Upon reading David Dunn's paper on Nature, Sound Art and the Sacred, I thought about the times I have listened to music since it is very prevalent in my life and if the content artists create made me or others feel "richer in the end" as David Dunn explains how art does and/or should. I thought it was interesting when he brought up the point of how some songs have changed the meaning of music as a whole over the years to more as a "distraction, self-glorification of musicians, or growth of a new industrial sector". He rather suggests that music should be similar to the way in which we regard meditation so that we can be better able to understand these sounds as an aesthetic phenomena and a gain a more deepened awareness of our world. I found this very accurate as through the modern day manipulation of music it has definitely changed the meaning and real importance of music over the years as there have been songs that have been publicized in that they send the wrong message, or just songs that grew famous solely on popularity and artist self-glorification.
Since we all have such a different connection with music that becomes a way in which we might refashion our relationship to nonhuman living things, we have to be careful with what we chose to listen to but more importantly how we listen to it. Environmentally, Dunn points out an important point in that we have to take ownership of the environmental damage that our tech has damaged, as well as, welcome the non-human living creatures in an equal and accepting manner. I think this is very important in preserving our natural world that our generations are increasingly taking more advantage of. In one of his projects, David Dunn experimented with the mimicry of birds to see how they would respond to humans electronic manipulation of music in which they were progressively able to match their natural sounds to and not reject the type of music.
Although a very small experiment, it goes to show that humans and animals are aware of each other which birds do not reject showing that humans should not reject the intelligence and sounds that natural non human living species create. If we were able to listen and accept the sounds of our natural world without trying to change it in a way that "seems fit"to us we can create a better understanding of our world and more specifically, the sounds we and natural creatures have constructed in figuring out our place in our world.
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