Rainforest

David Tudor, Rainforest Version 1 (1968)

"A non-bucolic broad-band world Another widespread conception about nature sound environments regards them as 'quiet places', peaceful islands of quietude in a sea of rushing, noisy man-driven habitats. This constitutes the main motto of the Nature Sounds Society, as made explicit in the title of the CD released by the Oakland Nuseum, 'Quiet Places', and also that of G. Hempton's releases, 'Quiet Places Collection'.

While this can be true for certain natural environments and under certain conditions, I think this understanding leads to a restricted and bucolic view of nature that I don't share. La Selva, as many other tropical rain forests, is also a paradigm of an antithesis to this view. It is indeed quiet a noisy place. The multitude of sounds from water (rain, water courses), together with the incredible sound web created by the intense calls of insects or frogs and plant sounds, make up a wonderfully powerful broad-band sound environment of thrilling complexity. The resulting sound textures are extremely rich, with many sound layers that merge and reveal themselves by addition or substraction, challenging perception and also the very concept of individual sounds.

As I see it, this certainly contributes to expand our aural understanding of nature, not denying quietude, but embracing a more complete conception, freed of our judgement and of a somewhat simplistic categorization. I'm certainly on the side of those defending the 'pristine' sound quality of natural environments, but essentially because I think we should avoid the sound intrusion that leads to sonic homogeneization, thus pursuing the conservation of sound diversity in the world.

Within the same spirit, I also defend the preservation and enhancement of the diversity of man-made sound environments and devices. The value we assign to sound environments is a complex issue we shouldn't simplify; under some circumstances, nature can also be considered as an intrusion in environments dominated by man-made sounds. In this sense, my approach is as futurist as it is environmentalist, or, in broader terms, independent of these categorizations."

Francisco Lopez, sur "La Selva", 1998 - V2_Archief
Source : http://www.franciscolopez.net/env.html