Polyphony
London, 2023
LED, Aluminium, Rubber, Electronics, Speakers, Code
Polyphony is a performative, audiovisual installation that invites visitors to contemplate the role of sound in shaping our world. For millennia, humans have lived surrounded by a rich symphony of life composed of insects, birdsong, the rustling of leaves, and the cries of various creatures. The biophony of our environment (the animal sounds of a specific habitat) has shaped human language, songs, musical instruments, and other sonic traditions. Polyphony is a tribute to this entangled relationship between humans and the animals with whom we share our environment. It also serves as a monument to the human and nonhuman songs that are being lost due to industrialization, urbanisation, noise pollution and species extinction.
Stepping inside the circular array of 128 light columns and and 18 speakers, visitors are immersed in a soundscape inspired by field recordings from the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve in the Central African Republic, recorded by bioacoustician Bernie Krause and his late colleague, the ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno. Home to chorusing frogs and insects, as well as several bird species known for their counterpoint calls, the sounds of this environment are echoed in the traditional instruments and rhythmic patterns native to the local B’Aka pygmy tribe, highlighting the call and response between natural sounds and cultural sounds.
The delicate acoustic fabric of this interspecies concert is rudely interrupted by human-made sounds of a different sort—the sounds of logging, poaching, low-flying aircraft, and deforestation —calling attention to the ways ecosystems and the species who inhabit them are threatened by encroaching industrialization. In recent years, much of this forest ecosystem has been destroyed by poaching and illegal logging.
Run time: 23 minutes
Soundscape by Dr. Bernie Krause, courtesy of Wild Sanctuary Inc., Generative Sound Design and Spatial Mix by Dave Meckin
Commissioned by 180 Studios
Film by Matt Watt
Images by Jack Hems
