As part of the upcoming Timber Festival in the UK, a sound map has been created that enables you to listen to various recordings of forests across the world. The sound map project is simple and fascinating, and you’d be surprised at how different each forest (and its corresponding weather and bird songs and so forth) sounds.
The project’s website states “We are collecting the sounds of woodlands and forests from all around the world, creating a growing soundmap bringing together aural tones and textures from the world’s woodlands.” All of the collected sounds are part of an open-source Creative Commons Share Alike library that anybody can listen to or build upon. In fact, part of the Timber Festival will include artists of all varieties responding to the sounds in their own work, be it paintings, music, or anything else.
Each entry on the map displays the area’s name along with the city and country it’s in. You’ll also be able to see other information as well, like the area’s exact location coordinates, the name of the person who captured the recording, the date of the recording, and a brief description of what the recording sounds like (“A windy day in the birch forest,” for example). In most cases, there’s also a nice picture of the forest you can gaze at while you listen.
If you’ve happen to live near a forest, you can also add your own recording of it to the project’s library. You’ll need to collect a photo along with the audio and fill out a short form.
So, take a moment to explore the map. There’s the cuckoo’s calls during a summer evening in Heinola, Finland. Or maybe you might prefer the sounds of the Rio Azul along with some bird calls in El Bolson, Argentina. Or perhaps a rainy forest in Fukuoka, Japan. No matter what floats your boat, there’s a world full of forests for you to enjoy.
via Moss and Fog
