Re: A Teaching Society
Chris and Anton recently wrote:
> > 3. If Anton recently had to delete 400Mb that is hardly a
> > permanent sound archive either is it ?
> I use the same acount for other stuff. I shouldve been more clear. I just
> deleted 400 meg of my bands jammings . . . . I don't ever delete
> stuff from the nature sound part.
>
> Anton
Dear Group:
Along this interesting, continuing thread of creating various permanent
archives that are
teaching, learning or historical resources for the future, we must remember
that both
biodiversity in general, and sound environments in particular (including human
lingustic
and culture diversity sounds), are decreasing exponentially. Any climate
change event will
no doubt shock our system much more. My intuition says that our lifetime, but
more
directly impacting our children's generation, will see a major "phase shift" or
"warp" in
Earth's life system.
WHOA! That is heavy stuff and a downer, especially early on Friday morning.
Let me be
clear: I enjoy having fun and partying and working and living and being a dad
more than
dwelling on such things. But deep down inside, this is what I sense as TRUE
about our
special time in history, and must acknowledge it -- even though it is a bummer.
We
should live for the present but occasionally acknowledge the likely future.
Strangely, out
of the several billion of people on the planet, probably only a few hundred are
really
experts in natural sound. Probably 10 or 20 are the truly great sound
recordists, maybe
less. This is a small group. Others make an occassionaly good or great
recording, that
could also be featured.
What I would like to do is to perform a methodical search, relying on the vast
individual
and institutional knowledge out there, and create a website with history's
greatest
ecosystem and other natual sounds on it -- without anyone trying to make money
on it. I
will fund it and try to marshall other's collective knowledge and wisdom. It
will inure to
the collective benefit and ego gratification of the group.
This would include recordings from many different sound recordists. I think
the key to
this is that everyone is trying to make money on their projects. This makes
sense if it is
your profession. If it is your avocation, it is not necessary. Making
individual profit keeps
things splintered rather than generating the power of combination. This
dynamic is true
even of, or perhaps especially with, the museums and universities. They have
started to
horde their recordings and certainly don't do an effective job teaching with
them. They
are archivists, rather than teachers on a societal scale. But if no one
searches the archive,
or only movie sound track guys who want Hermit Thrust recordings, what use is
it?
Accordingly, if you freed yourself up from trying to make money on such a
project, and
highlighted just a few recordings from any one source and provided links to
that source so
that it was a win/win, you could create an aeshetically pleasing teaching
resource that
would hopefully be used by the industrialized world of the "connected" future.
As just one example, many tens of millions of homes in the West are wired for
5.1 sound.
In 3 or so years, many if not most of those sound and HDTV systems will be
wirelessly
connected to the home computer, both screen and sound. How many really great
5.1
recordings are out there? Why not identify those, and the best stereo and mono
recordings, and put a few of them someplace where everyone knows to go if you
want to
put on an Ecuadorian rainforest, or a deciduous North American dawn chorus, a
night
crickets, or amphibians from the Southwest?
Query: Is this a threat to the economic viability of other's projects, and
would they
therefore not participate?
Such a project would take a litte work and is a multi year effort. I am hoping
that the
many great recordists who participate and even who "lurk," on this site will
consider
nominating their own recordings, or other's remarkable recordings, as
candidates.
Everyone knows what her best recording is, or his top 5 or 10 or 100. They
also know
their buddies' best recordings. I have heard Geoff Keller's sage grouse
recording, for
example. Ted Parker played his Little Nightjar recording for me in his home in
Baton
Rouge. I heard Bernie Krause's Allogonquin wolf recording right here on this
Group.
Hope you will consider this idea and not chuckle too hard at it.
On other matters I will report on the success, or failure, of the upcoming 4
day, 25 mile
hike into a remote section of the Grand Canyon, the backpacking solution
discussion. I
only wish I had much better microphones ( I am bringing an Audio Technica
835ST). If I
get into heavy treefrog and red spotted toad country, the signal to noise ratio
will be fine.
If I am recording warblers and flycatchers in a quiet, mesquite filled wash, I
may be
severely disappointed. I go there once a year so no problem. Will be
upgrading
microphones this summer, and will be auditioning the Sennheiser pair when I
visit Geoff
Keller in four weeks.
Geo Paul
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