Can vandalising music inspire us to take action on wildlife decline?

In recent years there has been no shortage of data that show the impact of humans on the natural world, but these are often shown through unemotional graphs and figures. I decided to try and find a way of sharing data about nature in an emotional way. If people feel strong emotions about nature then they are more likely to make positive changes and take action to save our natural world.  

As a researcher at the University of Edinburgh's School of Biological Sciences, my skills focus on how sound can be used to communicate data through a method called sonification. Examples include Geiger counters and heart rate monitors. Mostly sonification is done using algorithms and computer-synthesised music, which often sounds neutral and scientific. To represent nature data emotionally, I needed to create a sonification method that sounded passionate and touching.

I thought about when sound is emotional: such as at political rallies, football matches, and funerals. What makes sound so moving? Perhaps the history we share with certain songs causes these emotions. Rather than creating new sounds for my sonification, what if I used songs people already know? Would sonification based on familiar sounds allow me to transfer people’s feelings from the song to the nature data? 

I wrote an algorithm with two inputs: a sound file and a data file. The data I used measures the decline of biodiversity from the year 1970 and is updated yearly. It is known as the Living Planet Index (LPI) and is made by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) . The LPI is a high-level overview indicator that gives yearly single values to measure the health of global biodiversity, showing the average relative abundance compared to 1970. This is calculated from thousands of species’ population sizes, densities (population size per unit area), abundance (the number of individuals per sample), or some proxy of abundance, such as the number of nests or breeding pairs. The lower the LPI value, the worse global biodiversity decline has become.

The algorithm splits the sound file into chunks, with the first chunk of the song representing 1970, and the second chunk representing 1971, all the way through to the final chunk of the song representing the most recent year in the data. In each chunk, soundwave values are randomly set to zero to damage the song proportionally to the LPI value for that year. This introduces a tiny gap in the song, which interrupts the sound. The lower the LPI value for that year, the more interruptions in that section of the song. The more damage to the natural world, the more interference in the sonification. 

The sound input could be any recording presented in the right format. I was careful to focus on songs, poems, and natural world recordings that I felt would be familiar and emotional to my audience. One song seemed the perfect fit, Sigur Rós’s iconic 2006 song, Hoppípolla, used to promote the award-winning BBC series Planet Earth. The awe-inspiring visuals, the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC, transported viewers to stunning habits rich in wildlife. But it represented a world under threat and the song is a key part of this story: the perfect song to vandalise. 

However, in my first attempt the algorithm made the song sound fuzzy and low-quality all the way through, and it was impossible to tell how the LPI values changed by listening to the sonification. I had no idea how to fix it. My idea was at a dead-end.

I hit the books. I learned our hearing is very sophisticated. Sound hits our eardrums all the time and our brain constantly processes the sound to create the world as we hear it. Our brain is amazing at filling in tiny gaps in sound. This is why when you hear a song on the radio with interference, you can still make out the song, even though much of the information is missing.

I realised that when I listened to my sonification, my brain was filling in the little gaps made by my algorithm, so I couldn’t hear them! To fix this, I needed to make the gaps in the song bigger, to stop my brain filling them in. With bigger gaps in the algorithm, for the first time I could hear the damage of the natural world by hearing the interruptions of the sound. Listening to the result was a strongly emotional experience for me.

Many people feel sonifications are best when they produce a wow-factor. Though I believed my approach worked, I needed to see if other people felt the same. I was invited to a big conference in Manchester for the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). With over 250 nature professionals attending in-person, and more online, I was nervous sharing my sonification with them. If it didn’t work for them, it would be the end of the line for this project. 

However, I knew that if they experienced the wow-factor, I would truly know the approach worked. To accompany the sonification, I made a video from old home movies and wildlife documentaries. I travelled down the night before and sat in my hotel room fretting. Would the sonification work for everyone, or was it just me?

The performance was a success! So many people kindly spoke to me about the intensity of their feeling during the performance. Playing to a crowd had intensified the experience. I was overwhelmed by the success of the sonification. I also held focus groups to record listener reactions, and they matched the success of the performance.

The research paper, published in Biological Conservation, reports more of these quotes and the varied responses of listeners. Now, I need to get as many people as possible to hear the sonification, to maximise the impact. I have recently published a scientific journal article detailing precisely how the method works and showing focus group feedback on the listening experience of different sounds, such as song, poems, and a field recording.

I have performed the sonification in other venues, in Germany and the USA. I have made versions available online so as many people as possible could hear it, including the accompanying video. With the online versions, it has the possibility to make an impact globally, not just where I can perform the piece.

You can find out more about taking action against wildlife loss and the changes needed in the Living Planet Report.

With thanks to Sigur Ros for the music. 

Listen to Sigur Rós - Hoppípolla [Official Music Video - 4K]

Representing biodiversity decline data by manipulating familiar audio files to create emotional responses: A novel sonification method of soundwave-level deletion, Biological Conservation

Sonifyed - Soundcloud

Sonifyed - Vimeo

Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) 

Living Planet Index

Living Planet Report 2024