Class creates online ’soundscape’ of Cornell

Alyssa Kirsch, left, Jonathan Karseh and Leah DeWitt, all students in a "Sound, Silence and the Sacred" class visit the Laboratory of Ornithology to tour the Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds. From the locomotive-like roar of Clubfest to the calm stillness of a midnight walk across the suspension bridge, a class of students has created a blog offering an audio tour of Cornell sounds. Members of Professor Kim Haines-Eitzen's "Sound, Silence and the Sacred" class in the Department of Near Eastern Studies spent the semester using texts, recordings, videos and performances to explore the function and meaning of sound (and silence) within diverse religious traditions. Each week, the students also made a recording from a particular spot on Cornell's campus, recording an event or capturing natural or human-created sound and reflecting on the sound in a paper. The best of those can be found on the Cornell Sound Map blog. "We all experience sound every day, but to take time to think about it has really improved my quality of life," said Leah DeWitt '16, a chemistry and chemical biology major who's minoring in religious studies. Students used high-quality microphones from the music department as well as their own phones to record sounds from across campus.