Lungs of the Earth (Pulmões da Terra)

The biophony of an environment (the sounds of a specific habitat) often speaks volumes to the health of an ecosystem. In many parts of the world today, animal calls and bird songs are being lost to ecological damage, and in some places, more-than-human music has become altogether extinct.

Lungs of the Earth remembers the endangered piha bird and places her at the heart of the soundscape—a bird native to the Amazon and the second loudest bird species on the planet. The piha is unusually sensitive to disaster and is typically found in the most well-preserved corners of the forest. In this ecological dystopia, she is reimagined as a forest keeper, calling urgently for our attention.

Stepping inside the forest, audiences become immersed in a spatialized soundscape with field recordings from the Amazon rainforest by sound artist Felix Blume and composed together by sound designer Bernardo Alvarado Rojas. Four elemental poems by Brazilian writers—”Water” by Patrizia Longhitano, “Fire” by Virna Teixeira, “Air” by Alyssa Martens, and “Earth” by Monika Radojevic—take audiences on a narrative journey, highlighting the call and response between animal and human voices.

Lungs of the Earth is a tribute to the entangled relationship between humans and ‘the last forest,’ and it serves as a monument to the songs being lost to deforestation and climate change.