Arizona State University: Sound as Connection – Listening Across Species and Deep Time

Sound is a great revealer. It passes through barriers, flows through darkness and stitches living beings into webs of information and communication. Attentive listening can reveal ecologies, histories, injustices and future possibilities.

Beginning with human voices and music, David George Haskell explores the connections carried in sound, showing how our sonic creativity arises from deep evolutionary history and present-day ecology. How do our mammalian origins shape our voices? What can we learn from the first musical instruments on Earth?

These human experiences echo the creative roles of sound in the more-than-human world. Listening to the textures and forms of bird and insect songs, for example, reveals how animals relate to the physical structures of their homes. These interconnections suggest ways we might use listening — individually and collectively — to reconnect and defragment our lives.