Prior to the development of sound spectrography in the 1940s, the study of animal vocalizations was purely a sonic endeavor. The sonogram—a picture of sound representing the varying intensities of acoustic frequencies—allowed biologists to scrutinize animal calls with a new precision. The ability to see a bird call, for example, made it easier to separate sound from environment, which in turn trained the listener to eventually perform this trick.
In Present Spectra of Future Absence, Mitchell Akiyama employs digital spectrography to remove animal vocalizations. Using the “Spot Healing Brush” included in Adobe’s Audition software to an ironic end, he has erased all traces of non-human life from a field recording of a downtown Toronto park. But these erasures are audible and distinct, manifesting as eerie, spectral artifacts. Robert Rauschenberg understood that erasure is never an annihilation, that in rubbing out his friend Willem de Kooning’s feral linework, he was establishing negation as a positivity. Jacques Derrida understood this as well, coining the term “hauntology” to describe the always-present absence of the things we believe we have lost or destroyed.
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Curatorial Text:
Fragments of Sonic Extinction is an ongoing project demonstrating a subjective approach towards the
extinction of natural sounds, focusing on the sonic character of endangered (and already vanished) species along with their relationship to a variety of cultural histories. In the form of a website, Fragments of Sonic Extinction intends to shift the focus on ephemeral extinction and the complexity of the rapid changes within the sonic spheres of our world. Employing interpretation, immersion and interaction as central characteristics, the project presents contributions by artists dedicated to the perilous or extinct nature of specific species and attempts to negotiate their sonic perspectives and environments. The manifold contributions react to future, current and past global environmental issues through a variety of narrations centred on the theme of sonic extinction. Above all, the intention of the project is to present explicitly free, artistic sound works and compositions that are rooted in diverse conceptual models and production techniques, including field recordings, data sonification, electronic and instrumental compositions, amongst others. The goal of this project is to create valuable impulses for the emergence of ecological awareness through the use of immersion in and sensitivity to sonic perspectives, which pay close attention to the catastrophes taking place in biospheres which have been effectively silenced as myriad species and their habitats are rendered extinct.
Curated by Kalas Liebfried
Comissioned by Neustart Kultur and Bayern Innovativ