Emotional Impact
October 14, 2006
Suspended Sounds was an immersive installation of sounds of extinct, endangered, and threatened species, presented at the Ear to the Earth Festival in 2006 in New York City. If you're not familiar with Suspended Sounds, we suggest that you go there, then return and continue to read this brief reflection. Aleksei Stevens was one of the composers who worked on Suspended Sounds. He was also a key person in researching and gathering the sounds.
It was certainly fascinating, but researching Suspended Sounds was also an emotional experience in that I was researching the disappearance of animals. Why do species disappear? By far the most common threat, which came up repeatedly, in all parts of the world, was loss of habitat. The logging of old growth forests, the development of marshlands, in one odd case the prevention of wildfires--many human actions have led to loss of habitat for a number of species. An effect of habitat reduction is localized populations. This is a major problem because, for example, if a species of bird that was once found all along a coastline becomes restricted to a small part of it, then a far greater percentage of the overall population will be affected if that restricted area is struck by disease or catastrophic weather.
There were a number of heartbreaking facts I learned in the course of this research. Mother and father spider monkeys are killed so that their babies can be captured and sold as pets. The red siskin is captured for cross-breeding with canaries, to make a popular hybrid (preventing this already endangered species from being able to reproduce with its own kind). Whales, who have complex societies and communicate with one another via sonar over immense distances, can no longer hear each other because of the amount of noise in the seas from ships and weapons testing. They often end up colliding with ships and beaching themselves simply because they can't tell where they are.
Of the many stories I read about different extinct and endangered animals, the single most wrenching was that of the now extinct Kawai 'O'o. In 1982, there were only two members of the species left on earth, a male and a female. The female was killed during that year in a violent storm. The male survived the storm, and was last spotted in 1985, meaning he lived for three years, through three mating seasons and three migration cycles, as the only member of his species. It is my personal belief that animals have emotions, but regardless, I think the fact that we can feel for them is enough of a moral imperative to take action to prevent the fate of that bird from befalling any other animal.
Copyright © 2006 Electronic Music Foundation, Ltd.
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