“The spaces of sight and sound” – Containment, feedback, and contingency in R. Murray Schafer´s acoustic ecology

In the 1970s, the World Soundscape Project (WSP) around the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer popularised the term “acoustic ecology” to examine specific interrelations of sound, space, perception, and technology. What was implied when Schafer and his colleagues referred to their project as “ecology”? Where is the historic project of acoustic ecology located epistemologically with regard to other theories of art, media, and ecology? It is my contention that the WSP´s work with cybernetic concepts in their media practices offers answers to these questions. Focusing on Schafer´s reception of Marshall McLuhan´s concept of “acoustic space”, this article examines Schafer´s practices through the lens of two media theories: thinking through questions of containment and care the paper analyses how Schafer conceptualises modes of adaptation between hearing and the surrounding world. Schafer´s exercises for modulating perception via “Ear Cleaning” are explored as specific strategies to manage contingency–treating the relationship of environment and perception as something that can and should be changed. With a focus on Schafer´s seemingly contradictory perspective on tape recordings demonstrated how his practices operationalise a technological openness that his theories both rely on and deny. For it is totality, not contingency that Schafer claims.