! ^_^

The old website of Taiwan Soundscape can no longer be edited due to the technical problem of the website host Yam. It is therefore shifted to the current web address. What surprised me is that there are still many people leaving messages in this old website. Most of the messages are about protesting and complaining the noise pollution around their living environment. From the words they used, I can feel their anger and frustration about the aweful experiences. I fell very sorry for these victims.
Taiwan should establish a group, such as 'Taiwan Sound Quality Foundation', to work for and with the citizens to claim for justice of good quality of sonic environment! I sincerely hope that people do not get frustrated. Together, we can work it out!

p.s. As I mentioend before, in Britain, there is an organisation called Environmental Protection UK (formerly NSCA). It can be a very good example to look into.

BigBen.mp3

Until 2 days ago when I was recording Big Ben at 12am, I've been forgetting to share this report with you. Here I enclose the link and the sound I recorded!

Hope you are going to enjoy it!

ps. In order to have it available online, the sound is compressed and the quality is negotiated. Please accept my apologies.

The recording site: At the south bank opposite to the Parliament.

 

Mr Lin is a crocodile farmer. When it's the third day before little crocodiles are born, he would go to the egg room and talk to the eggy crocodile: 'nnnn'. The eggies would respond to him with 'nnnn'!

Lets have a think, what sound has been a part of your job? What sound can represent the (sonic) image of your professional? Yes, every job has its sounds!

At the 2-28 Memorial Museum, there is currently a special exhibition-- Taipei's air raid during the WW2. There are quite a few interesting artifects presented, including the fire-alarming bell, the gas mask and so on. The staff can also assist visitors to experience the 'horrific' atmosphere of air raid by operating a manual air-raid siren.

This is exactly the interesting thing about sound-- in different era and environment, people's recognition of sounds are different. Taking this air-raid siren as an example, people in the past time would be scared to death while people nowadays simply whisk the machine with curiosity!

I  wonder if there are sonic artifects exhibited in this show...

Mr Yang kindly reminds us that when listening to music with headphones, do not turn it too loudly. Otherwise, it might affect the sensibility of our body or even damage our eardrums!

For details, please visit this link. 

Here I would like to remind people something slightly relating to the subject... when listening to music with headphones, please do not sing aloud-- it does not sound nice as you think!

When I was 13 years old, I enjoyed doing it very much. Until one day, my dear brother came to my face and said to me: 'Sis, do you know that singing with the headphones on can cause very unpleasant sounds?'.... Since then, I have never done it again to make myself stupid! haha!

Noise makes people upset and anxious. Recently, a newspaper also mentioned about a survey that noise can cause troubles to those people whose hearts are not well.

I went to Notting Hill Carnival yesterday and experienced Caribbean party styled music-- big scaled speakers were overlapped to form a wall and the volume was turned to the maximum. The sound shook my body organs as the way the washing machine does my laundy... up and down, spin and spin and spin... It was sometimes quite scary to me as I could really feel my heart getting weak! Nevertheless, there were many people enjoying dancing in front of the speaker wall. They did not seem to be affected at all!

p.s. Thank Mr Yang for kindly providing the information about noise. 

A woman in our neighbourhood complained to my mum about the noises of frog singing. They caused her insomnia. However, I think that she talked to the wrong person, because my mum loves to listen to frog sounds since she was born in the countryside.

In today's Liberty Times, there is a report about people's views (1, 2) about frog croaking. Please have a look.

Also, there is an interesting website about frog sounds made in different languages-- here. 

Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration has finally generated a simple version of the noise map. Although it includes only 3 districts of Taipei, covering 25 square kms, there is a start. It is definitely a good news!

What interests me is that Taiwanese don't seem to appreciate this outcome. They consider that it cannot improve the surrounding noise pollution immediately. I personally think that the EPA should declair its planned usages when it announced the production of this map in order to gain people's understanding and support. For example, in order to improve Taiwan's noise environment, we need to consider the strategic approach instead of keeping ticketing whoever makes noises. To do so, the noise map is a very important guidance-- the governmental policy makers, architects, interior designers etc can all use it to plan cities, buildings and houses. For example, with a noisy road, they can consider expanding the area of trees, building noise barriers, making waterfalls or fountains or making the traffic go underground etc.

Many people in Taiwan have taken the installation of air tight windows for certain. It is a frustrating phenomenon. People are used to give up their right of listening to non-pressure natural sounds. They either close windows or play music. People, please wake up your ears! Have you heard birds chirping today? Were you waken up by the alarm clocks again rather than the birds? Have you heard cicadas of this summer ni-niing yet? Do you know they have come out of the earth?

Hopefully people have the awareness of the sonic-environmental protection. Please don't give up your right of listening to good sounds!

In the past, I introduced London's noise map in the blog of Taiwanese Soundscape. I also mentioned the connections between sound design and city planning. If you want to know more about these two aspects, please visit the archive of this blog.

According to the news of ETtoday, because of Taiwan Railway's failaure of the bid, the vendor of the Fu-Long Lunch Box will no longer do his business at the platform of Fu-Long Train Station.

Won't be able to do his business? That's right. It will be a big problem!

Because the cry of 'Ben-Dong'-- the sonic hallucination that commuters enjoy before arriving the station, the sound that makes passengers' bellies hum-- is going to dissappear soon! This cry is so affective to Taiwanese life!

Is anyone going to visit Fu-Long soon? Could you record this sound? Preserving sounds that carry the value of Taiwan is everyone's responsibility!