Ear to the Earth
Last week, I attended the Ear to the Earth festival (www.eartotheearth.org) in NYC. Put together by Joel Chadabe, President of the Electronic Music Foundation, it included some transcendently beautiful work, as the ambitious symphonic composition by Pierre Marieton from the found sounds of Hanoi, to some rather slight work by young artists. Much was far too loud for me but all was instructive.
Fascinating panels were interspersed thruout events showcasing the work of artists with scientists, as Andrea Polli and Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig (Columbia) and David Dunn with Jim Tolisano of Kinship Fellows, who pointed out that it was an artist, Alfred Wallace, who provided the observations upon which Charles Darwin based his theories of evolution. Dunn has been recording pine bark beetles, discovering what attracts them to trees and collating information that may now address the devastating infestations out West.
What were most moving to me were a series of installations based on gathered sounds, as Annea Lockwood map and soundscaping of the Danube, Philip Dadson of New Zealand on the Antarctica and the crown jewel, Suspended Sounds, a collaborative work by Joan LaBarbara, Chadabe, Alvin Curran, David Monacchi and Mort Sobotnick, listed as an equal collaborator, my former mentor from graduate school, who protested that his only involvement was at a dinner. I appreciated the spirit of generous attribution of the organizers.
The, Suspended Sounds, project organized the sounds of extinct and endangered animals into a series of Scenes, opening with the delicate voices of the extinct Dusky Seaside Sparrow and Bachmans Warbler and closing with the plaintive sound of the endangered Hawaiian Kauai O o bird.
In the final panel, Saturday October 14th, it was referenced from the World Watch Institute that we are now losing 10-20 000 species a year, compared to 4 per year in the past. We will shortly have lost two-thirds of all species. I found it heart-breaking to listen to the complex and beautiful calls of animals we have destroyed without a thought.
One of the most charming events was a chance to compare the rain sounds of Hildegaard Westerkamp, co-founder of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology from British Columbia and Steven Miller, recording sounds from the Pecos River in New Mexico. The former was light and comforting, the latter was threatening and dramatic, reflecting the respective ecological functions of rain in those ecologies.
An opening installation and closing panel participation was from Laurie Speigel, on NYC pigeons. She has observed that rats and pigeons compete for food and where there is an abundance of pigeons, there are fewer rats. She presented her comparisons between dogs and pigeons, pointing out that pigeons, as dogs, were bred to be dependent upon humans and tho now feral, are neither truly wild nor domestic. In captivity, they typically live into their twenties and mate for life. In the wilds of the city, their average life span is only two years. The installation was a series of views of these beautiful, intelligent and much maligned animals.
A notable element of all these works was the cross-disciplinary nature, in which visual and acoustic practice, science and art blurred and for the most part, created powerful statements about what we must all embrace if we are still to save something of this fragile earth for all the inhabitants. We share this planet and like pigeons, in many cases, are neither fully wild nor fully domesticated. What we are all dependent upon, is the kindness of strangers with a conscience.
Fascinating panels were interspersed thruout events showcasing the work of artists with scientists, as Andrea Polli and Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig (Columbia) and David Dunn with Jim Tolisano of Kinship Fellows, who pointed out that it was an artist, Alfred Wallace, who provided the observations upon which Charles Darwin based his theories of evolution. Dunn has been recording pine bark beetles, discovering what attracts them to trees and collating information that may now address the devastating infestations out West.
What were most moving to me were a series of installations based on gathered sounds, as Annea Lockwood map and soundscaping of the Danube, Philip Dadson of New Zealand on the Antarctica and the crown jewel, Suspended Sounds, a collaborative work by Joan LaBarbara, Chadabe, Alvin Curran, David Monacchi and Mort Sobotnick, listed as an equal collaborator, my former mentor from graduate school, who protested that his only involvement was at a dinner. I appreciated the spirit of generous attribution of the organizers.
The, Suspended Sounds, project organized the sounds of extinct and endangered animals into a series of Scenes, opening with the delicate voices of the extinct Dusky Seaside Sparrow and Bachmans Warbler and closing with the plaintive sound of the endangered Hawaiian Kauai O o bird.
In the final panel, Saturday October 14th, it was referenced from the World Watch Institute that we are now losing 10-20 000 species a year, compared to 4 per year in the past. We will shortly have lost two-thirds of all species. I found it heart-breaking to listen to the complex and beautiful calls of animals we have destroyed without a thought.
One of the most charming events was a chance to compare the rain sounds of Hildegaard Westerkamp, co-founder of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology from British Columbia and Steven Miller, recording sounds from the Pecos River in New Mexico. The former was light and comforting, the latter was threatening and dramatic, reflecting the respective ecological functions of rain in those ecologies.
An opening installation and closing panel participation was from Laurie Speigel, on NYC pigeons. She has observed that rats and pigeons compete for food and where there is an abundance of pigeons, there are fewer rats. She presented her comparisons between dogs and pigeons, pointing out that pigeons, as dogs, were bred to be dependent upon humans and tho now feral, are neither truly wild nor domestic. In captivity, they typically live into their twenties and mate for life. In the wilds of the city, their average life span is only two years. The installation was a series of views of these beautiful, intelligent and much maligned animals.
A notable element of all these works was the cross-disciplinary nature, in which visual and acoustic practice, science and art blurred and for the most part, created powerful statements about what we must all embrace if we are still to save something of this fragile earth for all the inhabitants. We share this planet and like pigeons, in many cases, are neither fully wild nor fully domesticated. What we are all dependent upon, is the kindness of strangers with a conscience.
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