Åsa Helena Stjerna
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KLANGWÄLDCHEN/NORDIC EMBASSIES, BERLIN | 12-channel sound installation for the birtch trees outside the Nordic Embassies.
Klangwäldchen (English: A little sonic forest) explores the role and value of vegetation in urban environments.
The work was developed for a group of planted birch trees outside the Nordic Embassies, as part of the 300th anniversary of Carl Linnaeus at the Nordic Embassies in Berlin. 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 greenery of the birch trees.
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:
Aris Fioretos, Nordic Embassies.
Fox Ingenieurbüro Berlin: Technical realization
Review Uppsala Nya Tidning
GIVING VOICE TO THE TREES:
During 2006-2009, through a number of projects, I artistically 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.
LINK TO FILM- AND SOUND DOCUMENTATION
Documentation | Klangwäldchen, Nordic Embassies, Berlin, Germany.