Scott Rogers
8 channel sound installtion, 12 hours, 2023.
Sound Design and Mix by Richy Carey
Using hundreds of recordings of bird songs, Songs to the Sun is a sound installation following the sun as it rises from one side of the world to its opposite.
Sunrise is when many daytime birds begin to sing, a phenomenon known as the dawn chorus. In this immersive installation, the songs of birds from across the globe are brought together to mark where the sun is rising in real time. Using open-source field recordings, the work reflects on the passage of light, sound and time through nonhuman scales and rhythms, and across vast distances and ecologies. In the context of Toronto’s urban centre, audiences were surrounded by the acoustics of the natural world – a reminder of the presence of other humans near and far, and of the animals that share our collective lived experiences.
I worked with Scott to think through some of the shape of the work and the logistics of isntalling it in the space. Scott then came to stay with us in the studio, and compose and mix the twleve-hour surround sound work from hundreds of recordings of bird calls from across the globe.
It was performed at Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2023.