Credit: Aggelos Tsaligopoulos
The world is crammed with myriad sounds which might overwhelm an individual with relentless acoustics. Noise is so prevalent in daily-life that the concept and achievement of comfortable quiet is tough to define.
During the 180th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which held virtually on June 8-10, Aggelos Tsaligopoulos, from the University of the Aegean, will describe how quiet might be measured within the hopes of higher understanding its impact on people. The session, “Towards a latest understanding of the concept of quietness,” will happen Wednesday, June 9, at 11:20 a.m. Eastern U.S.
Tsaligopoulos said there’s a dualism between noise & quiet, meaning quietness thus far is viewed as a contradiction and because the lack of something, albeit that something is noise. Quietness within the urban context is quite the absence of noise — it’s checking out wanted noise in-order to avoid the unwanted.
“The context & therefore the environment surrounding the listener changes dramatically the way we understand quietness, highlighting the phenomenology in acoustic perception,” Tsaligopoulos said. “So, what if we attempt to break the association between noise & quietness? What if we attempt to assign to the term quietness quantifiable characteristics which might be subject to measurements?”
The Composite Urban Quietness Index is an attempt at quietness quantification based on the amount of acoustic complexity in a neighborhood . The goal is to offer a new and latest meaning to quietness in terms of sound complexity & provide for a reduc-tion in noise intensity.
Tsaligopoulos points out stress are often caused by high-intensity sound but also by silent acoustic environments. He said there might be a “sweet spot” of quietness that reduces the strain without creating it because it’s too quiet, but he believes this is often like mediocracy.
“It is time to seem beyond our phenomenological short-term pleasure & realize that well-being may be a long-term multidisciplinary effort that we’d like to plan ahead, keeping in mind ecological sustainability environmental equity and maybe biocultural diversity.”
Stella Kyvelou, from Panteion University of Social & Political Sciences; Nefta Votsi, from National Observatory of Athens; Aimilia Karapostoli, from Democritus University of Thrace; and Chris Economou & Yiannis Matsinos, from University of the Aegean, contributed to this research.
