Higher-order ambisonics recordings in primary equatorial rainforests—A listening experience

The project “Fragments of Extinction” has been working since 1998 at the crossroads between ecoacoustics research, technological innovation and sound art, recording the sound of the oldest and most biodiverse ecosystems of primary tropical forests in the Amazon, Africa, and South-East Asia. Through advanced higher-order ambisonics recording technologies, employed in these remote and extreme environments, the project is building an extensive sound archive of entire circadian cycles. These 24-h long spherical soundscape portraits are presented to audiences in the form of full-periphonic installations, to foster awareness about the extinction crisis and the urgency of heritagization of the last sanctuaries of evolution, which high systemic integrity is surprisingly clear in their sonic processes. This lecture will outline the aims and challenges of the last expedition in Borneo in February 2023, which represented the most important recording campaign of the project, into—possibly—the biologically oldest tropical forest on Earth. 3 Terabytes of recordings have been carried out, for the first time, with a 64-channel microphone array, thus constituting the first attempt of its kind for storing the high-resolution spatial properties of a vanishing acoustic habitat. Depending on the hosting venue and the available multichannel system the recordings could be presented as a unique ambisonics 2D or 3D listening experience of an impressive dusk chorus sequence.