Sunday, June 7, 2015

TED Talks: The Voice of the Natural World

TED Talks
The Voice of the Natural World -Bernie Krause

Rating: *****



I gave this TED Talks a 5 star rating due to the subject choice and the structure of the presentation. The subject spoken about in this video was the sounds of the wild and how humans actions impacted them. The other reason that made me give this presentation a 5 star rating was the message that Bernie Krause was trying to give to us. Even if you don’t see a big change, if you just listened to the animals you would really understand the impact of your actions.


I really enjoyed this presentation because of the subject material. Bernie Krause spoke about what many people usually ignore when they go outdoors. He spoke about the sounds of nature. The subject really suited him because for the past 45 years he has gone outside and planted recording devices to record animals(These recordings are called soundscapes). He then would teach us about how the soundscape works. He would let us listen to the recordings, and on a tv screen he would show us the actual recording frequencies and would teach us what each frequency was representing. He would then show us another soundscape, which was less enjoyable, which represented the wild after humans had effected it.

The way Bernie structured his presentation was also really well done. He would let us listen to the wildlife from one of his recordings, and he would tell us what things that we were listening to so that we can really enjoy it. He would then tell us what human actions had occurred in the area which he had made the recording, and would then present a second soundscape of the same place. In one example he made a soundscape of a forest with a river. We could hear the water from the river and tons of birds chirping. In this example, the human action which took place was selective logging. He then presented a picture of the forest before and after the logging, and there wasn’t a single difference. Following this he presented the second soundscape. The difference in the two recordings was huge. There were practically zero birds left in the area except a single woodpecker which was pecking some wood at the end of the recording. You could basically just call it a recording of a river. This shows, that even though people might say it doesn’t have a large effect on an environment, there will still be large changes even if you can’t see them.

Watching this TED Talks really helped me understand the repercussions of my actions. Even if I’m doing something that doesn’t make a visual consequence on what’s around me, by doing things in the outdoors I’m still having an effect what’s surrounding me.




Reference: Krause, Bernie. 'The Voice Of The Natural World'. Ted.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 7    June 2015.

No comments:

Post a Comment