Klangwäldchen [Sonic Grove] (2007)
Public multi-channel sound installation exhibited in Berlin in Kurfürsten Strasse and outside the Nordic Embassies close to Tiergarten

 

Klangwäldchen/Nordic Embassies was erected as a part of the 300 year festivity of the famous botanist Carl von Linné.

Klangwäldchen is the title of two different multi channel sound installations which concern the subjects nature and culture. Both installations deal with the concept vegetation in relation to an urban, cultivated environment.

In Klangwäldchen, Nordic Embassies the main subject was the 23 birth trees outside the Nordic Embassies in Berlin,normally regarded as“living material” a concept used in landscape architecture when describing vegetation as trees and bushes. Used as architectural material in the same sense as glass, steel and concrete, the vegetation has no value of its own. To the right:o verview photos. Yellow marked field on thesecond photo indicates the installation area. Yellow spots show loudspeaker positions in the trees.

The intention with both of the sounds installations was to put focus on the selected vegetation, in both installations bigger groups of birch trees. By giving the trees “voices” consisted of glittering, chandelier-like sounds, distributed via loudspeakers mounted high above on the tree-trunks, the vegetation were given a “value” for a period of time. The visitor could experience an atmosphere of a quiet, soft “sound cloud” coming from the inside of the estates. By slowly synchronized sound movements (panning) between the loudspeakers in the trees, the spatiality of the estates were accentuated. Through this, the perspective and depth of the two spaces were emphasized.