Each note you hear, played on a restored player piano from 1921, represents the number of elephants who may die in the future from ivory poaching in a single month. Much as an elephant would caress the tusks of a loved one who has died, a ghostly absence seems to play these deathly notes. As was common before the 1970s, the keys of this beautiful, antique instrument were crafted from ivory, the very material that drives people to kill elephants for their tusks. Though pianos are no longer made with ivory, this piece serves as a haunting reminder of how our unchecked or ill-informed desires can have devastating impacts on our ecosystem and other beings.

The score, both eerie and meditative, counts down, month by month, from today's 400,000 African elephants—predicting how many elephants may die each month that the world does nothing to stop ivory poaching. Lower, longer notes represent greater numbers killed for their ivory. During the ten minute piece, poaching increases at rate of only 1.5% annually. After only 300 months (25 years), the count of living elephants falls to zero, the piano’s ivory keys fall silent…and elephants are extinct.