Paul Walde and Tina Pearson: "Music for Natural History", Royal BC Museum, Victoria, Jan. 15 and Jan. 16, 2016

×

Expand

Photo: Christine Walde

Julia Zhu performs "The Elk Concerto" as part of Music for Natural History, 2012, a performative sound installation at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria

Julia Zhu performs "The Elk Concerto" as part of Music for Natural History, 2012, a performative sound installation at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria

Have you ever wondered what the world sounded like before the roar of jets or the steady hum of traffic? Paul Walde has – and he’s tried to recreate it, not only by removing the jarring sounds of modernity, but also by adding the teeming voices of creatures most of us rarely, if ever, hear. 

Walde’s newest project, however, takes a surreal twist by imitating natural sounds in the most faux-realist of spaces, the natural history museum. “We’re trying to breathe some life back into it,” says Walde, a visual arts professor at the University of Victoria.

He and collaborator Tina Pearson, a Victoria composer and performer, worked with some 20 musicians to create public performances in the seashore and coastal forest dioramas of the Royal BC Museum. There, among lifeless deer, seals and other creatures – with the canned soundscape turned off – they offer a blend of classical music, live improvisation, sound art and sonic mimicry using voices, conventional instruments, and other objects, all in unusual ways. 

Walde, whose previous work has included organizing a live choral and orchestral performance on Farnham Glacier in B.C.’s Purcell Mountains, is interested in deep listening and different ways of knowing, as well as the auditory skills our ancestors used to survive throughout most of human history. For her part, Pearson believes sound can help people reconnect in an empathic way with nature. “I think there’s a longing for that,” says Pearson, who, like Walde, grew up in Northern Ontario.

As part of the project, Walde, one of a new breed of intermedia artists who hunt and gather art among the disciplines, led a public sound walk through Beacon Hill Park, encouraging people to listen, really listen, whether to the sound of gravel underfoot or the rustle of autumn leaves. The experience, participants found, was powerful – and moving. 

Walde and Pearson also organized a sonic mimicry workshop that let ordinary folk imitate natural sounds – seals barking on the rocks, a hooting owl and the drum of rain on a tin roof. Awkwardly at first, and then with growing playfulness, a group of strangers began to sonically morph into the creatures whose voices they echoed. The process drew attention to an auditory void while never completely filling it. Like heading home but never quite arriving, it was both transformative and bittersweet.