Soundscape, cultural landscape and connectivity

Abstract

“Soundscape” is an environment of sound or sonic environment that focuses on the way a sound is perceived and understood by the individual or a society. With the special and temporal qualities of the sound, the concept presents a holistic way of knowing a place, and an attention to a sound distinct to a certain place, especially those distinct to certain human-nature interaction, allows new ways of sensing a place and connectivity (or lack of). Taking soundscape as a conceptual framework and incorporating concepts of cultural landscape and intangible cultural heritage, this chapter explores the role of sound in defining and articulating human-nature connectivity through a sound symbolic to a traditional Japanese divers’ culture. It is a phenomenological enquiry into a sustainable human-nature relationship where intangibility of human-nature relationship human is recognized in a sound.