spectrogram on vegan silk printed with Oeko-Tex Standard 100 (certified non-toxic) ink
32 ft. x 2 ft.

from the Unearthed series

Silent Song is a 32-foot-long silk spectrogram, highlighting about 20 seconds of visualized sound from a 2-minute 34-second audio recording captured by naturalist Wil Hershberger at Maryland's Audrey Carroll Audubon Sanctuary in 2001. Hershberger's original recording is catalogued as artifact ML107431 in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library, the world’s premier scientific archive of natural history photographs, audio, and video. ML107431 features the bird songs of several Progne subis (Purple Martins), an endangered species that is especially sensitive to cold snaps. As aerial insectivores, Purple Martins are particularly at risk as cold temperatures diminish their food source. Extreme weather has also shifted their breeding habits and lowered fledgling survival rates.¹  Here in Unearthed, the Purple Martin's song is silent, represented only through a distorted specter of a spectrogram—denoting the precarity of this species' future as the climate crisis worsens.

¹ Taff, C. C., and J. R. Shipley. 2023. Inconsistent shifts in warming and temperature variability are linked to reduced avian fitness. Nature Communications 14: 7400. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43071-y