2016 | Switzerland, Borneo | Documentary,Experimental

Biosemiotic Borneo

  • 14 mins
  • Director | Ursula Biemann
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Biosemiotic Borneo ­– a more explicitly sonic than visual piece of art – lingers around a giant Banyan tree that stands in the Meratus Mountains in Southeast Borneo. Drawing attention to the semiotic processes of world-making in nature, the audio-visual work explores how artists and field biologists go about sensing and making sense of dense forest ecologies of Borneo using new methods that describe entire genetic assemblages as fluid text. The sensory richness of the forest inspired this piece to be a form of music in the way geophilosophy recasts natural selection as musical composition, which binds together the coevolution of a tree, birds, insects and symbiont microorganisms.

Sound recordings in the field Nabil Ahmed; sound design, editing and mixing Patrick Codenys; percussion Beibei Wang; 3D art work Ioannis Kaltirimtzis; 3D animation Samaneh Moafi; performance of field scientist Rizqi Hidayat.

The video has been realized in collaboration with Nabil Ahmed.

One-channel video, installation of scientific filter bags and seven 3D models of tropical tree seeds.

ecology rainforest sound field work data evolution
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