Listening to Ballona

“Listening to Ballona from a natural history museum of the future” is an interactive installation that explores the intersection of science and art through the act of observation. Set in a speculative future where environmental degradation has severely impacted resources, the installation requires participants to manually generate electricity by pedaling a bicycle to listen to bioacoustic recordings from Los Angeles’ Ballona Wetlands.

The recordings, which capture the sounds of bird species that once inhabited the area, are played back with varying speed depending on the participant’s pedaling. This creates a dynamic experience where the sounds—and therefore the understanding of the past—can be distorted, reflecting the fragility of knowledge in a deteriorating world.

The installation combines several scientific and artistic elements: long-term bioacoustic recordings from the Ballona Wetlands, identification of over 150 bird species, energy generation through an inverter attached to a bicycle, and programming that alters sound output based on control voltages.

This project is a collaboration with Daniel Rothman, composer and sound artist from LA, who collected the audio data at the Ballona Wetlands since 2021. He proposed the idea and concept, I was involved in assembling and programming the installation. For the presentation at Nature of Cities Festival, Daike Peters joined the project to share her perspective as environmental urbanist.

This work was shown

• 18.08.-03.09.2023 Time to Listen - The Ecological Crisis in Sound and Music, Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg, Berlin ↗
• 03.-07.05.2024 The Nature of Cities Festival, Atelier Gardens, Berlin