The sound of culture: Exploring acoustical features of sounds perceived in free-choice learning environments

The Sound Travels research team will share a recording that exemplifies affective associations made with specific sounds by visitors to free-choice learning environments (a science museum, a park, a zoo, and a botanical garden). This recording reflects direct collaboration with visitors and demonstrates the variation in how people make sense of sound, both in identifying its sources and in describing its effects on their emotional and cognitive states. Our US-based, federally funded project explores the impacts of ambient and designed sound on STEM learning and leisure experiences. Beyond addressing our research questions, we embrace the larger goals of seeking meaningful input from professionals in and visitors to these spaces and directly informing educational design practice. Our methods include multiple stationary ambient recordings within spaces of interest, a post-experience visitor questionnaire, and a “sound search” instrument in which visitors record video clips during their experience to represent sounds that make them feel curious, energized, uneasy, and peaceful. Together, the resulting data reveal not only how visitors are affected by sound but also how visitors experience and notice sound in context, and in what ways a person’s embodied and culturally informed associations with sound relate to their experiences of learning and leisure.