sonic woodland

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A collaboration between Joe Acheson and spatial audio engineer Tim Southorn.

Sonic Woodland turns a woodland clearing into a sonic oasis. Five trees perform a constantly regenerating cello canon that melds with the natural forest sounds of birds, animals, insects and the wind in the trees, inviting you to soak in the woodland atmosphere in calm wonder.

The soundscape is alive, like the woodland it inhabits, using carefully programmed AI to constantly generate a never-repeating arrangement of the cello canon, performed by Rebecca Knight of the City of London Sinfonia. Layers of melodies from the individual trees combine to create rich harmonies that swirl around the glade, echoing the constant subterranean exchange of nutrients, minerals and water through the mycorrhizal network that connects the trees by their roots. Randomisation is also used to trigger short, sporadic bursts of sound that bounce from tree to tree - pianos, log drums, woodpeckers tapping out morse code signals, synth arpeggios - representing the Volatile Organic Compounds that the trees release to signal warnings of pests and disease to each other.

Sonic Woodland: Glade is the third instalment in the series, and first took the form of a large glade in the botanical forest at Wakehurst in Sussex, in which five trees performed a generative cello canon from July 12 - September 12 2021.
Since then it has run for three years across a brook in an ancient glen at Kelburn Castle on the West coast of Scotland, another whole summer at Wakehurst in 2023, and is now at Hawkwood CFT near Stroud.

The installation seeks to reflect the invisible natural processes which are constantly taking place in such a glade, with all the plants and trees cooperating to survive and thrive.
Carefully programmed AI creates the arrangement of the cello canon, with layers of melodies from the individual trees combining to create rich harmonies which swirl around the glade,
echoing the exchange of nutrients, minerals and water through the underground mushroom network which connects them by their roots (mycorrhizal symbiosis).
Randomisation is also used to trigger short bursts of sounds which bounce from tree to tree, much more sporadically - pianos, log drums, woodpeckers tapping morse code, synth arpeggios - representing the release of Volatile Organic Compounds (usually gases) which trees can use to send each other messages, warnings of pests and disease.

Cello performed by Rebecca Knight of the City of London Sinfonia.

Sonic Woodland Part 2: Dawn Chorus was an all-day installation at Wakehurst in Sussex.
Spatial audio engineer Tim Southorn and I recorded an on-site dawn chorus with lots of microphones from 3-6AM on May 5th 2019, which I edited down to a 30 minute loop,
and accompanied with a very long instrumental swell, a building and growing texture of pianos, clarinets, synths and brass.
This was played back from 6 speakers spread around the same trees so that people could experience this amazing natural event on a summer afternoon.

'Sonic Woodland' is a 40-minute music and sound installation in a woodland glade, created in July 2018 for Kew Gardens' Wakehurst site in Sussex,
a wild botanical garden which is also home to the Millenium Seed Bank.
Part of The Wonder Project by Shrinking Space.

Speakers hung from trees and buried in the ground reflect the mycorrhizal symbiosis constantly taking place in the woods
- the relationship between the trees and the fungi, connected via the root systems underground.

The trees exchange carbon from photosynthesis in return for minerals and water stored underground - they are also able to use this network to communicate information and exchange nutrients between the trees themselves,
in ways in which science is only just beginning to understand.

Using a spatial sound system built by Tim Southorn, sounds appear in the canopy and move down into the ground and up into the branches of other trees in the glade.
Call-and-answer melodies swirl around the space, as the trees perform duets over the ambient hum and bass drones that slowly shift around the woodland floor.