Your Mating Call is Important to Us

Speculative Fiction & Sonic Storytelling

Watch and listen on Theatrum Mundi

As Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring,” first noted, the decrease in sonic activity of an ecosystem may point to larger health issues at play. For example, due to human noise pollution, birds and insects often have to adjust the sound frequency of their calls just to be heard by one another. If soundscape ecology uses sound to monitor the health of ecosystems, what if sonic prescriptions could heal them? In this fictional history, we glimpse rival factions debating this question, including The Resounders, whose Sonic Apothecary emits elixirs for the given ills of the natural urban environment.

Unfortunately, these clashing perspectives drown out the voices of synanthropes, or species that coexist with humans in city spaces - that is, until the Great Cacophony tips urban denizens towards a wider field of attention.

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This project was featured in Theatrum Mundi’s 2021 Colloquium “Crafting a Sonic Urbanism: Listening to Non-Human Life” and received the New School’s Tishman Grant for Student Excellence.