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KLANGWÄLDCHEN/KURFÜRSTENSTRAßE | 24-channel sound installation for a neglected vegetation, Kurfürstenstraße 134, Berlin.

Klangwäldchen (English: Sonic Grove) explores the role and value of vegetation in urban environments. The site-specific work was developed for an abandoned plot, where a population of self planted birch trees live an anonymous life behind the fenced site. 

By giving the trees a voice —consisting of a soft glittering sound cloud, emanating from loudspeakers invisibly mounted high above onto the tree-trunks— the aim was to make visible and value a large part of the cities' more than human inhabitants.

The visitor could experience an atmosphere of a quiet, soft  synchronized sound cloud evolving from the inside of the location.

Divided into four smaller groups of “voices” , the slow synchronized sound cloud moving between the loudspeakers in the trees, emphazised the perspective and depth of the location and their non-human inhabitantS— just as sunlight streams into the greenery.

CREDITS:

K&K Kulturmanagement & Kommunication in commission by Quartiersmanagements Magdeburger Platz. In cooporation with Universität der Künste Berlin (Prof. Daniel Ott, Komponist, Institut für Neue Musik der UdK Berlin and Dr. Martin Supper, UNI.K- Udk Studio für Klangkunst und Klangforschung)
Fox Ingenieurbüro Berlin: Technical realization

LINKS:

Tagesspiegel

GIVING VOICE TO THE TREES:
During 2006-2009, through a number of  projects, I explored the absence of the intrinsic value of plants in urban environments, and their right to life for their own sake.

In the anthopocentric city, nature only has value in relation to its utility for humans. Either it is considered as weeds, alternatively used as "living material", a concept quite common within landscape architecture when referring to trees and bushes. Used as architectural material in the same sense as glass, steel and concrete, the vegetation just like the weed has no real value of its own.

The works were designed as large-scale public sound installations involving whole groups, avenues and clusters of trees. Sounding "voices" emanating from loudspeakers invisible installed in the greenery, draw attention to the trees – and their existence.