Earth Garden Lets You Explore the World Through Field Recordings

Earth Garden is a new interactive web project that allows users to explore the globe through environmental audio recordings sourced from Freesound. Inspired by Radio Garden, which lets listeners tune into live radio stations worldwide, Earth Garden replaces radio with natural and urban soundscapes. Users can navigate a 3D globe and hear sounds from various locations, such as waves on Atlantic islands, crickets in Tanzania, and rainfall in Manhattan. The project automatically rotates the globe, transitioning between recordings as the reticle moves. Users can also add generic ambient drones in the background. The recordings are drawn from Freesound, a collaborative database of audio samples, which means quality and volume can vary, and coverage is denser in the US and Europe, particularly the UK. The project was featured in an article by Terrence O'Brien on The Verge, which highlights it as a soothing and engaging way to pass time. Earth Garden is part of a trend of web-based audio exploration tools, offering a unique auditory experience of the world.