“The bioacoustician and musician Bernie Krause has been recording soundscapes of the natural world since 1968, from coral reefs to elephant stamping grounds to the Amazonian rain forest,” writes Rachel Donado in Tuesday’s (6/28) New York Times. “Now, Mr. Krause’s recordings have become part of an immersive new exhibition at the Cartier Foundation [in Paris] called ‘The Great Animal Orchestra.’ … At its heart is a work by the London-based collective United Visual Artists, who have transformed Mr. Krause’s recordings of the natural world into 3-D renderings. Imagine stepping into a soundproofed black-box theater whose walls spring to life with what look like overlapping electrocardiograms, representing different species’ sounds.… Mr. Krause is a polymathic musician who performed with the folk group the Weavers and helped introduce the Moog synthesizer to pop music … and film scores. He … is dismissive of scientists who focus on only one species at a time. Singling out one bird in a habitat is ‘like trying to understand the magnificence of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by abstracting the sound of a single violin player out of the orchestra and hearing just that one part,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to hear the whole thing.’ ”
Posted June 29, 2016
