Paper short abstract:

The more we understand about fetal hearing and processing sound, the more we understand how fetuses can detect subtle changes and process complex information within their "wombscape".

Paper long abstract:

Odette's very first movements, her first "quickening", was in response to David Bowie's "Starman". This was around 16 weeks, often the time for first movements in the fetus, and interestingly also the time when the hearing has developed. The fetus floats in a rich and complex soundscape; it is anything but quiet. The womb filter…amniotic fluid, embryonic membranes, uterus, the maternal abdomen-low frequencies, and blood in veins whooshing, then Mother's voice and body noises such as hiccups and the gurgles of digestion and of course, the heartbeat. The Mother's heartbeat can be as loud as a vacuum cleaner and ultra sounds as loud as a subway car arriving in a train station.We can try to mimic the womb-scape, imagining sounds being filtered through the body. We can use a hydrophone-a pressure microphone designed to be sensitive to soundwaves through fluid matter-on the abdomen to get an idea and sample for our wombscape.

(This is a sound work proposal for The Acoustics of Dwelling, a Sound Programme, however the audio work is attached to a two part paper:

PART 1: https://soundstudiesblog.com/2015/01/12/past-future-womb-sound-as-shared-experience-crossing-time-and-space/

PART 2: https://soundstudiesblog.com/2015/01/19/of-sound-machines-and-recording-a-sharing-that-transcends-time-and-space/

The sound work: https://soundcloud.com/maile-colbert/wombfilterstarman)

Perhaps it would sound something like this…