Accoustic Ecology

Emergence Magazine: When the Earth Started to Sing

This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. The experience is made entirely of tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound. Spoken words combined with terrestrial sounds invite our senses and imaginations to go outward into an experience of the living Earth and its history.

Biophilia: Sound On
A two-part series on the experience of sound. Included are projects created by composers, artists, and scientists that engage with the acoustic landscapes of the Earth. You’re invited to appreciate how sound affects our emotions and our relationship with the planet, and to consider how we all feel the vibrations of sound differently. Biophilia is a part of Arbor Institute's new digital journal of curated works interweaving art, ecology, and contemplative life

New York Times: How to Find Silence in a Noisy World

This week, "Sanctuaries of Silence" takes you on a virtual journey into one of Earth's last remaining bastions of true quiet - the Hoh Rain Forest, in Washington State. Shooting in beautifully immersive 360 video, directors Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee follow acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton as he explores the mossy, green heart of silence. Vaughan-Lee’s previous Op-Doc, “Vanishing Island,” also took us to a place physically endangered by modernity — Louisiana’s Isle de Jean Charles. In “Sanctuaries of Silence,” the threat is not so much to a place, as to our very ability to encounter the natural world on its own terms. As Hempton puts it, “Silence isn’t the absence of something, but the presence of everything.”

BirdNote: Sound Escapes

Gordon Hempton has mastered the art of truly listening. He’s known as the Sound Tracker. Some people call him an acoustic ecologist. His recordings and books have made him an international expert on the beauty and importance of undisturbed, natural soundscapes — and the ways human beings have changed them. In collaboration with BirdNote podcast, we’ll be immersed in soundscapes that Gordon hand-picked from some of the most wild, beautiful and sound-rich places he’s visited. And, he’ll give us a crash course in the art of truly listening — something that he says is a dying art, constantly under threat in our noisy, modern lives.

Quiet Parks International

Quiet Parks International is a non-profit committed to the preservation of quiet for the benefit of all life. The simple act of listening to the natural world can have a profound impact on our relationship to place and on ourselves by rooting us in a presence that we no longer take for granted.

The Great Big Story: Recording the Sounds of Extinction

Bernie Krause has been recording wildlife sounds, or "soundscapes," for over forty years. He's amassed the largest archive in the world, and in doing so, can chart how wildlife sounds have changed over the course of climate change.

Radiolab: Space

How would you describe life on Earth to an alien? In 1977, the Voyager spacecraft launched into space. And with it, went the Golden Record-- a sort time capsule, a collection of sounds of the human experience that would describe life on Earth to whomever or whatever might find it.

Twenty Thousand Hertz: The Golden Record

The team of sound designers deconstructs each track of the Golden Record, an album produced by Carl Sagan to represent the history of humans on earth.