Forestscapes

How can soundscapes be used as a way to attend to forest life and the many different ways of narrating and relating to forests, forest issues and forest futures?

The forestscapes project aims to explore and document generative arts-based methods for recomposing collections of sound materials to support “collective inquiry” into forests as living cultural landscapes.

Through an ongoing series of participatory workshops, exhibitions and listening labs the project explores how listening can serve as a way of engaging with and reconsidering forest life.

Through these activities algorithmic composition serves as an entrypoint for exploring folders and archives of forest sounds – from field recordings to online media materials.

Sound and soundscapes become a medium for surfacing unexpected actors and relations, unsettling who and what is noticed, and perhaps opening up other ways of knowing and experiencing forests.

"We’re exploring how collections of forest-related sounds can be assembled with software scripts to support collective inquiry into living landscapes. While sound has long been used as a way to provide individual immersion into a particular place at a particular moment - for example through field recordings - we’re interested in how collections of sound can be recomposed with arts- and humanities-based methods to support group listening sessions - and different ways of collectively noticing, experiencing and knowing forest life." – Jonathan Gray, Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies + Director for the Centre for Digital Culture

"With Forestscapes we are exploring alternative ways of knowing and experiencing forests, using sounds and listening as an entry point. Although the significance of sounds in relation to ecological crises was already manifest in the title of Silent Spring (1962), and accompanied by the development of bioacoustics in Ecology, less attention has been directed to the ways in which sounds, and combination of sounds (soundscapes) may be used to bring different people and disciplines together to attend to environmental concerns." – Maud Borie - Senior Lecturer in Environment, Science & Society + co-convenor of the Political Ecology, Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services group

"In this project we are using sound to challenge idealised constructions of forests (and nature more broadly) as pristine, untouched environments, instead recognising their complex character as spaces in which many different socio-ecological histories and conflicts overlap. We are experimenting with new methods for soundscape composition and collective listening which can allow collections of forest sounds to speak to us in ways that reflect this complexity." – Andrés Saenz de Sicilia, sound artist + Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London