Short review of The Sound Atlas by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen.
This is a compendium of sonic curiosities which will contribute to the growing attention paid to the sounds that permeate the universe and our being. We live in a mainly visual culture and at last other senses, such as smell and hearing, are being celebrated.
This short book is wide ranging, as might be expected from one called an atlas, and guides us from the residual vibrations left over from the Big Bang, through the 2,300 different recorded songs of Berlin’s Nightingales, to the singing sands that spooked Marco Polo and intrigued Charles Darwin to the evolutionary war between bats and moths- some of the insects being able to jam or misdirect the echolocation used by the mammals.
The book explores the science of sound and humanity’s cultural and spiritual responses to experiencing its variety, and in doing so steadfastly avoids reductionism. An intriguing chapter on hearing the voice of God, cites Elijah’s wilderness experience and the visions of Philip K Dick!
Two of my favourite anecdotes are that there is a modern day member of the Kierkegaard family who records the sound of mortuaries and crematoria, and that Voyager 1 includes not only , famously, the sound of singing humpback whales but the laughter of Carl Sagan.
The subtitle of this book is wholly accurate.
‘ A guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination’.
