Hildegard Westerkamp—composer, broadcaster, and sound ecologist—was a researcher with the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University in the 1970s, and taught courses in acoustic communication there during the 1980s. She was a founding member of Vancouver Co-operative Radio and has given soundscape workshops internationally since the beginning of the 1990s. Westerkamp employs the microphone like a third ear: to sensitize us to our immediate sonic environments and to better understand our own ways of listening—and thus our relationship to the world in and around us. In an early example she connected the soundscape with radio in her programme Soundwalking, broadcasting narrated recordings she had made in and around Vancouver.
Westerkamp was a co-organizer of The Tuning of the World, an international conference held in Banff Alberta to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the World Soundscape Project, and she was a founding board member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), an organization which came into being during that conference. She is a co-editor of
Soundscape—The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, a biannual publication of the WFAE.
Some articles that have appeared in Musicworks include:
“Inside the Soundscape: the Compositions of Hildegard Westerkamp.” Donna Zapf. Musicworks 15.
“Soundwalk in the Park with Hildegard Westerkamp.” Andra McCartney. Musicwork 72.
“Conversations with Nature: Hildegard Westerkamp’s Soundsacpe Composition Talking Rain.” Sylvi MacCormack. Musicworks 74.
Westerkamp’s article, “Composing with Environmental Sound” (Musicworks 26) discusses the evocation of the essence of a place through the use of environmental sounds which she employs to focus audience awareness on the emotional effects of sounds.
She has also written:
“New Year's Eve, Vancouver.” Musicwork 29.
“Acoustic Ecology and the Zone of Silence.” Musicwork 31.
“A Child's Ritual.” Musicwork 35.
Weblinks:
Westerkamp’s website offers more detailed information about her various activities in the areas of soundscape composition, acoustic ecology and soundscape studies:
www.sfu.ca/~westerka
An extensive exploration into her compositional work can be found in Andra McCartney’s Sounding Places: Situated Conversations through the Soundscape Work of Hildegard Westerkamp York University, Toronto, 1999, and in the internet
at
www.emf.org/artists/mccartney00/text.html
The World Forum for Acostic Ecology and its Journal can be found
at www.wfae.net
