Mycelium of Sound includes field recordings from Kinokophone and contributing artists. Learn more about each recording and contributing artists below. Numbers correspond to the numbers that are attached to the installation.
Amanda Belantara
24 Coqui frogs: Frogs singing in a Puerto Rican rainforest
Photo credit: Amanda Belantara
22 Wild Sheep Chase: Sheep on a farm in the Lake District, UK
Photo credit: Amanda Belantara
13 Kareizawa Rain: Rain falling on a rainy summer day in rural Aomori, Japan.
Photo credit: Amanda Belantara
3 Yamayaki: A controlled burn of the Akiyoshidai Plateau in Yamaguchi, Japan. Firefighters are on the scene.
Photo of Marty Greenbaum’s artist book, Batman, courtesy of Eileen Mislove Photo taken by Amanda Belantara. Find the book in New York University Libraries Special Collections. Learn more about Marty Greenbaum’s life and work here.
21 Uptown traffic: Evening traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway in New York City
Photo credit: Amanda Belantara
Steven Brown
17 Sweeping My Desk (with an Induction Coil Pick-Up)
So many of my sonic memories are stored on a variety of different disc drives and computers, most of them sit on my desk....using an induction coil pick up I 'swept' my desk recording the drives and computers where so many of these recent memories of mine are digitally stored.
http://www.listenhear.co.uk
Photo Credit: Glitch by Michael Cacioppo Belantara
Peter Caeldries
10 Hive
A somewhat dangerous undertaking but recorded the bees at the entry of the hive with the microphone on a boom pole. Close up they are surprisingly loud. Amazing sound for small wings that look fragile. Layering the recordings I have the impression they sound angry. One wonders why…
Photo credit: Amanda Belantara
2 Equip Sermia
Greenland icecap outlet glacier. The thundering sounds you hear are huge pieces breaking off the glacier wall. The gunshot-like sounds are cracks that happen inside the glacier. All this against a background of melting iceberg sounds recorded with hydrophones.
http://900hz.net/
Photo credit: Peter Caeldries, courtesy of the artist
John Hartog
16 Prelude, then American Robin
With a mountain stream peacefully gurgling through a narrow meadow, edged by forest, a quiet prelude of bird chorus introduces the robin who flutters in and boldly carols his song.
oregonsoundscapes.com
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
Yoichi Kamimura
18 Ryuhyo
The recording work "Ryuhyo" is the sound of drift ice recorded in Utoro, Shiretoko in March 2022. Every winter, a mixture of seawater and freshwater freezes in the Russian Sea and becomes drift ice, which gradually drifts to Shiretoko. In this recording, the sound of the ice floes can be heard rumbling wildly. This is due to the fact that the decrease in the amount of drift ice has created many gaps in the Sea of Okhotsk, which used to be completely covered with drift ice, and the drift ice now moves violently. The sound of ice floes that sounds very strong is actually the appearance of ice floes that have become very weak.
http://www.yoichikamimura.com/
Photo Credit: Still of Sonotoki, courtesy of Amanda Belantara
Elin Már Øyen Vister
9 The Lost Kittiwakes of Vishellern cave, Vedøya (Røst, Sábme/NO)
I recorded the Kittiwakes of the Visheller cave in the spring of 2010 and then again in the summer of 2011. the decline in the seabird population on Røst has escalated. During the summer of 2020 the bird mountain of Vedøya, including the Kittiwakes breeding in the Vishellern cave where gone. The mountain has silenced. The cave is an empty resonant space, echoing what once was to be heard. The sonic sensation of hearing and listening to a flock of Kittiwakes flying out of the cave right above you is one of the strongest and most mesmerizing sound memories I have. To know that this sonic event is now lost is utterly tragic. Statistically speaking there are no more Kittiwakes and Guillemots breeding on Vedøya. In 1980 there were approximately 1.5 million pairs of Puffins breeding in all of the Røst archipelago and on Vedøya only, 12000 pairs of Guillemots and 25.000 pairs of Kittiwakes. Nowadays, the overall Puffin population is down to around 200.000 pairs and the few Guillemots left are hiding in small caves and crevices. The last Kittiwakes of Røst are clinging on in the mainland of Røst on Kårøya -island and at the mini bird mountain, Gjellfruvær further out into the archipelago. If the decline continues, which it probably will, there will be no auks, guillemots, or Puffins left on Røst in the near future. The Kittiwake are listed as critically threatened on the Norwegian red list. This track is taken from the upcoming album Soundscape Røst - Spaces and Species Vol II (Gruenrekorder late 2023)
https://elinmar.com/
Photo Credit: Elin Már Øyen Vister, courtesy of the artist
Oranka Morales
7 Community of Mothers
When my daughter was born we had some trouble with low milk supply. With the help of my midwife, we obtained a supplemental nursing system that enabled my baby to nurse using donated milk. This sound is the sound of the community of mothers coming together to provide support and allowing me to bond with my newborn baby. A beautiful manifestation of this world wide community I entered when my daughter came into this world.
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
Koji Nagahata
6 Decontamination of Fukushima
Sounds of contamination works are symbolic sounds at Fukushima after the severe accidents of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear power plants. These sounds were recorded at Fukushima University when the first round of decontamination works were done. In this track, the sound of cutting the pavement, the sound of digging the trench to bury contaminated materials, the sound of mowing, the sound of a high pressure water jet machine, the sound of filling in the trench, the sound of asphalting and a soundscape around the trench can be heard.
https://www.sss.fukushima-u.ac.jp/~nagahata/
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
Alexandre Ponomarenko
12 Thirsty Trees
Trees under drought emit short ultrasound "clicks" whose origin is not clear. Using a new method to monitor the sap conduits within wood under hydric stress, we could follow the fast development of cavitation bubbles. We show that each ultrasound is linked to the nucleation of a bubble. Their energy reflects the hydric state of the conduit.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0480
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
Ocean Conservation Research
23 Wind Turbine
Increasingly energy is being converted from renewable sources such as wind and tidal swings. While these sources are marked improvement over fossil fuels in terms of global climate and pollution impacts, offshore energy comes with its own set of problems; noise being one. From the initial site surveys, to the construction and installation, to the servicing, and eventually the decommissioning; each stage is accompanied by its own set of noises. And wind farms are being planned and installed which will include hundreds to thousands of turbines. These large aggregations spread across hundreds of square kilometers of the ocean will create noise fields that distract or disrupt acoustical adaptations which have evolved over millions of years. Tidal technologies will bring their own sets of noises: The creaking of thousands of hinges, cavitation behind countless propellers, the thrashing of hundreds of swell-capture devices will all have some acoustical impacts. It remains to be heard how problematic they will become. But we do know that fossil fuel is killing the planet and we must weigh in as to what we are willing to sacrifice to keep up with our energy demands.
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
14 Motor Underwater Swell
Fossil-fueled, propellor-driven boats have completely transformed the global ocean soundscape. The deep ocean is over ten times louder now than it was just 50 years ago due to transoceanic shipping alone. Adding to that the millions of smaller craft from pleasure boats to fishing vessels has made for a complete acoustical transformation of a habitat that has evolved countless acoustical adaptations since the beginning of biological time. Impacts of anthropogenic ocean noise is becoming increasingly evident as we explore and learn more about how marine animals use sound to survive.
Photo Credit: sandsun
11 Snapping Shrimp
Distinctive for its disproportionately large claw, which can be on either arm. Not pincers, rather there is a pistol-like feature with a “hammer” that snaps and creates a cavitation bubble that is loud enough to stun their prey. You can hear these in almost any temperate coastal waters. It is the fizzy, or clicky sounds you hear when you swim underwater in the sea, signaling a healthy reef.
There is informed speculation that the fizzy-clicky sound serves as “acoustical daylight” to animals, reflecting off of underwater shapes and objects much the way that random sunlight bounces off surfaces to reflect back coherent boundaries.
www.OCR.org
SALA - Audrius Simkunas
4 Contact with Roots
I put contact microphones into the ground near the tree which is moaning in the wind...some vibrations come through the roots. Also there is a lot of clicking sounds: it comes from the grass in wind and also from the ants.
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
Coryn Smethurst
1 Agile Gibbon
I recorded the calls of Agile Gibbon at Bukit Wang in Malaysia. This small ‘reserve’ is surrounded by palm oil plantations which do not soak up rain during the rainy season like forests, leading to large volumes of water coursing through the river eroding its banks and making them unsafe to walk on. The river, contaminated with a disease spread by rat urine, is spanned by a bridge which terminates at a sheer rock face. Yet despite all the above there are many species of birds (including the rare Chestnut-necklaced Partridge), grasshoppers, cicadas, geckos, snakes and gibbons which have made this their home. It has no environmental protection. I recorded these gibbon calls, which can be heard echoing through the forest, mid-morning. I think the long bending notes and refrains are a quite beautiful way to signal that the territory is no longer controlled by humans, if it ever had been.
Photo credit: sonia
15 Malaysian Thunder
Large hills in Malaysia are often less developed than other areas and, as such, form oases for flora and fauna. Tropical storms are one reason why. Logging steep ground prior to development leaves it susceptible to landslip caused by the deluge of water from tropical storms. This instability is graphically demonstrated on Frasers Hill, where I recorded this incoming storm. The single track road running down from the hill has had to employ extreme geo-engineering to prevent landslips, ie the deployment of large amounts of expensive concrete on the land adjacent to this minor road. Precipitation, combined with geology, is sometimes the natural world's best friend.
https://soundcloud.com/coryn-smethurst
Photo credit: Kay Wiegand
Veljo Runnel
8 SoundGround
Male wolf spiders Hygrolysa rubrofasciata vibrate their body on dry leaves. This behavior is for attracting females. It is like a song, with different elements, with different rhythms. Recorded with a pair of DPA 4060 mics on the ground between leaves spaced approximately 20 cm apart
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
Jon Tipler
5 Cricket
On a terraced bank of a mossy chestnut forest near Prémian in the Hérault department in the Occitanie region in southern France, I came across this little fella happily stridulating away in his arena of cleared undergrowth.
It took him a while to return to the stage, his chirping having been temporarily disturbed by my placing of microphones, yet he promptly accepted them and continued his performance.
Photo Credit: Amanda Belantara
19 Eduardo Eagle Bone
Eduardo, a village elder, is the last person alive in the small community of San Jose de Payamino who remembers how to play this traditional instrument. It would traditionally be accompanied by drums made from a solid piece of trunk and covered with the skin of a monkey on one surface and the skin of a paca on the other.
Photo Credit: Sebastiano Secondi
Eisuke Yanagisawa
20 Bat Chorus
Ultrasonic calls from bats under the Sanjo Ohashi (bridge). Recorded in August 2008, Kyoto, Japan. All sounds were captured and real time converted by bat detector. Recorded sounds were used without adding any effects or processing.
http://otonoha.x0.com/
Photo credit: mindscapephotos
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