Domestic Soundscapes
Caoimhe O'Donnell
National College of Art and Design Dublin
Ireland has one of the most ecologically degraded landscapes in Europe, yet this decline is largely invisible in everyday life. Domestic Soundscapes makes biodiversity perceptible through sound. A solar-powered bioacoustic monitoring system captures the soundscape of domestic gardens and translates acoustic complexity into a daily biodiversity score. Residents can track change through a living dashboard and take simple seasonal actions, such as planting native species, leaving grass long, and creating habitat, that influence what the system hears over time. As data from individual gardens accumulates, it reveals how biodiversity changes across a neighbourhood and how collective action can influence what is heard