Artist spends year recording the sounds of a forest in upstate New York

Artist and filmmaker Joshua Bonnetta spent a year recording the sounds of a forest in upstate New York, condensing 8,760 hours of audio into a four-hour album.

The Pines is “like a poetic version of a scientific chart,” The Guardian wrote. Placing a recorder halfway up a pine tree, Bonnetta captured both ambient sounds — falling rain, branches creaking under snow, and even “leaves fill[ing] in on the deciduous trees” — and raucous wildlife noises from chipmunks and a “pretty gnarly raccoon.”

The soundscapes also contain an “undercurrent of mourning” stemming from the climate crisis, The Guardian wrote: “You could always be recording something that you might not be able to record again,” Bonnetta said.