Gracias a un par de amigos míos en Facebook (¡bendita fuente de información!) llegué a conocer este sitio: «Fragments of Extinction».
Se trata de un proyecto en el que han grabado los sonidos de los principales ecosistemas a la altura del Ecuador. ¡Qué viaje alucinante que es escucharlos! Es una sensación muy especial. No dejen de experimentarlo.
http://www.fragmentsofextinction.org/listen-to-ecosystems/
Para disfrutar mejor, les aconsejo que sigan las instrucciones de la página en cuanto a usar auriculares.
No dejen de escuchar las grabaciones que aparecen bajo «Eco-acoustic Music»: http://www.fragmentsofextinction.org/eco-acoustic-music/
Y de ver el CD booklet: http://www.fragmentsofextinction.org/PDF/Eco-Acoustic-compositions-CD-Booklet-lowQ.html
Copio a continuación el texto que aparece bajo «Motivation» en la página principal: http://www.fragmentsofextinction.org/mission/
Motivation
“What took 4 billions years to evolve is vanishing in the blink of an eye.”[1]
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (signed by some 1360 world scientists and released by the United Nations in 2005), the current global extinction rate is between 100 and 1,000 times higher than it would naturally be. Immediate projections for the future indicate that this rate may reach 12,000 within our lifetime. [2] As a result of the direct human pressure on ecosystems (mostly deforestation and overexploitation) and the effects of human impact on the biosphere (as invasive species-triggering and pollution) an exponentially growing number of the planet’s recently estimated 8.7 million living species are going extinct. The rate of 30,000 species per year was already predicted in 1993 by Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson (estimates which order of magnitude has since been revealed correct by most current studies), which equals to some 3 species going extinct every hour. Current estimates do not even include climate change. This is all the more shocking if we consider that, at present, only 1.9 million species have been described, most of which have barely been studied, if at all. Of all known species, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, and 41% of amphibians now appear on the IUCN Red List of threatened species [3]. We are facing the collapse of life itself.
This kind of information moved me, about 15 years ago, to dedicate my life to an interdisciplinary project that joins science, technology, and art to foster public awareness of ‘the most silent catastrophe of our times’: what has been defined as the Sixth Mass Extinction.
The ongoing ecocide is silencing forever the marveollus choirs of natural sound, the ‘eco-symphonies’ we have not even heard or recorded.
So my colleagues and I began investigating in the world’s oldest and most diverse primary equatorial rainforests, collecting three-dimensional sound portraits of entire circadian cycles. The complex network of inter and intra-specific communication found in these recordings is a relevant proof of the systemic behavior of the soundscape in primary habitats.
It is the sonic heritage of millions of years of evolution. We must save fragments of it in order to study, understand, experience, enjoy, and conserve it, preserving for future generations imprints of the disappearing sonic intelligence of nature.
Fragments of Extinction is doing part of this work.
David Monacchi
Atresillado 