David Monacchi is an Italian sound artist, researcher and eco-acousticcomposer, best known for his multidisciplinary project [|Fragments of Extinction], patented periphonic device, the Eco-Acoustic Theatre, and award-winning music and sound-art installations. Monacchi is internationally recognized for his pioneering work with nonprofit organizations, such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation, and Ear to the Earth, to capture and preserve the unique sonic heritage of the world’s rapidly vanishing, last remaining areas of undisturbed primaryequatorial rainforest; his many thousands of hours of field work dedicated to the creation and development of a growing sound bank of these remote ecosystems, which provides raw data for the scientific analysis and study of the world’s most critically endangered biodiversity hotspots; and for raising public awareness and fostering discourse on the biodiversity crisis through his musical compositions and immersive sound installations.
Fragments of Extinction
Over the past 25 years, composer David Monacchi has conducted field recordings throughout Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, North and South America. During a 2002 pilot project in the Brazilian Amazon conducted in collaboration with Greenpeace, Monacchi collected his first high-definition ‘sound portraits’ of an intact tropical ecosystem. With these unique recordings, he composed the eco-acoustic opera Fragments of a Sonic World in Extinction, which toured theatres and contemporary music venues across Europe and the United States. Now, nearly 15 years later, Monacchi’s Fragments of Extinction is its own independent nonprofit organization, dedicated to conducting field research in the world’s last remaining areas of undisturbed primary equatorial rainforest, and a member of ECSITE. Capturing 3D soundscape recordings of these ecosystems with high-technology, "space-inclusive” and “space-preservative” methods and experimental mic techniques, Monacchi is able to faithfully reproduce these sonic ecosystems over periphonic loud-speaker arrays and to produce evocative eco-acoustic compositions, which bring audiences into intimate contact with the acoustic biodiversity of remote ecosystems. Fragments of Extinction is currently being developed with the multiple aims of: collecting three-dimensional 24-hour cycles of acoustic biodiversity from the most important rainforest hotspots at the equator; analyzing and studying the field data from an ecological and aestheticpoint of view; and disseminating the results in research, educational and art contexts by means of the "Eco-acoustic Theatre," a flexible, periphonic theatre space, designed, engineered, and patented by Monacchi.
