Hearing the Unheard: Forgotten Voices
Müller’s Bat (1989), for example, consists of ultrasound recordings of indigenous Icelandic bats processed to be audible to human ears.[4] (Bats use ultrasound to perform echolocation so they can fly in the dark without hitting objects, and locate insects).[5] Müller’s Bat allows the listener to become aware of the fact that there are many sources of sound and for that matter, sources of life) of which we are usually unaware. From the other direction of the audio spectrum. The youtube video “Sonification of the Tohoku Earthquake” audifies a time-aligned seismograph and heatmap of the earthquake into the range of human hearing. Winters and Weinberg argue in their article “Sonification of the Tohoku earthquake: Music, popularization & the auditory sublime” that by making creating a new experience of a seemingly-familiar phenomena that is more “immersive and visceral” than visuals alone, the video gives audiences access to an auditory sublime, “a sudden awareness of one’s own tiny presence against the vastness of the universe.”[6] According to the authors, artistic audifications like “Sonification of the Tohoku Earthquake” cause listeners to ultimately realize that they are conceiving something almost inconceivably great and powerful and thus represent a powerful strategy for attracting audiences to artistic sonifications.[7]
The idea of making audible the humanly inaudible also applies to the sounds of extinct species – sounds inaccessible to in terms of time rather than space. Müller’s 2008 project Séance Vocibus Avium, for example, recreated the calls of eleven extinct Icelandic bird species. Collaborating musician was assigned to reconstruct the sounds of a particular species would have many by studying historical documents. Rather than relying on electroacoustic technology, all the sounds are recreated using only the human voice – an underscoring of both a sentimental connection and the haunting fact that it was humans that directly or indirectly caused the extinction of these birds.[8]
In sum, a deeper appreciation for natural environments can be gained by revealing the unheard. In a recent interview, Jana Winderen notes how recording sounds in “hidden places” – such as her speciality, underwater environments - put us in a position of humbleness towards Earth when we realize how we are unaware of, how much we do not know. Winderen further describes how oceanic soundscapes, soundscapes which cover 70% of our planet, “ reveals a complex and generally unknown sonic world under the surface. It reveals that creatures we did not know could communicate with sound are doing exactly that.” And when we realize that “something is communicating through sound,” “we gain a sense of it having intelligence.”[9]
[1] Brush, Leif, and Gloria DeFilipps Brush. "Monitoring Nature's Sounds with Terrain-Based Constructions." Leonardo (1984): 4-7.
[2] Adams, John Luther. The place where you go to listen: In search of an ecology of music. Wesleyan University Press, 2010.
[3] Kruth, Patricia, and Stobart, Henry. Sound. Darwin College Lectures, Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print.
[5] Kruth, Ibid.
[6] Winters, R. Michael, and Gil Weinberg. "Sonification of the Tohoku earthquake: Music, popularization & the auditory sublime." In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2015).
[7] Winters, Ibid.
[8] Sudyka, Diana. “Wolfgang Müller - Séance Vocibus Avium,” Tiny Aviary. November 27, 2009, Web. http://thetinyaviary.blogspot.com/2009/11/wolfgang-muller-seance-vocibus-avium.html.
[9] Fischer, Tobias. “Interview with Jana Winderen.” Tokafi.com, Web. http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-jana-winderen/. (Accessed 10 July 2016).
