Chris Watson
“From the Mara to Monheim”, 2023
Grove at the Wanderparkplatz (hikers’ car park)
The project of the English musician and sound artist Chris Watson plays with the idea of meteorological temperature inversion (also: reversal weather situation), which carries sounds of an equatorial soundscape from a river woodland in the Masai Mara, a nature reserve in Kenya, into a small inner-city grove near the old town of Monheim am Rhein.
A temperature inversion is a weather phenomenon that occurs when air temperature increases with altitude and colder air near the ground is trapped by a warmer layer of air above. Under these conditions, sound waves are reflected from the boundary layer back to the ground, causing sound to travel much farther than usual.
At dawn in the Masai Mara, the morning chorus of lions, wildebeest, vervet monkeys and African elephants is reflected back to Monheim am Rhein and spread through a spatial array of loudspeakers concealed amongst the trees. The soundscape becomes audible in the the mornings from 8 a.m. During the following 12 hours the sounds evolve through periods of high drama and action to quiet times of apparent calm and stillness. The day time temperature of 40 degree Celsius controls much of the animal behaviour so by midday it is the solo songs of insects that ring out from the woodland floor. By mid afternoon tropical storm clouds gather and thunder rolls out through the woodland signalling a change. Hippos surface from the river bed and a pride of lions emerge from their den. Nearby a clan of spotted hyenas call as part of an evening chorus of bats, frogs and insects and a time when predators turn out to hunt their prey. The work celebrates the sounds of a distant landscape transposed into the local landscape of Monheim in real time. It invites the listener to walk in a familiar place while engaging with the soundtrack and everyday drama of a distant and unfamiliar habitat.
Chris Watson, lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a founding member of the influential experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, he has developed a special and passionate interest in recording the sounds of animals and habitats from around the world. His television work includes many broadcasts of the David Attenborough series “Life,” including “The Life of Birds,” which won a BAFTA Award for “Best Factual Sound” in 1996, and the BBC series “Frozen Planet,” which also won a BAFTA Award.
Biography
Chris Watson, lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a founding member of the influential experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Since then, he has developed a special and passionate interest in recording the sounds of animals and habitats from around the world. His television work includes many broadcasts of the David Attenborough series “Life,” including “The Life of Birds,” which won a BAFTA Award for “Best Factual Sound” in 1996, and the BBC series “Frozen Planet,” which also won a BAFTA Award.
Watson has recorded or contributed to numerous BBC Radio 4 and World Service productions, including “The Wire,” for which he won the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Broadcaster of The Year Award. Watson has also received the Paul Hamlyn Composers Award. His installations have been commissioned by international institutions and festivals including the Sheffield Millennium Gallery, Opera North in Leeds, The National Gallery, London, The Louvre, Paris, the Aichi Triennial in Japan and Unsound in Krakow.
