Keyword ‣ noise
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We live in a world interwoven with voices, which release meaning beyond the invisible of the night or the distance, and reveal the marvelous part of the world. These voices carry us and speak to us, without our even paying attention to them. Even abiotic sound productions – thunder, murmuring rain or rolling waves – remain meaningful and interpretable. Plants, we recently learned, are also sensitive to sound vibrations. Just like trees, in a way, listen. But contemporary noise, this filth of our industrious societies, blurs access to these sensitive realities of life. The Anthropocene is coupled with Thorivocene (from the Greek thóryvos, noise), an era of din and irrelation.

Noise-free zones have fallen by 50-90% since the industrial boom began in the 108th century, and cities themselves have become unlivable. In the heart of Île-de-France alone, the noise caused by transport results in a loss of eleven months of life for each inhabitant, ie an overall loss of 000 years of life in good health. More than 70% of Parisians are bothered by noise, even though double-glazed windows are closed. And in high school environments, listening to amplified music through headphones today leads one in seven final year students to have to put up with a thirty-year-old ear. Noise creeps in everywhere. And, everywhere, it alters listening.

But we are not alone in suffering. Acting like a relational switch, noise blocks the flow of life. It obstructs the free circulation of voices, multiplies the snags in the tight fabric of relationships between living beings. Anthropophony has now invaded marine spaces by multiplying the deafening snoring of ships, the repeated percussion of mining surveys and other military sonar issues. It is one of the sources of emblematic cetacean strandings.

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