Listen

Once long past, listening gave clues for survival. Now we listen unconsciously, blocking noise and tuning in to what we want to hear. Yet the unwanted sounds we filter out tell us a lot about our environment and our lives. Broadcaster Teresa Goff listens for the messages in our walls of sound.

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As civilization has become more mechanized, more urbanized and more digitized, the amount of noise has increased in tandem. This noise, according to, author of, "is a window for understanding some of the paradoxes and contradictions of being human." If you take the sum total of all sounds within any area, what you have is an intimate reflection of the social, technological, and natural conditions of that place., a founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, says that "Environmental sound is like a spoken word with each sound or soundscape having its own meanings and expressions." So when you listen to the noise, what does it have to tell you? "Noise is a pit of interpretation," says noise musician. Broadcastergoes into the pit with her documentary,, Duke University Press 2012., PublicAffairs 2010., MIT Press 2008., The MIT Press 2004., University Of Minnesota Press; 1st edition (June 30, 1985)., MIT Press 2011., Random House Inc (T); First Canadian Edition edition (June 1977)., Duke University Press 2006, MIT Press 1999, MIT Press 2010 The Taste of Sound , article in SALON. The 'War on Noise': Sound and Space in La Guardia's New York , in Sound Clash: Listening to American Studies, ed. Kara Keeling and Josh Kun (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 289-316.