LINES performance of Biophony.
Photo credit: Quinn Wharton.
acoustic and visual aspect of our culture. In other words, it was the vast human-animal world
that taught us to dance and sing. That’s because
when we lived more closely connected to the
natural world; in order to align ourselves with
it, we mimicked the sounds and movements we
heard and saw—first in our musical expression
and then our linguistic expression. That is our
background—it is deep in our DNA.
If people want to know more about that, they
might want get a hold of our recent book called
The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of
Music in the World’s Wild Places. There is a lot of
science in there.
move to the compelling and organized sounds
of the natural world? I mean we certainly did
that when we lived more closely connected to
it.
If you just play the sounds, it brings out the
mystery and the wonder, compared to projecting photographs or signage that just distracts
from the atavistic connections that we so badly
need to reach. If the performance setting is
right, it needs no explanation. Like I said earlier, the answers are buried deep in our social
DNA. We have all the answers already.
JF: Many in the science community would consider your recordings data—a record of animal
JF: A conventional way to present your record- behavior. Why present them in a collaborative
ings would have been to include illustrative con- setting with dance?
tent—video or photos of the animals that make
these sounds. Why dance? Why the performing BK: I think the answer to that as a scientist
arts?
with a PhD in the field of bioacoustics, I can
tell you that the ways in which I have to frame
BK: My background is acoustics, and what on
my subject matter may be fine for a handful of
earth is more illustrative than having dancers
us in the discipline, who comprehend the ob-
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SciArt in America June 2015