Croaks, squelches, waterfalls: the visionaries bringing the jungle to your headphones
Sound artist Martina Testen suggests that audio from a natural environment appeals to “that unexplainable place from which stems the body’s immune system, as well as all the mystical and archetypal figures and desires”.
In a recent experiment, she observed that consumers spent more time shopping if a supermarket played Biodukt, recordings from Slovenian and Italian sub-Alpine forests that she and her partner Simon Šerc released on 20 March, the first day of spring. (The release date was originally meant to be 12 March – St Gregory’s Day, celebrating when birds find their mates – but was delayed due to coronavirus.)
While the exact palliative effects of such recordings may be unclear, few would deny how grounding they can be in an increasingly urbanised world, given their ability to mitigate the effects of manmade noise pollution. Traffic-related noise has been linked to sleep disturbance, cardiovascular disease, not to mention constant irritation.
