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john roach

Amplifying the Tropical Ants - lisa ann schonberg - 0 views

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    "ATTA (Amplifying the Tropical Ants) is a multimedia research project on ant acoustics in the Brazilian Amazon producing results in bioacoustic anaylsis, sound works, and music composition. I first visited Manaus, Brazil as an artist-in-residence with Labverde in July 2017. On this trip I made preliminary recordings of ant species and their habitats and used these as the basis of several new music compositions. Since then, I have been collaborating with entomologists Erica Valle and Fabricio Baccaro at the Universidade Federal do Amazonas / INPA on a collaborative research project encompassing bioacoustics, field recording, behavioral ecology, taxonomy, music composition, and acoustic ecology. Ants are doing so much of the vital work maintaining tropical rainforest ecosystem functions: herbivory, seed dispersal, predation, decomposition, soil aeration - and their habitats are in turn crucial to global climate regulation. Can listening to ants generate empathy and encourage us to do our part in countering climate change? Can listening to insects remind us how little we know - and that we are not in charge of nature? Can it shift our perspective and encourage us to consider a biocentric viewpoint? "
john roach

FORA.tv - Dr. Bernie Krause: The Great Animal Orchestra - 0 views

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    Dr. Bernie Krause, creator of Wild Sanctuary, demonstrates that every living organism produces sound. This presentation focuses on the symbiotic ways in which the sounds of one organism affect and interrelate with other organisms, local and regional, within a given habitat. Learn about unusual soundscapes and their relevance to preserving natural sounds worldwide. Biophony--the notion that all sounds in undisturbed natural habitats fit into unique niches--will be used to illustrate the ways in which animals taught humans to dance and sing.
john roach

Peter Cusack and Katrinem's London Sound Walk Maps online - CRiSAP - 0 views

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    "The format of 'Path of Awareness_Elephant and Castle' explores an individual's personal experience of space through walking, particularly the interplay between sound event (footsteps) and surrounding architecture, influenced by the constantly changing interactions in the environment. A route created around the college of communication offers numerous opportunities to engage with the city's dynamics. Walking itself, the sonic character of footwear, the walkability of this urban habitat, as well as its architectural and atmospheric qualities are all major features of this soundwalk. My soundful shoes become instruments, soloists in the space, creating a dialogue with the surroundings and situating us sonically in the places we walk."
john roach

BIG Reveals Design of Treetop Hotel Room Wrapped in Bird Nests | ArchDaily - 0 views

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    "BIG revealed the design for a treetop hotel room wrapped in 350 bird houses created for the Treehotel in Lapland, Sweden. Designed in collaboration with ornithologist Ulf Ohman, the 34 square-metre Biosphere room seeks to enhance the surrounding biosphere by providing a habitat for local birds while allowing guests to be immersed in the surrounding forest. The project is the latest addition to the hotel's series of individually designed rooms created by some of Scandinavia's most renowned architects, such as Snøhetta, Rintala Eggerstsson, and Tham & Videgard."
john roach

Artists and scientists come together to explore the meaning of natural sound | PNAS - 0 views

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    "Sound is everywhere in tropical forests. Rain drips from water-slicked leaves, birds screech, monkeys titter and bellow, branches crack, wind moans, and insects chirp and buzz. Vibrations pierce the humid understory and echo through the airy canopy, creating a symphony of sounds that speaks to both artist and scientist. Monacchi is harvesting artistic inspiration as well as data. The chirps and rattles contain information about how species interact with the environment and each other, as well as the health of the habitat. Sometimes Monacchi uses his recordings to inspire the public, sometimes to inform ecological research. "I'm trying to be at the edge of both worlds," he says."
josieholtzman

francisco lópez [ essays // environmental sound matter ] - 0 views

  • The birdsong we hear in the forest is as much a consequence of the bird as of the trees or the forest floor. If we are really listening, the topography, the degree of humidity of the air or the type of materials in the topsoil are as essential and definitory as the sound-producing animals that inhabit a certain space.
  • B. Krause to the proposal of a 'niche hypothesis' (3, 4, 5) in which different aural niches are basically defined in terms of frequency bands of the sound spectrum that are occupied by different species.
  • upon the explicit intention of expanding classical bioacoustics from an auto-ecological (single-species) to a more systemic perspective, considering assemblages of sound-producing animal species at an ecosystem level.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • appraisal of other -sonic- components that are not reductible to the former. As soon as the call is in the air, it doesn't belong to the frog that produced it anymore.
  • No matter how good they can be, recordings cannot replace the 'real' experience.
  • Different microphones 'hear' so differently that they can be considered as a first transformational step with more dramatic consequences than, for example, a further re-equalization of the recordings in the studio. Even although we don't substract or add anything we cannot avoid having a version of what we consider as reality.
  • Although I appreciate very much the multitude of new sound nuances and the 'spaceness' provided by these technological developments, I don't have a special interest in pursuing 'realism'. Moreover, I believe these techniques actually work through hyper-realism
  • Now that we have digital recording technology (with all its concomitant sound quality improvements) we can realize more straightforwardly that the microphones are -they always have been- our basic interfaces in our attempt at aprehending the sonic world around us, and also that they are non-neutral interfaces.
  • the armchair environmental movement'
  • There is another seemingly unavoidable obstacle in this attempt at portraying aural reality: sound editing. Whereas the 'microphone interface' transfigures the spatial and material characteristics of sound, editing affects its temporality.
  • As I see it, this is a futile attempt to reproduce the world, that tends to become a kind of commodity directed to sofisticated entertainment or other forms of pragmatism. In its essence, a modern consequence of the same kind of mentality that long ago led to the creation of zoos.
  • We are much less inert for transciption and reproduction than the machines we have supposedly invented for these purposes. Compared to a microphone, we can either have a much more striking perception of such a human sonic intrusion or not perceive it at all.
  • Do we always realize that there's some distant traffic noise when our perception is focused on an insect call?
  • I don't believe in such a thing as an 'objective' aprehension of the sonic realiy
  • Not only do different people listen differently, but also the very temporality of our presence in a place is a form of editing.
  • Our idea of the sonic realiy, even our fantasy about it, is the sonic reality each one of us has.
  • I claim for the right to be 'unrealistic'
  • In the case of the 'Acoustic Ecology movement', although the scope of its activities is larger and there is a greater focus on descriptive aspects of sound itself (see, e.g., ref. 18), its approach essentially relies upon a representational / relational conception, sometimes also leading to 'encourage listeners to visit the place' (19).
  • I'm thus straightforwardly attaching to the original 'sound object' concept of P. Schaeffer and his idea of 'reduced listening'
  • The richness of this sound matter in nature is astonishing, but to appreciate it in depth we have to face the challenge of profound listening. We have to shift the focus of our attention and understanding from representation to being
  • When the representational / relational level is emphasized, sounds acquire a restricted meaning or a goal, and this inner world is dissipated.
  • Environmental acousmatics. The hidden cicada paradox Acousmatics, or the rupture of the visual cause-effect connection between the sound sources and the sounds themselves (22), can contribute significantly to the 'blindness' of profound listening. La Selva, as most tropical rain forests, constitutes a strong paradigm of something we could call 'environmental acousmatics'.
  • What I find remarkably striking is how the comprehension of virtually all approaches to nature sound recording is so rarely referred to the sonic matter they are supposedly dealing with, but rather to whatever other non-sonic elements of the experience of the -thus documented- place.
  • In my conception, the essence of sound recording is not that of documenting or representing a much richer and more significant world, but a way to focus on and access the inner world of sounds.
  • What I'm defending here is the transcendental dimension of the sound matter by itself.
  • A non-bucolic broad-band world Another widespread conception about nature sound environments regards them as 'quiet places', peaceful islands of quietude in a sea of rushing, noisy man-driven habitats.
  • As I see it, this certainly contributes to expand our aural understanding of nature, not denying quietude, but embracing a more complete conception
  • when our listening move away from any pragmatic representational 'use', and I claim for the right to do so with freedom (28).
  • I also defend the preservation and enhancement of the diversity of man-made sound environments and devices. The value we assign to sound environments is a complex issue we shouldn't simplify; under some circumstances, nature can also be considered as an intrusion in environments dominated by man-made sounds. In this sense, my approach is as futurist as it is environmentalist, or, in broader terms, independent of these categorizations.
  • I think it's a sad simplification to restrict ourselves to this traditional concept to 'find' music in nature.
  • I don't subscribe the coupling of nature to these schemes, by way of -for example- a search for melodic patterns, comparisons between animal sounds and musical instruments, or 'complementing' nature sounds with 'musical' ones (5, 25, 26). To me, a waterfall is as musical as a birdsong.
  • music is an aesthetic (in its widest sense) perception / understanding / conception of sound. It's our decision -subjective, intentional, non-universal, not necessarily permanent- what converts nature sounds into music.
  • sonic homogeneization, thus pursuing the conservation of sound diversity in the world.
  • To me, attaining this musical state requires a profound listening, an immersion into the inside of the sound matter.
john roach

http://artsci.ucla.edu/birds/index.html - 0 views

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    "The goal of this project is to understand the language of birds -- of course not ALL species of birds, but at least a few, starting with those that have languages that seem complex, and yet manageable.While this has long been a desire, up to now it has not been possible, but with modern advances in computing, in linguistic analysis, and a new-found appreciation of how sophisticated other creatures can be, the grammar (and perhaps meaning) of bird song seems attainable."
john roach

Trees Have Their Own Songs - The Atlantic - 1 views

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    "This acoustic world is open to everyone, but most of us never enter it. It just seems so counter-intuitive-not to mention a little hokey-to listen to trees. But Haskell does listen, and he describes his experiences with sensuous prose in his enchanting new book The Songs of Trees. A kind of naturalist-poet, Haskell makes a habit of returning to the same places and paying "repeated sensory attention" to them. "I like to sit down and listen, and turn off the apps that come pre-installed in my body," he says. Humans may be a visual species, but "sounds reveals things that are hidden from our eyes because the vibratory energy of the world comes around barriers and through the ground. Through sound, we come to know the place.""
john roach

Great Animal Orchestra - Everyday Listening - Sound Art, Sound Installations,... - 0 views

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    "Bernie Krause is an American musician and soundscape ecologist. He has been recording, researching and archiving soundscapes for over 40 years. ....It celebrates the work of Krause's work, adding a simple but fitting and room-filling spectrogram to the recorded soundscapes, emerging the listener in sound, and being able to recognise the animals with visual cues. Here's a 360-degrees video, if your browser can play that: The idea is quite simple, but the soundscapes are compelling and diverse. While it can sometimes be hard to get an audience interested in sound-based works in a museum, United Visual Artists did a great job of adding a simple visual counterpart to keep those who aren't used to only listen to sound, interested. If you want to know more about the work of Bernie Krause, I suggest watching this TED Talk about "The voice of the natural world"."
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