UrbaNature, for the Festival of Imperial Gardens, St. Petersburg, Russia, in June 2011. Next to a cool digital flowerbed (known to locals as the “fish”) by Caturegli-Formica, Steve Piccolo and Gak Sato installed sounds that morph from nature to machinery and back, not so subtly hidden in a big garbage bag under a handy caption board. The effect, which had to vie with all kinds of Italian music from Vasco Rossi to Puccini for this event of the program of the “year of Italy in Russia,” was actually pretty engaging, breaking all our usual rules for this sort of public art piece.
Materials: recordings of birdsong and nature sounds that morph almost imperceptibly (at first) into technological sounds; waterproof outdoor speakers, “wireless” playback system (not bluetooth or anything similar… separate playback gear matched with speakers, concealed inside plastic bags under caption signage).
Like a mechanical natural presence. We were thinking about reports that birds in cities adapt their song to include ringtones and other high-tech sounds, as if to blend into the context, or to sing with it. High levels of noise pollution also make the birds raise the pitch of their calls, so as to be heard over the din.
