Soundscape
The Soundscape Project is an attempt to record ambient sounds in and around the Virginia Tech campus. Over time, this developing sonic database will provide a geographically searchable multisensory experience. It offers cultural historians as well as contemporary visitors a temporal archive of the sounds that make up the aural experience of this landscape, along with digital photos taken at the time of the recording.
Initial development, was completed by the VT Geography 5984 Web Mapping class taught by Peter Sforza in the spring semester of 2011. The student team consisted of Wade Dickinson, Maria Garcia, Scott Lail, and Mike Palowitch. Together, they assembled digital recordings and published them using AudioBoo, along with a Google Earth .kmz file (159 MB) to view their locations. Recordings were made using Samson Zoom H2 and H4 portable audio recorders and a Redhead “dead cat” wind sock to mitigate wind noise. Audacity was used to convert the recordings from their native .wav format to .mp3 for web hosting.