Presentation at Aix-Marseille University - October 23, 2024

The Master’s degree in Acoustics and Musicology from Aix-Marseille University prepares students for careers in sound, engineering and sound design, perceptual acoustics, sound design, and music, creation, cultural action, musicological and ethnomusicological research. Mathieu Barthet invited me and Luigi Marino to present the Sensing the Forest project at the research seminar series of the master’s.

The seminars are addressed to Master 1 students who are part of two streams. One of the streams is called “Sound design engineering” and includes students coming from physics, electronics, and computer science. The other stream is called “Music, technology and humanities” and includes students who have backgrounds in musicology and music.

The session consisted of two parts. In the first part, we presented the project in the format of a research seminar. In the second part, we had an interactive discussion on research professions.

About the talk

Title

Sensing the Forest: Lessons learned from our artistic-acoustic intervention at the Alice Holt Forest

Abstract

In this talk, Anna Xambó and Luigi Marino will present the ongoing Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project Sensing the Forest: Let the Forest Speak using the Internet of Things, Acoustic Ecology and Creative AI (09/2023-08/2025), which explores how artistic practices, acoustic ecology, and the Internet of Things (IoT) can be combined to raise awareness of climate change. We will reflect on the project’s progress to date, including the creation of a solar-powered 24/7/365 soundscape streamer that continuously captures the forest’s auditory environment, the organisation of a summer school and art exhibition featuring site-specific works by ten international artists, and upcoming activities focused on community science engagement. Through these reflections, we aim to discuss how artistic and acoustic interventions can inspire new ways of listening to and learning from the environment.

Bibliography recommendations

• Bernie Krause. 2008. Anatomy of the Soundscape: Evolving Perspectives. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. Audio Engineering Society 56 (Jan 2008), 73 – 80.

• Bruno Latour. 2017. [Face à Gaïa. Huit conférences sur le nouveau régime climatique}(http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/634.html) / Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Polity Press.

Q&A

Some of the questions that emerged from the 10-12 students who attended the talk were about leadership in terms of how the project is managed and how decisions are made. There was also a question about whether we could elaborate on a statement that we made that sound is the most universal sense among all the life forms and could be seen as the lingua franca, which we then elaborated as a sense that has even been questioned in trees. Another question was on the correlations between sound and climate change. We explained that this is the most difficult part of the project and that we are reflecting on how to improve this connection after receiving feedback from the art exhibition at Alice Holt.

Research careers

For the second part of the session, Mathieu proposed exploring the nature of research careers through an interactive discussion. The questions posed by Mathieu, were about what motivated us in doing research, how we combine our teaching and research activities and our artistic practice, and what piece of advice can we give to the students to develop their research careers.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Mathieu Barthet for the invitation and to the students of the Master in Acoustics and Musicology, Aix-Marseille University, for their curiosity and good questions.