Plenary Sessions
We are very pleased to announce that plenary lectures will be presented by:
Prof. Stan Dosso, University of Victoria
Prof. Barry Truax, Simon Fraser University;
Prof. John Esling, University of Victoria.
"Studying the Sea With Sound"
Stan Dosso, University of Victoria
Because sound propagates efficiently in the ocean while electromagnetic radiation is strongly attenuated, acoustics are used underwater for many applications where light, radio and microwaves are used in the atmosphere (e.g., remote sensing, remote control, communications). This talk gives a brief historic overview of underwater acoustics, then focuses on new acoustic methods for studying the seabed and localizing sound sources in the ocean.
Stan Dosso is a Professor in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, where his research focuses on the development and application of inversion methods in geophysics, particularly in seabed geoacoustics. He is a long-time CAA member, and has served on the Board of Directors and as President and Past President, as well as Chairing the 1999 CAA Conference in Victoria. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, and received the 2004 Medwin Prize in Acoustical Oceanography from the ASA and the 2006 Science Teaching Award from the University of Victoria.
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"The Origins of Constricted Voice Quality: The First Sounds of Speech"
John H. Esling, U. Victoria
Many languages of the world exhibit features that can be classified in terms of ‘laryngeal quality’ – a subset of ‘voice quality’. The acoustic cues of these features illustrate an extensive range of use of the pharyngeal resonator and the laryngeal constrictor mechanism (controlling changes from the glottis through the aryepiglottic folds). The pharyngeal/laryngeal articulator has also been identified as the principal articulator that infants first start to control as they test and practice their phonetic production skills from birth through the first several months of life. Elements of the fine control of laryngeal constriction have been observed laryngoscopically in over 20 languages and modelled to illustrate the parameters of movement available in the pharyngeal articulator. The auditory/acoustic cues generated in the pharynx are the same elements of sound production observed in newborn infants from a range of language environments. The infant vocalization data illustrate that laryngeal quality is primal, that the control of the acoustic cues of speech originate in the pharynx, and that the acquisition of the ability to produce manners of articulation spreads from the pharynx in a process that parallels and complements the ability of infants to discriminate speech sound categories auditorily/perceptually.
John H. Esling is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Victoria, former Secretary of the International Phonetic Association (1995-2003), member of the IPA Council and of the Permanent Council for the Organization of International Congresses of Phonetic Science, and currently Editor of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. He has a PhD in Phonetics from the University of Edinburgh, where he studied with David Abercrombie, John Laver, and James (Tony) Anthony, and taught at the University of Leeds before moving to the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, in 1981. His research is in auditory and articulatory phonetics, particularly the categorization of voice quality, of vocal register, and of the phonetic production of laryngeal and pharyngeal sounds. He is director of the Phonetics Laboratory in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Victoria, and of two research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: the Laryngoscopic Phonetic Research Project, to investigate speech articulation in the throat, and the Infant Speech Acquisition Project, an international collaboration based in Victoria with research teams in Canada, France, Morocco and China, to establish how infants first acquire the modality of phonetic production. He is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and chapters and of numerous conference presentations, the compiler of the University of Victoria Phonetic Database, the Section Editor for Phonetics of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (Elsevier 2006), and an editor of the Handbook of the IPA (CUP 1999).
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"From Micro to Macro: Composing Microsound and Soundscapes"
Barry Truax, Simon Fraser University
Barry Truax will discuss his work that integrates inner sonic complexity in
the domain of microsound with outer sonic complexity in the domain of
multi-channel soundscapes and acoustic ecology.
Barry Truax is a Professor in both the School of Communication and the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University where he teaches courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic music. He has worked with the World Soundscape Project, editing its Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, and has published a book Acoustic Communication dealing with all aspects of sound and technology. As a composer, Truax is best known for his work with the PODX computer music system which he has used for tape solo works and those which combine tape with live performers or computer graphics. A selection of these pieces may be heard on the Compact Discs Digital Soundscapes, Pacific Rim, Song of Songs, Inside, Twin Souls, Islands, and Spirit Journies, all on the Cambridge Street Records label, plus the double CD of the opera Powers of Two. In 1991 his work, Riverrun, was awarded the Magisterium at the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France, a category open only to electroacoustic composers of 20 or more years experience.
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