Bernie Krause's Great Animal Orchestra has made its west coast debut with a show at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. All photos: The Exploratorium, unless mentioned otherwise
The Great Animal Orchestra draws on decades Krause has spent recording 5,000 hours of animal sounds
Krause notes the death of three billion birds in North America since the 1970s and the disappearance of 70 per cent of the insects in Germany as signs of an impending catastrophe
The 98-minute long score of animal sounds is accompanied by radiant light-filled spectrograms, created with the help of British artist Matt Clark of United Visual Artists, pictured. Photo: Ann Ray
The alarming rate of loss in the project’s subjects echoes through the high-pitched chirps of birds, the squeaking whirrs of insects and the howls of mammals. About 70 per cent of the biodiversity captured in the orchestra has been lost over time
'We are allowing the animals who are the real artists to express themselves, and what they are expressing is loud, clear, and unassailable,' says Krause
The installation’s reflective pool helps viewers grasp the low frequency components of certain phenomena
'The Great Animal Orchestra reveals a profound loss of biodiversity due to climate change and human impact,' says Exploratorium executive director Lindsay Bierman
'When I started recording the healthy habitats decades ago, I physically felt stronger and more present,” Krause tells The National
