The Great Animal Orchestra

A nearly lifelong resident of the Bay Area, Krause’s research offers a mesmerizing immersion into the acoustic world of animals, a field of study known as “soundscape ecology.” Before developing a passion for recording wild soundscapes, Krause worked as a musician and sound designer in the 1960s and 1970s, collaborating with artists like The Doors and Van Morrison, and joining the Weavers in 1963. With his music partner Paul Beaver, he helped introduce the Moog synthesizer to pop music and film, and their work can be heard on over 250 albums and 135 feature films.

Krause contemplates the natural world as a poet. He listens to animal vocalizations with a musician’s ear and studies his field recordings from the perspective of a scientist. He has become a master in the art of revealing the beauty, diversity, and complexity of the collective voices of wild animals increasingly silenced by the din and intrusion of human activity. Beginning in the 1970s, Krause recorded soundscapes across North America, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a collage of soundscapes from the depths of the world’s oceans. In recent years, he has returned to many of these sites only to find that more than 50% of the recorded biodiversity has been lost. This unique installation thus makes a plea – through the voices of compelling organisms – for preserving the wondrous diversity of the animal world. Krause implores us to listen to these narratives from the living, non-human world before they are forever silenced. Visitors are invited to further investigate the phenomena of sound in related exhibits throughout the Exploratorium.

“Imagine that the Exploratorium has been given Earth’s ear for the next few months,” Krause added. “It’s a receptor that detects only the life-affirming sounds of the natural world, even in urban San Francisco. This ear only responds to the divine sounds of the natural world and knows that they alone can repair our aching souls if we just let them in. What will we allow this wondrous ear to detect in the next several months? Will we sanction wisdom, conciliation, kindness, love, wonder, balance, beneficence, and restoration to be heard? People often ask: ‘If I want to hear these beautiful animal orchestras, what can I do?’ It’s not what we must do to hear them. It’s what we choose not to do. To paraphrase a line by David Bowie: The future belongs to those who can hear it coming. Question: What do you hear?”

The Great Animal Orchestra was commissioned by the Fondation Cartier for its eponymous exhibition in 2016 and is now part of its permanent collection. After reading Krause’s book by the same name and later visiting his home in Sonoma County, Hervé Chandès, the Fondation Cartier’s Artistic Managing Director, conceived of the idea for an immersive audio-visual realization of Krause’s archived recordings. It was the Fondation Cartier that introduced Krause to UVA, the London-based visual arts practice led by Matt Clark, whose installations and collaborations integrate new technologies and traditional media.

“Bernie Krause’s work teaches us that each animal species possesses its own acoustic animal signature that, like a musical instrument in an orchestra, positions itself with both precision and subtlety within the score of the soundscape of the ecosystem in which it lives,” Chandès said. “The polyphony of the great animal orchestra is rapidly being lost, and we must band together to protect these indispensable resources and environments.”

To produce The Great Animal Orchestra, Krause created a composite of seven different marine and terrestrial habitats from around the world. UVA developed a computer software that creates extraordinarily detailed, immersive, streaming spectrograms generated by the soundscapes. These, in turn, form real-time visual interpretations of the various sites and times of day where and when Krause’s original recordings were made. In its newest iteration at the Exploratorium, the exhibition will be presented in a sound-proof, standalone gallery with enhanced LED components.

“The Great Animal Orchestra is one of our most often exhibited and popular works, and we’re thrilled that as we celebrate UVA’s 20th anniversary in 2023 it is on display again, as its fundamental message about the diversity and fragility of the planet’s species is more relevant and timelier than ever,” said UVA’s Matt Clark.

Surrounding the periphery of the acoustic images is a subtle natural component – a border of water. For visitors, the shallow moat might go unnoticed until it ripples subtly at the sounds of insects, or quivers in waves, reverberating the elephant’s low-frequency roar. In this environment, visitors are guided into the interrelationship of the many species performing in the world’s own soundtrack of life.

The Great Animal Orchestra has been presented at prestigious institutions around the globe, including the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Paris); Seoul Museum of Art; The Power Station of Art (Shanghai); Triennale de Milano; 180 The Strand (London); Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA); the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, during which time the spectrograms were also projected as part of a site-specific presentation on the sails of the Sydney Opera House; and Lille3000 (Lille, France).

Alongside the exhibition, French filmmaker Vincent Tricon’s documentary produced by the Fondation Cartier, Bernie Krause: A Life with the Great Animal Orchestra, will also be screened. The film premiered at The Great Animal Orchestra presentation at the Peabody Essex Museum in 2021 and won Best Documentary at the Los Angeles CineFest in January 2023. Composed of archival footage and interviews filmed in California in 2021, A Life follows Krause through Sonoma County, where he lives with his wife and partner Katherine.

The Fondation Cartier’s The Great Animal Orchestra website was conceived in 2016 upon the exhibition’s debut and is dedicated to the work of Bernie Krause, allowing visitors to become their own conductor of nature’s vast musical ensemble.

The Exploratorium is a portal to the astonishing scientific phenomena that animate our world and shape our actions. It creates extraordinary learning experiences that ignite curiosity, upend perceptions, and inspire brave leaps forward. Since 1969, the Exploratorium has been home to a renowned collection of exhibits that draw together science, art, and human perception, changing the way science is taught. Its award-winning programs provide a forum for the public to engage with artists, scientists, policymakers, educators, and tinkerers to explore the world around them. The Exploratorium celebrates diversity of thought, inspired investigation, and collaboration across all boundaries.