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 providing 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.

Dr Jonathan Gray, Senior Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies and co-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.

Dr Maud Borie - Lecturer in Environment, Science & Society and 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