Forest Threnody

Infos Artwork
  • Year: 2015
  • Place: Borneo
  • Land: Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia (1.42965855,114.740599198093) centr.
  • Category: Ecosystems/ Flora/ Fauna and Pollution/ Destruction/ Toxins
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FOREST THRENODY is a collaboration between artist Rowell and composer-activist Yii concerning the environmental destruction in South-East Asia with a focus on Borneo. In a live performance, Yii’s choral work was combined with Rowell’s two-channel sound work and single-channel video that shows satellite images of Borneo’s rainforests and palm plantations. >>

“The treetops of rainforests appear as irregular shapes, palm plantations as dotted grids, waste ponds as blotches, roads and canals as lines cutting through the forest floor. Each of these visual shapes, moving vertically, triggered different tones. The software autonomously created a sonic impression of the disturbed, post-natural landscape – chopped down, burned, cleared, terraformed, exploited, wasted. […] This work compresses the distance between the orbiting satellite camera with the landscape on Earth, annihilating the space and time between the viewer and the environmental crisis occurring at this very moment.” (Steve Rowell) >>

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