Artists and photographers have long been intrigued with a study of visual envirnments, both natural ("landscapes") and artificial ("cityscapes"). The last two decades have seen, also, increasing interest in natural and artificial sonic environments or "soundscapes." The Hudson River Valley of New York State, located along the Hudson River just north of New York City, has long been an area noted for its interesting natural landscapes. Indeed, in the nineteenth century an important genre or "school" of landscape painting, The Hudson River School, made the region famous. But the Hudson Valley also has many interesting sounds. It is the purpose of this site to introduce you to ten of these soundscapes. Although brief streaming Quicktime 3.0 audio files provide small samples of each site presented, it is hoped that you will plan to visit the valley and hear these sounds, and others, in their full natural scope.

Much of the current interest in soundscapes is an outgrowth of the work of the World Soundscape Project established in the early 1970s by the Canadian scholar, R. Murray Schafer, at Simon Fraser University. There is now a large world-wide community of artists, scholars and activists who are concerned with the sounds of our environment. They work to create and enforce laws reducing or preventing noise pollution, preserving and archiving interesting sounds, creating awareness of sound as a part of everyday life, and creating artistic compositions which use sounds from various environments. Many belong to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, a non-profit organization of sound ecologists. Information about the history of acoustic ecology, articles about sound issues and information about soundscape composers can be found at the WFAE website.

"Hudson Valley Soundscapes" was designed and created in the summer of 1998 by students at Dutchess Community College of the State University of New York, located in Poughkeepsie, New York. The website was one assignment in the course Design for Interactive Media. All of the information, images and sounds were gathered by the students and organized into the present site in a period of three weeks. We welcome your feedback. Please send email to the course instructor, Eric Somers, Professor of Design and Chairperson of the Department of Performing and Visual Arts at DCC.