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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.""

Remember Forests? People around the world recorded the sounds of their forests, so you can escape into nature, and unwind wherever you are. Take a breath and soak in the forest sounds as they breathe with life and beauty! And while you are here, why not help to grow what keeps us alive? Climate change and governments are destroying our forests. Let's leave some trees for our grandchildren to climb and make the steps to restore our planet.

The Underground Sound Project is a collection of underground sound recordings made by artist Nikki Lindt over the course of the past year. They were made in Prospect Park, other parks in the five boroughs of NYC and in rural Cherry Valley, NY. The recordings are made by placing microphones underground, underwater and even inside trees. So put on your headphones and come explore the melodic, resonant, and otherworldly sonic ecosystem right beneath our feet!!

"Did you know deep, resonant sound can be heard inside trees, among the roots of plants, in shifting soils, in streambeds, rivers, and even in mud-and that the sounds of the subway and airplanes can be heard in the soils of our local parks? From May 14, 2022 - May 2023, experience the sounds of Prospect Park in a new immersive way with artist Nikki Lindt's the Underground Sound Project, a Soundwalk."

"In the lineage of musique concrète, a composition created from recorded sounds rather than instrumentation and vocals, The Last Stand chronicles the lifespan of a 300-year-old White Oak from the years 1750 - 2050. The "Mother Tree" lives in Black Rock Forest, a nearly 4,000 acre diverse ecosystem in upstate New York. The story spans the Mother Tree's life from acorn to its "last stand," the final burst of life-giving energy a tree gives to its vast forest network before it dies. From the quotidian to the catastrophic, the sonic narrative spans elements that produce and hold life in nature. As the years unfold, the human impact on the forest becomes visceral: from the onset of settler colonial occupation to the physical and technological expansion of nearby United States Military Academy West Point, species disappear, storms intensify, and the drone of highways and planes becomes constant.  "

"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. "

"Sound designer and composer Diego Stocco (warning: lots of sound) continues his ongoing project of making music from uncommon objects and places with this new video using loops recorded from a local dry cleaner. Stocco has also made music from a tree, from sand, and even a a bonsai, among others. Of all of them I really think this is his finest. Make sure you make it past the 2:10 mark."

"A tree's year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently."

"In Neerpelt, a small town in the very north of Belgium on the border with the Netherlands, there's the very unique Klankenbos (or Sound Forest). A public forest filled with sound art installations hidden between the trees, accessible to anyone for free any moment of the day. Something so unique, it's strange we've never written an article about it here on Everyday Listening. Time to make up for that."

I see them in the streets and in the subway, at dollar stores, hospital rooms, and parties. I see them silently dangling from electrical cables and tethered to branches of trees. Balloons are ghost-like entities floating through the cracks of places and memories. They are part of our rituals of loss, celebration and apology. Yet, they are also part of larger systems, weather sciences, warfare and surveillance technologies, colonialist forces and the casual UFO conspiracy theory. For a child, the ephemeral life of the balloon contrasts with the joy of its bright colors and squeaky sounds. Psychologists encourage the use of the balloon as an analogy for death, while astronomers use it as a representation for the cosmological inflation of the universe. In between metaphors of beginning and end, the balloon enables dialogues about air, breath, levity, and vibration.

"What do we really hear when we hear the wind? If you step from a wood into an open field, the sound changes, although it is the same wind blowing over both. A winter pine tree far from the coast makes the wind perform like an angry sea, while a neighbouring bare birch makes a gust-like sound as soft as the brushings of a jazz drummer. A single blast can turn telephone cables and barbed wire fencing into the strings of a wind-harp."

"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."

"Today a growing group of sonic artists engage with plants as collaborators in their processes and creations. The duo Feral Practice invites audience members to sound walks in forests to reflect on ecological and social issues in the vicinity of trees. Sound artist Mileece senses signals from plants to develop sound-generating algorithms that she combines with field recordings to design immersive sound installations, a technology akin to the one used by Tosca Terán to detect activity in mycorrhizal systems which she converts into musical notes. Cristina Ochoa and Eduardo Vindiola read signalling activity in beets and modulate their rhythmic patterns to perform with them. Leslie Garcia studies plant communication to design prosthetic devices that simulate an abstract voice for plants through a process of biofeedback."

"The tranquil chorus of the natural world is in danger of being lost to today's generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns. Rising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water, and trees rustling in the wind, which can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service"

"'The Underground Sound Project' is a public art installation in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. It can be experienced remotely online at theundergroundsoundproject.com The work explores and reveals the world of underground sound that can be heard under our feet. Did you know deep, resonant sound can be heard inside trees? Among the roots of plants, in shifting soils, in streambeds, rivers, oceans, and even in mud?"