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john roach

Reference Library of Digitized Insect Sounds - 1 views

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    "The sounds of crickets courting and flies flying familiar to many of us, but have you heard a rice weevil larva eating inside a wheat kernel, a termite cutting a piece of wood, or a grub chewing on a root? Modern insect detection and control technology makes use of these subtle signals, sampled below. Most of the sound files on this page were selected from noise-free sections of recorded signal, but you can hear some typical background noises mixed with insect sounds at I below. The insect sounds have higher frequencies and shorter durations that make them relatively easy to separate from background."
john roach

INSEcT tiME | continent. Dave Phillips - 0 views

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    "how would we hear insects if we were insects?"
john roach

Kristine Tjøgersen - Bioluminescence - 0 views

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    "Thousands of species of fireflies all blink in different patterns, not only blinking in rhythms but simultaneously performing specific flight choreographies. The timing and pattern of their flashes are unique to each species. In Bioluminescence, I translated firefly behavior data from Prof. James E. Lloyd's Studies on the Flash Communication Systems of Photinus Fireflies into an orchestral piece. Rhythmic patterns of light and insect movement provide the material for both melodic and rhythmic figures. In biology, bioluminescence is the ability of living things to produce light through biochemical processes. Most bioluminescent organisms are found in the sea. The group of marine bioluminescent organisms includes fish, bacteria, and jellyfish. Some bioluminescent organisms, including fireflies and fungi, are found on land. Bioluminescence is used by creatures to make prey, defend themselves against predators, find mates, as well as for other vital activities. Recent studies show that the number of fireflies is declining. Light pollution from human-generated light disrupts insect courtship behavior because it can only occur in the dark. The artificial extension of daylight into the night disrupts the fireflies' dark-light cycles and thus their biological behavior."
john roach

'Tiny melodies': musician uses moths' flight data to compose piece about their decline ... - 0 views

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    "They are vital pollinators who come out at night, but now moths have emerged into the bright light of day as co-creators of a new piece of music - composed using the insects' own flight data."
john roach

Crickets, bees and vinyl - a Pestival mix by Chris Watson | Music | The Guardian - 0 views

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    "Asked to curate a night of insect music for Pestival at London's Southbank Centre, wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson thinks he may just have found a 15th-century iPod"
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

Bernie Krause: The voice of the natural world | Video on TED.com - 0 views

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    "Bernie Krause has been recording wild soundscapes -- the wind in the trees, the chirping of birds, the subtle sounds of insect larvae -- for 45 years. In that time, he has seen many environments radically altered by humans, sometimes even by practices thought to be environmentally safe. A surprising look at what we can learn through nature's symphonies, from the grunting of a sea anemone to the sad calls of a beaver in mourning. "
john roach

Why this wildlife expert is making his archive public - BBC News - 0 views

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    "Capturing just 20 seconds of a songbird's chirrup, or an elk's bugle, or a kangaroo's chortle often requires hours of stillness and solitude. It's a craft that Birmingham-born sound recordist Martyn Stewart has perfected over the last 55 years. In that time, he's built up one of the largest private collections of natural sound in the world. Comprising 30,000 hours of material, it includes recordings of 3,500 bird species, alongside countless mammals, insects, amphibians and reptiles, as well as soundscapes of the Serengeti, the Arctic and Chernobyl, 10 years after the nuclear reactor meltdown. At least four of the species he's recorded are now extinct in the wild, including the northern white rhinoceros and the Panamanian tree frog."
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."
john roach

Henrik Håkansson | Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - 0 views

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    "Henrik Håkansson (b. 1968 Sweden) devotes his work to studying the complex connections between humans and nature. He carefully constructs environmental experiments that ask participants to explore their impact on the environment that surrounds them, such as in the installation Frog For e.s.t. (eternal sonic trance) (1995). This piece consisted of a room filled with inflatable pools, humidifiers, insects, frogs, strobe lights, and a DJ mixing techno music on site. Projects like Frog For e.s.t. examine the intrusion of human artifice on the environment: what happens when we attempt to recreate delicate ecological systems? What are the effects of human-made sounds replacing the natural soundscape?"
john roach

CATCH THE BUZZ- Blind Beekeeper Relies on Sound | Bee Culture - 0 views

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    ""I can hear how the bees are behaving - if they're agitated, if there are other bees trying to get in the hive, or if it's too crowded or too hot or too cold," said Aerial Gilbert, an avid beekeeper in Petaluma. What you want to hear, she said, is a calm steady buzz. That indicates that everything in the hive is going smoothly."
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.
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  • 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

Sound Design for 360 | bioni samp - 0 views

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    "Step inside the world of Bioni Samp, an urban beekeeper who makes honey - and music - from his bees. This immersive 360 profile takes you deep inside the beehive. Peter Boyd Maclean's film uses cinematic narrative conventions with immersive sound and vision in order to intensify the experience of becoming fully immersed in the story."
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