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If you would like to know more about Positive Soundscapes or to become involved please contact

Joanne Leach

Project Manager

University of Salford
Acoustics Research Centre
Newton Building
Salford
M5 4WT

T: 0161 295 2690
M: 07785 792 187
E: joanneleach@postmaster.co.uk

The Positive Soundscapes Team:

Dr Mags Adams, University of Salford
Dr Rebecca Cain, Warwick University
Dr Angus Carlyle, University of the Arts
Peter Cusack, University of the Arts
Dr Bill Davies, University of Salford
Dr Ken Hume, Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr Paul Jennings, Warwick University
Prof Chris Plack, Lancaster University

Mags Adams

Mags Adams is a Research Fellow in the Acoustics Research Centre at the University of Salford with five years post-doctoral research experience. She has previously worked on a large EPSRC project 'VivaCity 2020: designing urban sustainability into city centre living' and has produced several recent papers on soundscapes - including their perception, sustainability and planning. She organised a session at the RGS-IBG conference 2005 on 'Urban Sustainability: rethinking senses of place' and is currently guest editing a special issue of Senses and Society on 'Senses and the City'. She is particularly interested in theoretical interconnections between sustainability, urban form and individual practice as well as sensory experience. She has developed a participatory methodology incorporating photo surveys, soundwalks and semi-structured interviews to explore sensory experiences of urban spaces with a view to incorporating residents' perceptions of environmental quality in 24-hour cities into urban design decision making. She has worked successfully in multi-disciplinary teams on a number of projects and produced a number of key publications and presented at international conferences.

Neil Bruce

Neil Bruce is a PhD student and has been involved with audio, music and technology for the last 18 years, working in both the creative and technical sides of the industry. Neil graduated from Salford with a B.Eng (Hons) in Electroacoustics and then worked as a recording engineer with Manor mobile studios. Neil spent the 1990's and early 2000's working in the IT industry, initially as a software engineer and then as a project manager. He then formed his own company delivering professional audio, media and IT consultancy services. During this time he returned to education, initially studying music and social science at the Open University and then an MSc in Multimedia Signal Processing from the University of Surrey. At Surrey, Neil specialised in psychoacoustics and spatial audio, in particular multichannel encoding and perception. Prior to returning to Salford to work on the Positive Soundscapes Project, he completed a Diploma in Media Composition from the Film Institute in Los Angeles, this led to work as a sound designer/composer on a number of independent films, which so far have be shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 and The Salento International Film Festival. Neil is currently on the board of the UK and Ireland Soundscape committee (UKISC) and is an avid phonographer with a large collection of binaural recordings captured all around the world. Neil's academic interest is in soundscape competence, sound design and how culture, media and experience influence perceptions of the sound environment.

Rebecca Cain

Rebecca Cain is a Senior Research Fellow at Warwick University and is part of the WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) Technology and Information Group. She joined WMG in Jan 2005 as a Project Engineer working on the Intelligent HMI (Human Machine Interfaces) Project. Her main research interests are customer involvement in product development, participatory design / co-design / user-design, product representations, and ergonomics.

Angus Carlisle

Angus Carlyle is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts. His research interests focus on the intersection between technology, culture and creativity, with a specific emphasis on sound. He has published nine chapters in a variety of books, more than 30 articles in journals and has delivered in excess of 20 conference papers and invited public lectures. His practice-based research in the field of sound art has been exhibited on Resonance FM and on Radio Taxi, at the Architects' Association, the Contemporary Art Museum, Strasbourg, the DCA Gallery, Tucson, Arizona, the CCCA in Barcelona, the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) gallery, the LePlacard International Festival and the Port Elliot Literary Festival. He is Co-Director of Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP), an initiative dedicated to the exploration of sound in artistic contexts. CRiSAP facilities include a wide range of high-end microphones and recording equipment, a professional recording environment and a variety of multi-channel diffusion systems with a large (72m2) sound-proofed installation space.

Peter Cusack

Peter Cusack - (guitar, bouzouki, live electronics) - is a sound artist/musician and environmental recordist with a special interest in acoustic ecology. Project activities range from song writing, through improvised music, to research on how sound contributes to our sense of place and recording projects that document areas of special sonic interest - most recently Lake Baikal, Siberia; the Azerbaijan oil fields; Xinjiang Province, China. In 1998 he initiated the 'Your Favourite London Sound' project, which aims to find out what Londoners find positive in their city's soundscape. Currently involved in 'Sound & the City' the British Council sound art project in Beijing, 2005/6. Active in improvised and electro-acoustic musics he has played 100s of concerts at home and abroad. He is a Senior Lecturer in 'Sound Arts & Design' at the London College of Communication and gives 'field recording' workshops worldwide, including at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (summer 2004). With Swiss video artist Ursula Biemann and students from the Architectural University in Baku, Azerbaijan, has just finished "Baku: In 5 Quarters" - an examination of different planning aesthetics in Baku in the context of it's oil history, including their effect on the local soundscape. Peter is also a member of Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP).

Bill Davies

Bill Davies conducts research in room acoustics, particularly its perceptual aspects. Starting in auditorium acoustics, he has broadened his interests to include perception and control of several kinds of complex sound fields both in rooms and outdoors. He has previously supervised research using qualitative social science methods, laboratory psychoacoustic methods and novel sound reproduction systems, all of direct relevance to the proposed project. Bill Davies has published about 25 papers in acoustics. As the head of the Acoustics, Audio and Video group at Salford (29 full-time staff), he is used to trying to get a group of academics to produce the right output at the right time. The acoustics group at Salford owns world-class acoustic labs, recently rebuilt for £2.5M. These include an anechoic chamber, two semi-anechoics, a listening room, four recording studios and extensive systems for field recording and measurement.

Ken Hume

Ken Hume is Head of the Division of Health Science and is a member of the Noise Research Group in CATE (Centre for Air Transport and the Environment) at Manchester Metropolitan University. CATE's main activities are research into global and local air quality and noise disturbance issues as a consequence of aviation. His research career has involved: Auditory evoked brain potential responses to meaningful and meaningless stimuli. The interaction of sleep stage patterns and circadian rhythms in humans eg shift work. The disturbance of sleep patterns by aircraft noise and other factors (eg. alcohol, sleep apnoea). Tinnitus, and the interaction of loud music and social drugs in young adults. More recently his research has focused on the health impacts of noise through sleep disturbance and community response (both physiological and attitudinal) to aircraft noise around airports which has involved complaint analysis. Hume has published over 100 papers/reports and works on a number of national, European and international committees/groups/research projects concerned with noise disturbance and is the current chair of ICBEN (International Committee for the Biological Effects of Noise, Group 5 - Sleep disturbance) and has been the Hon Sec of the British Sleep Society.

Paul Jennings

Paul Jennings of WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) is the leader of their Technology and Information Group, a research team comprising 10 full-time researchers and 7 doctorate students. Their primary research interests are product perception, in particular sound quality, and hybrid vehicles. He is a founder member of WMG's research committee and for ten years has served on WMG's Engineering Doctorate Executive which has responsibility for all WMG's research degrees. In the past 9 years he has been Principal Investigator for 11 projects which have had associated grants with a total value of £3.2 million. These grants have been from EPSRC, the Department for Transport and Advantage West Midlands, and have all involved industrial collaborators, primarily from the automotive industry. Four of these projects have developed new tools and techniques for predicting noise levels and character. He has published over 50 papers at national and international level, of which 15 have been related to noise-related research. Facilities available for this project include a state-of-the-art Listening Room which includes professional data capture equipment and software.

Chris Plack

Chris Plack is a psychoacoustician and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. His research interests include: cochlear processing, loudness perception, pitch perception, and auditory temporal resolution. He has a particular interest in the underlying causes of sensorineural hearing loss (the most common type of hearing impairment). Over the course of his career he has developed the "temporal window" computational model of temporal resolution and intensity coding, which now includes a realistic cochlear simulation, based on psychophysical measures. Chris Plack has published 37 articles in international journals, and has received £1.2m in research council and charity funding as PI. He is head of the newly formed Sensory Neuroscience Unit at Lancaster University, which will shortly house three double-walled sound-attenuating booths, state-of-the-art evoked potential and multi-electrode cortical EEG systems, TMS equipment, and an fMRI analysis suite.

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