Image courtesy of Echo Choir
I have been happy to support my friend and artist Hermione Spriggs in her explorations with Echo Choir at the Grant Museum UCL. Hermione and I met on Murmuration #3 and bonded over mutual interests in night creatures and I have been happy to join in the exploratory sessions with sound capture in her bat project.
Hermione and Echo are working to create the music for a public sculpture which will be based in Jesus Green, Cambridge, at the heart of the Cambridge Nature Network, an initiative since 2021. The sculpture will use technology to translate the inaudible frequencies of the bat population in Jesus Green into human hearing range. As part of the project, Echo will spend time creating music inspired by the techniques bats use to communicate; including Echolocation, in which they use the reflections of their own calls to work out the shape of the space they are in. We developed these skills at the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College London.
Hermione writes about her work with Echo Choir - “We are investigating technologies that translate the ultrasonic frequency of bat “clicks” and “chirps” (emitted when navigating using echolocation, hunting and communicating) into human hearing range. We hope to utilise this bat locator technology developed by scientists to create an interactive public sculpture for Jesus Green that enables the sound of the bats to be felt and heard. In working with Echo Vocal Ensemble, we've enabled the human voice to "jam" with the bat’s echo-locative sounds.'“
Team
Hermione Spriggs, lead artist
Sarah Latto, musical director
Sally Carr, Lucy Cronin and Margaret Lingas, sopranos
Anna Semple, mezzo soprano
Sam Oladeinde, tenor
Sam Gilliatt and Gus Perkins-Ray, bass
Natascha Nanji, video capture
Rebecca Huxley, sound capture