Online project

Website The Great Animal Orchestra

In 2016, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presented the exhibition The Great Animal Orchestra, inspired by the work of American musician and bio-acoustician Bernie Krause. The website "The Great Animal Orchestra", conceived for the exhibition and dedicated to the work of Bernie Krause, allows you to become the conductor of nature’s vast musical ensemble.

For more than forty years, Bernie Krause has collected nearly 5,000 hours of sounds recordings from wild natural habitats, where over 15,000 animal species live. His research offers a wondrous immersion into wildlife’s acoustic environment. Bernie Krause unveils the beauty, diversity, and complexity of the animal languages, slowly silenced by the deafening noise of human activities.

Guided by Bernie Krause’s voice in English and by the artist Camille’s in French, this website lifts the veil on the mysteries of the animal kingdom’s acoustic harmony, and suggests an unprecedented interactive experience to discover the soundscape’s ecology and spirit.

A FAMILY-FRIENDLY EXPERIENCE
Do you know what biophony is? Are you familar with the way in which the aural niches inhabited by animals work? Have you ever heard of acoustic degradation? The website www.legrandorchestredesanimaux.com suggests Internet users of all ages to seize the great concepts associated with Bernie Krause’s work through five interactive scenarios:


1. ACOUSTIC NICHES
In the soundscape of Mungwezi Ranch, Gonarezhou National Park, Zimbabwe.


2. LEARN TO LISTEN
In the soundscape of Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.


3. SONIC DEGRADATION
In the soundscape of Crescent Meadow, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Californie, United-States.


4. ORCHESTRATION OF THE WILD
In the soundscape of Camp KM41, Amazonas, Brazil.


5. OCEANS
In the soundscape of the Pacific Ocean (Maui, Hawaï/Vancouver Island/New-Zealand), Caribbean Sea, Big Sur (California).

Image gallery

Freedom at the center of the user experience: each scenario can last 5 minutes or a whole day listening to the soundscapes.

Through a unique, vibrant, and sensitive interface, the Fondation Cartier works with exclusive web technologies allowing for narration and developed by the Upian agency.

This interface is also visually innovative thanks to a representation of sounds with subtle variations, which pays close attention to the notion of harmony while honoring the range of sonorous volumes and the diversity of the soundscapes recorded by Bernie Krause – and presented in The Great Animal Orchestra exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain from July 2, 2016 to January 8, 2017.