2014 | Site-responsive sound installation | 16 channels
September 19, 2014–April 30, 2015 | World premiere
Commissioned by Rod Faulds, Director of the Schmidt Center Gallery
Presented as part of Common Ground: Artists in the Everglades
Performing Arts Building, Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
Bats and Insects, animated rendering by Freddy Jouwayed. © 2014 Subtropics Editions.
THE INSTALLATION
Bats and Insects was created for a public passage connecting the entrance of Florida Atlantic University’s Performing Arts Building with the Schmidt Center Gallery. Approximately 200 feet long and 25 feet high, the hallway widened near the gallery entrance into a space resembling a lobby.
Sixteen custom-made black panels hung overhead on aircraft cable. Exciters turned the panels into individual loudspeakers, allowing the recorded sounds of bats and mosquitoes to move back and forth through the entire length of the passage.
Two players ran materials in loops of different durations. Their changing relationship meant that the bats and mosquitoes sometimes appeared to chase one another, sometimes crossed paths, and sometimes moved independently. Rather than repeating as a fixed narrative, these encounters continued to rearrange themselves while the installation operated.
The piece remained active continuously, gently accompanying students and other passersby through the building while also drawing visitors from its entrance toward the gallery.
MAKING THE RECORDINGS
Bats are difficult to record in nature. Their flight is erratic, they are difficult to locate in darkness, and their echolocation calls occur at frequencies beyond the range of human hearing.
I recorded them with extended-frequency microphones as well as homemade ultrasonic boundary microphones designed by David Dunn and built during a workshop hosted by iSAW in Miami. The recorded calls were brought down into the range of human hearing, making it possible to hear sounds that ordinarily help bats navigate and locate prey but remain inaudible to us.
Mosquitoes present an almost opposite recording problem. They are abundant and readily heard when they approach us, but their flight sounds are difficult to isolate within the dense soundscape of the Everglades.
The bat and mosquito materials live inside field recordings made during my month-long AIRIE residency in Everglades National Park. David Dunn joined me in the park for part of that residency and contributed to this body of recordings. The recording containing the bat calls was made at Long Pine Key on September 12, 2013, between six and nine in the evening.
Bats use sound to probe their surroundings. Mosquitoes become audible only when they pass very near us and disappear again as they move away. These are two very different ways of using sound to negotiate a life.
The piece is dedicated to scientist Skip Snow, who taught me about the bats living in Everglades National Park and helped me understand where and when they might be found.
THE SOUNDS AND THEIR MOTION
Three kinds of sound inhabit the installation: bat calls, mosquito flight, and the otherwise hidden acoustical signature of the building.
The suspended black panels carried the bat and mosquito recordings. A custom relay-based sequencer switched the signals among the sixteen individual speakers, causing the sounds to travel in two directions through the passage. The switching system functioned almost like a bank of independent gates, allowing each source to appear, disappear, and continue its movement elsewhere.
The small exciters used for the hanging panels could not reproduce the lower resonant tones needed to activate the architecture. To carry those frequencies, larger exciters were attached directly to the hallway’s glass windows, turning the glass itself into a group of nearly invisible loudspeakers.
The resonant tones were developed specifically from the acoustics of the site. Transmitted through the windows, they appeared to come from no identifiable source. While the bats and mosquitoes moved through the passage, these slowly changing tones allowed the building to make its own presence audible.
The relay system continued a method I first developed for Breezeway, in which a custom-built sequencer switched seventy-volt speakers on and off to move sound through an extended architectural space.
TECHNICAL REALIZATION AND CREDITS
The black exciter-panel speakers were developed by Gustavo Matamoros.
Freddy Jouwayed designed the installation layout and provided essential assistance in realizing its physical form.
Claudio Rodriguez designed and built the custom relay-based sequencer and assisted with the installation electronics.
Special thanks to Rod Faulds for the invitation, and to Sybille, Craig, and the Schmidt Center Gallery staff for their enthusiastic support.
