What you'll hear in the Fern Room is Orniphonia 2 by Chicago composer and artist Bob Snyder. Importantly, there are no actual bird sounds in this piece at all—everything is created through electronic means using analog synthesis. The compositional approach is similar to the groundbreaking Forbidden Planet (1956), the first movie with an electronic soundtrack. In that film, each character is accompanied by a unique sound created by an electronic circuit. In Orniphonia 2, the sound of each “creature” is also generated by a particular circuit. Each circuit generates patterns consisting of cycles within cycles that interact and change. The fact that a circuit producing regular interacting patterns of change can mimic a living organism reflects the fact that all living things exhibit rhythmic behavior, and that all biological life interacts with its environment in a regular way.
Orniphonia 2 was commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio for the Florasonic sound installation series, a partnership with the Chicago Park District curated by Lou Mallozzi.
March 3rd, 2013 - June 30, 2013
Fern Room, Lincoln Park Conservatory
2391 N. Stockton Drive
Opening Reception:
SUNDAY MARCH 3RD, 3-5PM
Exhibition hours:
DAILY, 9:00AM-5:00PM
FREE ADMISSION
Bob Snyder graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy, and received a Master of Music degree with honors from Chicago Musical College. He has produced video work exhibited in two Whitney Biennial Exhibitions, and is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and The Long Beach Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many other places. He has studied and written about the relationship of memory to music, and has published writing on that subject with MIT and Oxford Presses. He is on the faculty of the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About Florasonic
Florasonic is a unique program that commissions composers and artists to make new site-specific music and audio art installations for the Fern Room of the Lincoln Park Conservatory, a turn-of-the-century greenhouse. Curated by ESS Executive Director Lou Mallozzi, Florasonic presents each project for three to five months, visited by an estimated 500 to 1,000 people each day.
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