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Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores how the sounds of biodiversity might be translated into artistic forms that extend their scientific significance in the public sphere, by showing local social realities and imaginaries of nature, focusing on a collaborative project in the Calanques outside of Marseilles.

Paper long abstract:

How can aesthetics become a tool for the assessment of biodiversity in ways that provide opportunities for co-production and participation, the creation of new knowledge and support for conservation initiatives ? Typically, it is visual approaches that dominate considerations of this question. They involve ways of seeing biodiversity in the landscape that can range from its pictorialization for aesthetic appreciation to its abstraction into non-representational forms for scientific analysis.

This project takes another approach to the aesthetic evaluation of biodiversity, exploring its representation through sound and its perception through ways of listening, rather than relying on images and ways of seeing. It aims to connect ideas about what a sustainable, biodiverse future should look like with what it should sound like. Specifically, it explores how the sounds of biodiversity might be translated into artistic forms that extend their scientific significance in the public sphere, by showing local social realities and imaginaries of nature. It considers this question in the context of polluted landscapes where visual perception alone may obscure the value of their biodiversity. It focuses on a particular case: the chemical pollution and ‘nature based ‘conservation of a landmark feature of the industrial Calanques – the ‘reclining chimney’ (Cheminée rampante) – in a biodiversity hotspot. It treats this case as an experimental scenario for combining scientific systems of data modelling involving ecology, bio-acoustics and acoustics with perceptions and representations of that environment, involving anthropology, film and psychology.