soundscape

Schizophonia or Schizophonic


(Greek: schizo = split; phone = voice, sound) The term was first employed by R.M. Schafer in The New Soundscape (Toronto, 1969, pp. 43-47) to refer to the split between an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction in a soundscape.

Original sounds are tied to the mechanisms which produce them. Electroacoustic sounds are copies and they may be reproduced at other times or places. Schafer employs this 'nervous' word in order to dramatize the aberrational effect of this twentieth century development.

See: Moozak, Lo-Fi, Sound Intrusion, Sound Pollution, Tape Recorder. Compare: Fidelity, Sound Phobia, Soundscape Design.

Recording of Gordon MacRae played from the bell tower of a church in Hanley, Saskatchewan.


Amplified voice at a fast food restaurant in Halifax, N.S.


Amplified voice from a mobile public address system.


Amplified voices at the Atlantic Winter Fair, Halifax, N.S.


Background music at a shopping mall.