COLLABORATION
Biophony
An Evolutionary Collaboration
By Joe Ferguson
Contributor
For many of us, our first experience with science
(other than text) was seeing illustrations in books.
We gazed with awe and wonder at the artistic vision
of a distant galaxy or a photograph of a microscopic
world teeming with life. We are wired to feel this
way—more than half of the brain’s pathways are
devoted to vision. Yet the same primitive environment that drove the evolutionary development of
our brains contained more than just static visual
stimuli—it was alive with the sounds and movements of nature.
Life thrived everywhere, and in an effort to assert ourselves as members of this precarious equilibrium, we began to mimic the hoots and hops of
the highly successful nonhuman species around us.
Over time, these imitations became more complex,
and we learned to copy one another. We developed
elaborate language systems and music; we watched
each other to learn complex skills and actions like
tool making and dance. This is our evolutionary
heritage, and it is written into our genetic blueprint.
It’s why we are moved by a romantic overture or tap
our feet to the vigorous rhythms of jazz or why our
jaws drop at the athletic beauty of the dancer.
This inherent response to sound and movement
is what gives the performing arts such profundity.
The increasing significance of science-based art in
aesthetic culture demands a stronger consideration
of, and collaboration with, the performing arts. The
potential to contextualize scientific information
with humanity’s innate qualities adds meaning to
data and scientific investigations.
A brilliant example of the marrying of science
and the performing arts was the world premiere
of Biophony at the Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts in San Francisco, California. A collaboration
of soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, composer
Richard Blackford, and choreographer Alonzo
King, the performance represented a sublime fusion
of scientific information to music and dance. For
36
45 minutes, the theatre resonated with recordings
from rare natural habitats that were occasionally
complemented with musical instrumentation, while
lissome dancers carved the empty space on stage.
The score was a collection of soundscapes from
a vast range of marine and terrestrial landscapes. It
began with the sound of a lone field cricket in the
American Southwest before proceeding through a
trumpeting herd of friendly elephants in DzangaSangha Baï, the haunting songs of humpback whales
in the Atlantic, the answering c alls of Arctic loons
in Alaska, the snorting roar of a giant forest pig in
Kenya, and the buzzing of bees in Gombe. Subtle
musical instrumentation accented a number of the
movements, like the series of glissandos on kettle
drums during a thunderstorm in Borneo.
This rich aural landscape was articulated by the
extraordinary dancers of Alonzo King’s LINES
Ballet. King avoided the easy trappings of anthropomorphism, choosing instead to interpret and
echo Krause’s and Blackford’s dynamic and complex
score. His dancers crawled, flew, and whirled about
on stage more as composites of species and habitats—they scurried to the sound of bees, huddled at
the crack of thunder, and swayed to the gentle rush
of ocean waves.
It would be easy to be politically correct and say
the piece was a critique of the ecological threat
facing the creatures and landscapes depicted, but
it was more than that. It was the product of a rare
level of equitable collaboration of science, music,
and dance that was moving and intellectually provocative.
The three collaborators of this work took time to
answer some questions about science in the performing arts.
*A special thanks to Mona Baroudi for her assistance in
the preparation of this piece.
SciArt in America June 2015