Here is my brief report from Megalópolis Sonoras: Sonidos en peligro de extinción (Sound Megalopolis: Cultural Indentity and Sounds in danger of extinction) conference organized by the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) and the recently founded Mexican Forum for Acoustic Ecology. The conference began on March 23rd at the gorgeous Fonoteca Nacional in the beautiful Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, and concludes on March 27th.

On Monday morning the national media were massed for the conference’s inaugural ceremony. Here is a slide show from the proceedings at the Fonoteca: www.fonotecanacional.gob.mx/flashgallery/flashgallery.html

Following the inaugural ceremony, Hildegard Westerkamp led a large group of us on a sound walk through the huge park nearby, the Viveros de Coyoacán.

My Flickr site includes photos taken at the Fonoteca Nacional and the INSIDEOUT sound installation show at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, with Simo Alitalo, Dr. Nigel Helyer, and Jesse Seay.

At the conference Derrick de Kerckhove gave the keynote on Monday morning. On Tuesday Barry Blesser gave his keynote, and R. Murray Schafer gave his keynote this morning. Sabine Breitsameter will be the keynote speaker this Thursday morning.

The numerous talks and diverse perspectives of the speakers are too numerous for me to describe in a few words and still hope to convey a sense of the breath and depth of the ideas and information. I’ll mention a few here.

Andrea Polli spoke on her recent sonification work in Antarctica. Luz Maria Sanchez spoke on sound maps, Carla Teixeira spoke of fences in Australia (reference to Hollis Taylor’s and Jon Rose’s “Great Fences of Australia Project”, Constantinos Stratoudakis discussed his research in reconstructing soundscapes in virtual space based on the data mapping of actual soundscapes. Andreas Mniestris spoke on similar effort in Greece, on the island of Corfu. Andreas also informed us of the surprisigly large amount of activity in the field of acoustic ecology  (61 members in their local WFAE chapter, the Hellenic Society for Acoustic Ecology).

You can read all the abstracts online of the above presentation and more in English at http://ponencias.pizzadeveloper.com/?cat=18  and in Spanish http://ponencias.pizzadeveloper.com/index.php?cat=18

As a new board member of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology I have been meeting with fellow board members to make plans for the future of the WFAE. This is a rare opportunity to meet face to face with the individuals from the international affiliates of the WFAE. [Currently, there are nine affiliates. The chair of the WFAE, Nigel Frayne published a report on the history and outlook of the WFAE in the Fall/Winter 2007 of the Soundscape Journal. This and other back issues can be freely downloaded at http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/WFAE/journal/]

An interesting factoid: Lidia Comancho, Director General of the Fonoteca Nacional, informed us that the Fonteca is at the former home of the famous Mexican poet Octavio Paz (1914-1998). Coyoacán is also where Leon Trotsky lived and died in exile, and where his friends, the modernist painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived.

Listen to an audio clip from Mexico City:

Tags: acoustic ecology, conference, Coyoacán, Fonoteca Nacional, Megalópolis sonoras, Mexico, photos, soundscape, WFAE

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