The photo above is a still-frame from the Sonance music video, in which a songbird fades into a spiraling open sky above the forest canopy – a poignant image of the disappearance (and silencing) of wildlife in the wake of industrialist habitat destruction. The two photgraphs below are also drawn from the video, which juxtaposes images of undeveloped ecosystems with densely urban spaces, following the sonic juxtaposition of industrial development and ecological biodiversity.
Sonance is an experimental sound-and-image project about the impacts of human and machine noise on other animals. The initial question posed is: Does human noise disrupt animal communication? The answer demonstrated throughout the audiovisual piece is an emphatic yes. The soundscape composition moves from relative silence and animal calls to the gradual domination of mechanical drones. These drones are then accompanied by synthesizers and drums and a musical piece emerges from a contemplative and provocative mixture of “natural” and “mechanical” sounds. The video follows the sounds with imagery and texts that emphasizes the importance of sound to animal and ecosystem communication, and the adverse effects of industrial noise escalation on ecosystem health. The silent narration through text makes explicit the logic of the composition, which slowly displaces and erases the sounds of more-than-human animal and plant ecologies with machine sounds and human musical instruments. This video is featured on the EcoSong website, a collective of environmental activists, scholars, musicians and educators working to promote environmental stewardship in the Salish Sea region of Washington state and across the globe. (source)
