Welcome to my sonic project, The Heartbreaking Sound of Silence! This project feels like its halfway between a soundscape and a podcast episode. I’ve tried to recreate the feel of a beautiful jungle and provide some insightful voiceover. The goal of this project is to force folks who may be uncomfortable with the idea of hunting or trophy hunting to think critically about the massively positive impacts both activities have on wildlife conservation. I hope you enjoy!
The target audience of this project was the same as my previous project: people who may not know much about trophy hunting other than their personal disgust with it. However, the exigence of this project was slightly different than the exigence of my photo essay. Previously, the exigence was trying to figure out how to make a solid argument that may evoke a response or change in attitude from an audience uncomfortable with the idea of trophy hunting. Now, the exigence I am wrestling with is how to do exactly that without written word. Truthfully, I find this task a lot easier to handle than in my photo essay, partially because I’ve already made the argument, but also because I have an extensive background working with audio interfaces.
My idea came to me almost immediately. I set out to find copyright-free sound bites of exotic animals, and very quickly found Epidemic Sound. I downloaded maybe 5 or 6 different clips, and then closed my eyes and envisioned what I thought an exotic jungle may sound like. The first thing I thought of were the birds, loud, shrill, squawking, singing to one another. I downloaded another 20 one or two second clips, equalized them in Garageband to bring the highest frequencies down in volume, and layered them on top of each other to create one soundscape. Next, I downloaded my layered tracks into one master track to make room for the other sounds I wanted to include in my jungle. If you add too many individual audio tracks in any given DAW, your computer and project will slow to a halt; it becomes too much to process, so it’s important to blend cohesive sounds together occasionally, into one singular track. Next, I gathered specific bird sounds that anyone can identify, like peacocks, and spaced them out so that each sound stands alone, and the audience can clearly make them out. Next, I began adding the sounds of lions, elephants, chimpanzees, basically the “stars of the show” when one thinks about the jungle or exotic animals. (As I was doing this, I began to realize this jungle I was creating was highly fictionalized, as many of these animals do not exist within the same habitat. Lions are primarily a plains-grazing animal, while chimpanzees tend to live in denser, greener forests. To remedy this, I made a note that I must mention this is a purely hypothetical jungle where all the world’s most beloved megafauna lives in my voiceover.)
Next, I set out to create my own gunshot noises, so I studied a few DIY foley art videos on YouTube for inspiration. I figured my best bet was to slap a flat shoe against flat tile hard to get that perfect CLAP sound, and in Garageband I split the audio file in half so I could add a decent amount of reverb to the end of the sound, creating an echo effect that closely resembles the sound of a rifle firing. However, after trying this around my house on various surfaces with various objects, it became clear that the iPhone microphone is far too sensitive to accurately pick up the high end frequencies of such a loud noise, and would only pick up a soft pop that sounds nothing like a gunshot, even after playing with it in Garageband. The next best thing I could think of would be to record my roommate playing a shooter video game and then manipulating that sound until it had the proper amount of reverb on it, to make it sound like it came from a distance away. Again, I realized I would have to make a note in my voiceover to give a fair trigger warning to anybody that may be affected by such a sound. The gunshots in my project are meant to represent trophy hunters, only popping up seldomly, but consistently. I figured for the timeframe I’m working with three or four gunshots would be sufficient. The argument I’m trying to make with these sounds is that the sound of the jungle and the sound of an occasional rifle discharge are symbiotic in their relationship.
The point is you can’t have one without the other, as uncomfortable as that thought may be. Once the gunshots stop, I taper the sounds of the jungle until eventually, all the audience can hear is silence. The point I’m making with the silence is that if we take the gunshots away and ban trophy hunting across the globe, eventually those beautiful sounds of the jungle will be gone, too. I plan to leave a solid 10 to 15 seconds of silence before resuming my voiceover so that point resonates before explaining the uncomfortable reality that we must learn to be okay with: if you want to continue hearing the beautiful sounds of wildlife, you must accept that you’ll hear a gunshot occasionally, too.
If this topic interests you, and you’d like to know more, these following sources have provided me with rich information that have guided these past two projects:
O’Brian, Bill. “Hunters as Conservationists.” FWS.gov, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11 Apr. 2022, https://www.fws.gov/story/hunters-conservationists.
Rott, Nathan. “Decline in Hunters Threatens How U.S. Pays for Conservation.” NPR, NPR, 20 Mar. 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation.
Semcer, Catherine E. “Conservationists Should Support Trophy Hunting.” PERC, The Property and Environment Research Center, 1 Oct. 2019, https://www.perc.org/2019/09/06/conservationists-should-support-trophy-hunting/.
Abumrad, Jad. “The Rhino Hunter.” Radiolab, Simon Adler & Robert Krulwich, WNYC, 27 May 2021, radiolab.org, https://radiolab.org/episodes/rhino-hunter.