The Art of Creation: Putting Music in Its Place

Have you ever tried to put a place to music? James Bulley and Daniel Jones, two UK artists and musicians, teamed up together with sponsors, scientists, and other musicians, to do just that. In 2014, they created a musical art installation series entitled Living Symphonies, reflecting through music the presence and life of the landscape, flora, and fauna found within the four pieces of forest land where the installations were placed. They followed up with a fifth installation, also in a UK forest, in 2023.

The process began with a team of ecologists and wildlife experts carefully documenting the wildlife, plants, and atmospheric conditions in the 6400 square-foot area they had earmarked. They took photographs, compiled detailed surveys, and created maps and keys showing the location of specific flowers, shrubs, insects, reptiles, mammals, ground cover, etc.

They documented the characteristics of each creature: speed, size, eating habits, hours of activity, exact location, etc. A specific set of musical motifs was designed to represent each species based on their characteristics. If an animal moves quickly or slowly, that is portrayed through the music. If it crawls or flies, that is echoed in its sound. The animal's waking and sleeping hours are reflected in how its sound is included the musical composition, with its sound becoming audible as it wakens and becoming muted or silent as it moved toward sleep.

Each species' sound also interacts with the sounds of other species based on the interactions of the species within the ecosystem. If a bird perches in a tree habitually, the sound for the bird and the tree might coexist together in the music. Groupings of creatures can lead to groupings of sounds in the music. Changes in weather and time of day changes the music in the same way that changes in weather affect the activity of creatures who live within an ecosystem.

The music was created and recorded by a group of musicians playing a variety of instruments: violin, cello, bassoon, percussion, flute, piano, saxophone, etc. Then, it was then installed within the forest from which it was inspired, being played back through a three-dimensional sound system. The music was played from morning until late afternoon for a week time period, with people wandering in, looking and listening, and making connections between the things they saw and experienced with the music created to represent it.

Below are three short excerpts from two of the Living Symphonies. The first two are from the Living Symphony created and played back into Fineshade Woods in Northamptonshire, one reflecting morning and one reflecting evening in that place. The third is an evening from Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire. (To enable Soundcloud excerpts, click "view in browser" link above the first image of the post).

The forests are only 80 miles apart, with some overlap in species, but the symphony puts into music the reality that each place (and time) is distinct.

As you listen to these excerpts, I invite you to imagine yourself in these woods, listening to birds and bees buzz around you, hearing the movement of small and large creatures. I wonder what sort of activity you visualize as you listen. How does the morning feel different from the evening in Fineshade and how do the evenings in Fineshade and Cannock Close differ. Can you feel and hear the distinct aspects of each?

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After this experience, I encourage you to enter an outdoor space around your own home and make your own detailed observations of that place. What creatures do you see and hear? What plants, large and small, are growing there? What kind of music would write for this place if you were to do so?

Feel free to leave a comment below (you can sign in through your email) or contact me directly at louise.conner@circlewood.online. We also encourage you to forward this piece to anyone you think might benefit from it.

Louise

Final Call! Is there a particular poem, or line from a poem, that helps you to keep a measure of hope in your perspective when you feel the brokenness of the world acutely? If so, we would love for you to share it with us. Send it, along with a short explanation of what it means to you, by April 20th and I will include it in a post compiling what is sent in from our readers. (If you have an image to go along with it, please consider including that as well.)

The Ecological Disciple is part of Circlewood, an organization committed to "accelerating the greening of faith."

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