different types of users are able to intuitively navigate through the data collected under the PANP project, coordinated by the biologist Paulo Marques under the ISPA-IU (Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada – Instituto Universitário) in a partnership with MUHNAC (Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência da Universidade de Lisboa). According to the MUHNAC, the national archive of Portuguese biodiversity sums up to nearly 2800 hours of the Soundscapes Project recordings, from around 21 locations. The first objective of the work we are now presenting was to design a clear map of this database of sounds. However, when listening to the soundscapes, knowing the places where they had been recorded, we were transported to images of the sites, hence becoming landscapes. That changed the perspective of our project. The main purpose is now to create a cross-modal and sensorial-rich digital experience, which weaves sound and image; a synaesthesic journey through the sounds of life and the images from where it all happens. Such experience should be capable of portraying the recorded territory and displaying its potential as an acoustic and visual site, allowing a natural navigation through the recordings, so that their intrinsic information can be fully enjoyed by a diversity of individuals. To make sure that the several dimensions of knowledge contained in each recording were addressed – recording site, variable conditions such as season and time of day, recording time, type of landscape portrayed, the team responsible for collecting the audio, technical equipment used, audible and identified species in the audio track – we needed a deep understanding of the audio collection. This task required extensive analysis and familiarization with the data’s nature and the development of notations to properly catalogue it. Assorting this information and displaying it in an organized manner, along with the implementation of a search mechanism, helped to streamline the process of reaching and exploring the data, broadening its spectrum of users. Perusing this kind of raw data granted us a singular perspective on a very rich physical, cultural and visual territory. Ensuring the user is offered different fruition levels, such as the ability to study the species, listening to a compilation of sounds or immersing themselves in the identity of a place, became part of the design brief. Digital platforms, such as websites, arise as an optimum medium for sensorial-rich data and physically distant places – allowing the combination of sound and image, making for a representative experience of what visiting a certain place would feel like. The pliability of the digital medium allows it to be shaped both as a scientific archive, flexible enough to display the data from different perspectives and to stack knowledge layers, and as a poetic library, available to experts and laymen. Considering that the developed notations have substantial reach, the system is able to accommodate the addition of posterior recordings, thus being able to grow and support a larger database, both in terms of time, for diachronic samples of existing sites enabling a comparative evolution of ecosystems, as in geography. Enlarging the audience poses some questions that we must face. From an optimist perspective, we see it as an extraordinary opportunity to communicate these territories, inviting users to physically experience the sites. On the other hand, if these sites are not prepared, having already some kind of infrastructures in place (e.g. national parks), bringing too many people can alter the balance of ecosystems that are still very well preserved, being precisely this one of the first reasons to be portrayed.
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