Qu'est-ce que le silence ? Est-ce vraiment l'absence de tout ? En écoutant bien, le silence n'est peut-être pas celui que l'on croit. Il n'est ni vide ni singulier, mais plein et pluriel. On découvre les grands silences, peut-être inquiétants, des vastes horizons, les silences naturels qui sonnent tout sauf creux, les silences quotidiens dans l'attaque des prédateurs, la discrétion des proies ou les soupirs des enlacements. Aller chercher les silences dans l'évolution, le comportement animal et l'écologie, c'est aussi découvrir en contrepoint la diversité sonore étoilée du monde sauvage et dénoncer les bruits, ces horribles grincements de nos agitations, qui les menacent. Et si on respirait quelques instants pour écouter le silence et son histoire naturelle ?
45 fragments d'histoire naturelle, issus des chroniques de Jérôme Sueur dans l'émission radio La Terre au Carré, font résonner les sons de la nature pour en exprimer toute la beauté et la diversité. Illustrée de 150 sons captés sur terre et sous mer, cette anthologie est une invitation à découvrir le monde vivant par la voie sonore.
In our busy, noisy world, we may find ourselves longing for silence. But what is silence exactly? Is it the total absence of sound? Or is it the absence of the sound created by humans - the kind of deep stillness you might experience in a remote mountain landscape covered in snow, far away from the bustle of human life? When we listen closely, silence reveals a neglected reality. Neither empty nor singular, silence is instead plentiful and multiple. In this book, eco-acoustic historian Jérôme Sueur allows us to discover a vast landscape of silences which trigger the full gamut of our emotions: anxiety, awe and peace. He takes us from vistas resplendent with full and rich natural silences to the everyday silence of predators as they stalk their prey. To explore silences in animal behaviour and ecology is to discover a counterpoint to the acoustic diversity of the natural world, throwing into sharp relief the grating reverberations of the human activity which threatens it. It is to attune ourselves to a world that our human insensitivities have closed off to us, to take a moment simply to breathe and listen to the place of silence in nature.
Sound is almost always around us, anywhere, at any time, reaching our ears and stimulating our brains for better or worse. Sound can be the disturbing noise of a drill, a merry little tune sung by a friend, the song of a bird in the morning or a clap of thunder at night. The science of sound, or acoustics, studies all types of sounds and therefore covers a wide range of scientific disciplines, from pure to applied acoustics. Research dealing with acoustics requires a sound to be recorded, analyzed, manipulated and, possibly, changed. This is particularly, but not exclusively, the case in bioacoustics and ecoacoustics, two life sciences disciplines that attempt to understand and to eavesdrop on the sound produced by animals. Sound analysis and synthesis can be challenging for students, researchers and practitioners who have few skills in mathematics or physics. However, deciphering the structure of a sound can be useful in behavioral and ecological research - and also very amusing.
This book is dedicated to anyone who wants to practice acoustics but does not know much about sound. Acoustic analysis and synthesis are possible, with little effort, using the free and open-source software R with a few specific packages. Combining a bit of theory, a lot of step-by-step examples and a few cases studies, this book shows beginners and experts alike how to record, read, play, decompose, visualize, parametrize, change, and synthesize sound with R, opening a new way of working in bioacoustics and ecoacoustics but also in other acoustic disciplines.
