from here to ear

Finches, Gibson guitars, Fender amps and the presence of the viewer are the ingredients of a sonic installation that is both fascinating and unsettling.

If you walk the length of the Hangar, at the end you find a passage blocked by a metal curtain. Push it aside and enter. You will be immersed in a totally unexpected atmosphere: a soundscape inhabited by 250 zebra finches—small birds that flutter gracefully within the high gray concrete walls. The floor, strewn with sand and tufts of grass, is crossed by visitors' trodden paths and scattered with feeders containing water and seeds and a series of electric guitars on metal music stands. A cluster of straw nests hangs in the center of the room.

The finches flutter and perch incessantly in this elegantly formalized stage set, hopping around and rubbing their beaks on the guitar strings. When they do this, the instrument generates a highly amplified sound. Some of the guitars are programmed to reverberate. The sonic result of this installation is that the space constantly echoes with residual, extemporaneous, unpredictable sound. The "concert" lasts throughout the day.

Viewers are an active part of the whole affair, even though they, unlike the finches, are not required to be there. Their very presence stimulates the birds to move and fly, and so to create new music.

The installation's creator, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, is not new to this kind of operation. Academically trained as a musician and composer, for years Boursier-Mougenot has chosen to experiment in combining sound and vision. His work stems from a mix of concept, calculation and chance. "The objects must be left to speak," he says.

His research into music and the nature of sound suggests that there is musical potential to be explored everywhere; this leads him to orchestrate all kinds of situations and objects ranging from street life, whose sounds are treated and reprocessed, to trees stirred by the wind, from waving dishes that become percussion instruments to vacuum cleaners with built-in harmonicas. In all of these situations, sound is the result of improvisation that is, ironically, the result of a carefully prepared choice.

A zebra finch at rest on a guitar neck at <i>from here to ear</i> by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. — A zebra finch at rest on a guitar neck at *from here to ear* by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

In this case, specifically chosen traditional instruments (legendary Gibson guitars and Fender amps as Boursier-Mougenot is keen to stress!) are placed in relation to each other and left to the mercy of the independent variable—the birds' spontaneous movements. The project's curator, Andrea Lissoni, notes that the result of from here to ear is close to indie and experimental music, somewhere between Sonic Youth and avant-noise.

But above and beyond the musical considerations, with this installation the Cube (the space at HangarBicocca hosting the piece) becomes a crossroads where nature and culture—the realm of what is born and the realm of what is produced—interact in a complex relationship, giving shape to a hybrid visual and sonic landscape that is both organic and technological with sophisticated artifacts that come into contact with the body, those of the animals and by extension our own.

The weight and motion of the finches make the guitar's strings vibrate.

Before coming to Milan, from here to ear had already been shown at Estuaire in Nantes and the Barbican Art Centre in London. But what is striking at the Hangar, in addition to the discrepancy between the birds' gentle touch and the loudness of the sounds they generate, is the contrast between the lightness of their flight and the power of the space. It is remarkable to see them circling in small formations having the dark concrete walls of the cubic space as their horizon. Here, this captivating work takes on a new and highly metaphorical meaning; the circular flight of the finches and the echo that their movement reverberates on the concrete walls speak eloquently about our existential condition of being "on probation," often unaware of the consequences of our actions and unable to control them. We move through life perhaps a bit out of place, like in a theater, playing a role in a narrative that is ours individually, but not only.
Gabi Scardi

In all of these situations, sound is the result of improvisation that is, ironically, the result of a carefully prepared choice.

A cluster of straw nests hangs in the center of the installation.

from here to ear

Finches, Gibson guitars, Fender amps and the presence of the viewer are the ingredients of a sonic installation that is both fascinating and unsettling.

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