WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE FIELD (2020-21)
Where the Forest Meets the Field was part of the multi-year Art of Trees exhibition sponsored by the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College in Ohio. I was a visiting artist for the program, where I took classes of students to outdoor spaces around Gambier to listen to the trees and the larger environment. We explored stories and contexts around the trees, made field recordings, and created a “sonic field guide” based on recordings and listening sessions with students. I also reached out to community members of Gambier and Mt. Vernon; residents that have a long-term understanding of where they live, and many kinds of knowledge to share.
Most of the listening sessions took place at the Brown Family Environmental Center along the banks of the Kokosing River, which has been transformed from farmland to many different ecosystems, from prairies to pine groves to marshlands. In this way, the land begins to return to its older environments; land native peoples cared for, cultivated, and hunted on before being systematically and ruthlessly removed, as well as the ancient Adena people before them, who first farmed the land thousands of years ago.
“Where the forest meets the field” is a quote from my friend, the artist Nathaniel Parsons, where he describes the area between forest and field as his favorite place to visit. For this project, the space between the forest and field points to the threshold between two environments, two different soundscapes, each distinct and yet thriving off of one another. Trees overhang, providing shade as summer cicadas sing among the tall grasses. As listeners, this allows us to imagine two distinct environments, with trees offering protection, definition, and solace. Pushing this idea further, one might see this as an apt metaphor for paying attention to differences between people, between cultures, and between students, the college, and local residents. The act of listening to these in-between places offers a practical and mindful way of cultivating appreciation and empathy for each of these differences.
Below, you’ll find a short guide outlining the process for a “listening session,” based on four simple ideas: walking, listening, contemplation, and conversation. This process is indebted to composers such as Pauline Oliveros, Hildegard Westerkamp, John Cage, and Annea Lockwood, as well as the sound art collective Ultra Red. We did part of this process in-person with the class, and it was also used as part of remote learning and can be followed from wherever you are. This guide can also be adapted as part of class projects, using the lens of each class discipline to create different kinds of observation and knowledge about place.
IMAGES - SOUND WALKS - LISTENING SESSIONS
SOUND MAP OF GAMBIER
LISTEN TO A SOUND INSTALLATION: WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE FIELD
Installed at the Gund Gallery from June through August, 2021, Where the Forest Meets the Field is comprised of field recordings made from September 2020 through May 2021. As a companion to the sound map above, the installation seamlessly moves through the Brown Family Environmental Center and Gambier, listening to both natural and human environments. Listen to an excerpt below:
Where the Forest Meets the Field (2021)
2-channel audio, collaged field recordings
Duration: 41 minute loop
As you listen, consider these thoughts:
Close your eyes.
Where are you? What do you hear?
Are you sitting in the prairie, in the late summer, listening to birds and wind and far off (ever-present) construction? Do you hear the chorus of insects, coming and going, each group hitting a different frequency? Do you see the flight of swallows above, circling and darting for an evening meal? Or, perhaps you hear the hoarse croak of a Scarlet Tanager, like a robin with a sore throat, just as you turn around to see him staring at you in his crimson-stained coat?
Or maybe you walk up to the pine grove and cross the threshold of trees, soft brown needles underfoot, and feel the wind stop and your eyes adjust and the temperature change -- and now you feel like you are in an architectural space, a cathedral perhaps? Do you hear the woodpeckers tapping above, a bee darting past your ear, the distant traffic of Mt. Vernon?
Are you up close to the Kokosing river? Are you in the river? Do you hear the counterpoint of gurgles and splashes and patterns of rushing and flowing and how the rocks and downed branches create eddies and pools, and no matter how long you listen it is always different and always the same?
Do you hear the raindrops hitting plants and moss and dead leaves in the woods? And then, suddenly, does the long, rich drone of an insect startle you –– lasting for a minute, two minutes –– only to stop abruptly. Are your ears continuing to ring, or is that a ghost sound, or a high pitched buzz you’ve never heard before?
Are you making yourself comfortable, sitting on the boardwalk at Givens Grove, near the centuries-old oak tree (and what is that faint industrial drone off to the north?), munching on doughnuts and drinking coffee and listening to the pre-dawn polyphony of insects and birds, all clamouring for their space in the audible world, to get their message across, to mate, to warn, to fight, to sing for joy?
Is it a chilly fall day, and as you sit down under a giant maple tree near the Church of the Holy Spirit you hear squirrels gnawing and twigs snapping and the bells signaling a quarter till and distant passers-by laughing nervously (and once again that near-constant construction)?
Perhaps you are sitting beside Walker’s Pond, still, quiet –– its own private amphitheater –– listening to the wind up high across the pine tops, and then a branch falls nearby and a vole darts across the path and dives under leaves and you swear there is someone approaching and it makes you jump?
Maybe you find yourself, after leaving Walker’s Pond and traipsing uphill, slightly out of breath and resting along a path where the forest meets the field, sitting under the protection of an American elm, and you look out across the wide field and crows echo nearby and cows and donkeys exchange words and there’s something burrowing in the hedgerows and a black walnut thuds to the ground and again you look up and out to see far across the valley and rolling hills and cotton clouds and you think, I could sit here forever?
Or, are you standing in the middle of a vernal pool, just off the Kokosing Gap trail and in the middle of an unplowed field? Feet wet, standing awkwardly, trying to be silent, so that the Spring Peepers might begin? And when they do, first it is a solo, an aria, then a duo, then all hell breaks loose and it is deafening and overwhelming and it completely surrounds you –– as you realize you inadvertently stepped right into the middle of their antiphonal amphibian choir –– and then suddenly, as if on cue, they all stop together, just like that?
EXPLORE AN “ACTIVATION GUIDE” MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH GUND GALLERY
LISTENING SESSIONS: a general process for in-person or remote students
1. Find a Tree: preferably one with some kind of significance (physical, social, personal, historical, age, etc.).
2. Soundwalk: spend time quietly walking to the tree, listening to the natural and human environments on the way. Most walks take around 15 minutes each way. Using your ears as your primary sense, pay attention to the sounds around you, how they change/stay the same, as if you were listening to music. Take notes if you wish: a. What do you hear? b. Pay attention to transitions/thresholds between environments (for example, from a field into woods). Note these changes.
3. Listen: at the tree, in silence, for at least 15 minutes. This is not a time to think too much; just pay attention, without judgement. Jot down notes if you wish (or make a recording).
4. Research: after returning home, find out more about the tree (according to your discipline and interests). This can be archival research, conducting an interview, field research (example: returning many times throughout the semester), etc.
5. Respond: create a reply to your experience, one that is creative, observational, and filtered through methods/ideas from your discipline: an audio recording, field notes, image/drawing, essay, etc. a. Prompts: What is the sound of this tree? What is the story of the tree? Of the place around it? What is the story of you interacting with it?
6. Return: with others or alone, bring your responses and new knowledge back to the tree and pay attention to them and how they might add to your understanding and appreciation of a place. Has your experience changed? What do the new contexts provide?