Climate Data Sonification

Anthropocene in C Major

Orchestral / Electronic Performance | Live Documentary | Installation

Adelaide Fringe | Silbersalz Science Festival 2021 | CPH:DOX 2021 | CPH:DOX 2020 (postponed) | CPH:LABS 2019

Live performance stills

‘Anthropocene in C Major’ is a visceral experience of human impact on earth, felt through a live performance that turns data into sound.

Over 45 minutes we travel from 12,000 years ago to the present, hearing human breakthroughs from the invention of the wheel to the Industrial Revolution and beyond... but also inescapable data trends that tell of our exploitation of the planet, and each other. At what now seems like a breaking point for our species, what can we learn from listening to the past, and what meaning can this bring to our present and future? Anthropocene In C Major provokes a response to climate change for a species paralysed by its own extractive structures. It invites us to confront and understand our own ecological and systemic grief, through the form of sonification, and within the scale of our modern existence on Earth.


Press Kit | Performance Guide | Full list of Data Sources | Camera-Ready Paper


Awards:
Winner: Best Film & Digital or Interactive Award - Adelaide Fringe 2023


Press Reviews:

★★★★½  The Serenade Files (Full Review)

“An important contribution to ecological art”
“holding time and space to grieve, to cope, to revelate and contemplate paths forward.”
“A complex sonic tapestry reminiscent of the first movement of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.”
“A portal to start decolonising ourselves, a pathway to express ecological grief, a gateway to connecting with the reality of climate change”
“Anthropocene might be understood as a hyperobject-in-miniature, encapsulating the complexity of our planet in this time of ecological crisis.”


★★★★½  Adelaide Fringe Review (Full Review)
"...gives cause to reflect of humankind’s role within our ancient planet"
"A sobering and important view of humankind’s role in shaping the world’s biodiversity"


Audience Feedback:

"Thank you for giving the Earth a voice"
“Hectic, devastating, thought provoking and brilliant”
“In all this complexity, suddenly it felt like nature was looking back at me”

Performances and Installations:

Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts / Sussex Humanities Lab Annual Keynote 2023 

Adelaide Fringe Festival 2023

ICAD 2022

Climarte Gallery Melbourne 2022

Adelaide Fringe Festival 2022

DACA - Data Art For Climate Action - Installation 2022

Silbersalz Science Festival  - with archive film and live AI visuals.

CPH:DOX 21 -  with live documentary interpretation by Katharine Round, created live by the artists, and you, the audience – as listeners, makers, observers and subjects.

Electric Dreams Festival 2020 - performed live with live archive film Twelve Thousand Years In Fragments by Katharine Round


Credits:

Composer: Jamie Perera

AICM Abstract film: Jamie Perera

Live film: Katharine Round

Orchestrator: Dan Keen

Sonification Programming: Adrian Lewis

Composition mentoring: Emily Howard

Featuring located sound by Alice Eldridge, Jez riley French and Pheobe riley Law


Developed in CPH:LABS by Jamie Perera, Katharine Round and Leah Borromeo

Performance guide (click to enlarge for detail):

Score excerpts:

Twelve Thousand Years In Fragments | Online performance | Global Health Film 2021 | Electric Dreams Festival 2020


“Twelve Thousand Years in Fragments” is a participatory audio-visual experience re-imagining 12,000 years of human influence on earth as a 40 minute symphony of sound and image. Created live by artists Jamie Perera, Katharine Round… and the audience. Throughout the anthropocene, humankind has collected, measured and recorded aspects of our lives and our planet - much of this information now floats freely online in archives and repositories, and on our computers and phones. In “Twelve Thousand Years in Fragments”, numerical data is transformed into sound, charting our planet’s evolution to the present day. Alongside this, a collage of “lost” imagery from the audience and online is created as a live, spontaneous montage. From survival to progress, war to wealth, evolution to revolution, we are provoked by fragments of data and memory to explore our transient place in the context of climate and ecological emergency.


Live sound: Jamie Perera

Live visuals: Katharine Round

Sonification Programming: Adrian Lewis

Featuring located sound by Jez riley French and Pheobe riley Law


Screenshots:

Oil, Coal & Gas for Three Cellos

Orchestral / electronic performance | Installation

ICAD 2023 | New Maker Ensemble Tour 2021 | FT Global Gallery COP 26 Edition | Serpentine General Ecology Project | Serpentine Podcast | We Make Tomorrow Summit

'Oil, Coal and Gas For Three Cellos' was commissioned by The Serpentine General Ecology Project and performed as part of the We Make Tomorrow 2020 summit. We Make Tomorrow called for creative climate action in a time of crisis, to be at the forefront of an urgent and creative plan for change. Over three days it brought creative-cultural leaders and institutions together with funders, grassroots activists, policy-makers and the scientific community to explore what creativity, leadership and innovation meant in the context of climate and ecological emergency, ahead of the crucial COP26 climate talks. 'Oil, Coal & Gas for Three Cellos' was specially commissioned for the event and was performed by James Douglas, Roxanna Albayati and Alice Eldridge.


'Oil Coal and Gas for Three Cellos' has since been featured in the FT Global Gallery - Climate Edition 2021, and performed by the New Maker Ensemble Tour 2021, and for ICAD 2023.


Composer: Jamie Perera

Orchestrator: Dan Keen

Sonification Programming: Adrian Lewis


Link to journal entry | Link to performance | Link to Serpentine podcast | Link to We Make Tomorrow event page | Link to FT Global Gallery - Climate Edition     


Score excerpts:

Flatline

Installation | Barbican | Global Health Film Awards


Commissioned by the Global Health Film Festival, which has a primary objective to use the moving image as a catalyst for discussion and for change. Flatline takes data relating to climate change, and juxtaposes archive of world health outcomes with projected sound waves to paint a sonic picture of what climate change means for global health. Exhibition was curated by the innovative Crossover Labs and led by festival director Gerri McHugh.

Incorporated data reflecting our global health:

  • Amazon rainforest decline
  • NASA GISS temperature anomalies over land and ocean
  • World atmospheric CO2 concentration.


Sound: Jamie Perera

Visuals: Leah Borromeo


Screenshots:

Climate Symphony Labs

Labs & performances | Forma Arts | Arts Council | Artsadmin


Climate Symphony and Forma Arts created two day-long labs at Artsadmin's 2 Degrees Festival in London and the Culture Lab at Newcastle University, bringing together journalists, scientists, data analysts and sound artists to explore how to change climate change data into a sound and music composition. Using data sonification, participant selected climate data sets and created their own interpretations within their own Climate Symphony.


Curated by Forma, evening events featured live performances by sound artists Kate Carr, Lee Patterson and Jez Riley French who use field recordings in the composition of their work, often from environments in which climate change is taking effect.

If The Oceans Could Speak

Installation

The Nature of Cities | We Are The Oceans | EDIT Toronto Design Exchange 2017


If the Oceans Could Speak transforms data around our production, consumption and disposal of plastics in the world's oceans into a sound and music composition. It is part of the Climate Symphony series, commissioned by We Are the Oceans and exhibited as part of EDIT at Toronto's Design Exchange in September-October 2017. This piece was created using peer-reviewed datasets from the World Economic Forum, Plastics Europe, the University of California Santa Barbara, the University of Georgia and Sea Education Association in Massachusetts. Using underwater oceanic recordings together with data sonification, we create an immersive sound experience to provoke new associations around the data. The audience is encouraged to share their reactions to the piece, and an accompanying visual presentation draws out the narratives and sonic representations in greater detail. As an artwork, it presents consumption and disposal of plastic using sonic textures, harmonies and variations in pitch and intensity to allow a visceral response in the listener. As a piece of journalism, it remains true to the raw data, and uncomfortable and jarring sounds echo the relentless increase in world plastic waste. 

Climate Symphony

Broadcast

Serpentine Transformation Marathon


Climate Symphony's first iteration was included in The Serpentine Gallery's Transformation Marathon 2015. Celebrating its tenth anniversary since the inaugural 2006 Interview Marathon, the 2015 Transformation Marathon addressed cultural, political and physical shifts, asking how significant change can be achieved today. In this iteration, 20 years of climate change was sonified using the following data: Arctic ice sea extent, NOAA CO2 measurements, floods in Pakistan and migrant routes across the Mediterranean.


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