Florasonic is a unique program that commissions composers and artists to make new site-specific music and audio art installations for the Fern Room of the Lincoln Park Conservatory, a turn-of-the-century greenhouse. Curated by ESS Executive Director Lou Mallozzi, Florasonic presents each project for three to five months, visited by an estimated 500 to 1,000 people each day.
Current project
Norman W. Long: Electro-Acoustic Dubcology IIISeptember 20 - November 29, 2009
When entering the Fern Room of the Lincoln Park Conservatory, you hear Electro-Acoustic Dubcology III, a sound composition by Chicago artist and designer Norman W. Long. The sources for the composition are location recordings made in the neighborhood around the Lincoln Park Conservatory. Combining his interest in acoustic ecology, the study of the sounds of environments, and his interest in 1970s Jamaican dub music, in which recorded songs were “recycled” and remixed into new versions, Long has created a sound composition from electronic transformations of the everyday sounds of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. His work invites us to pay new and closer attention to our environment and the ways in which we constantly reshape it.
About Norman W. LongNorman W. Long is a local sound artist, designer and composer, born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He studied art and sound composition at the San Francisco Art Institute and then earned a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture at Cornell University. Combining his interests in sound, music and designed environments, he has made numerous performances and installations at galleries and public spaces in the Bay Area, Ithaca and Chicago.
Electro-Acoustic Dubcology III was commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio with the generous support of the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund. It was composed for the Florasonic sound installation series, curated by Lou Mallozzi. Spanish translation by Noé Cuellar. Design by Daniel Marsden at JNL Graphic Design. Technical assistance by Alex Inglizian. Special thanks to the staff and volunteers of the Lincoln Park Conservatory.
Florasonic featured in TimeOut Chicago
Past projects
- leave(leaf)/believe: A Mdiedtation on the Complex Intersection between Emotions, Reason, and Faith by Julia Miller, May 9 - August 31, 2009
- Osmosymbiotic Echo by Jenny Gräf Sheppard, December 7, 2008 - March 31, 2009*
- Cardinal Points by Gustavo Matamoros and Rene Barge, September 7 - November 30, 2008
- Recordings Made in Public Space by Jeffrey M. Robinson, May 4 – August 17, 2008
- photo-sound-esis I, by Fred Lonberg-Holm, November 4, 2007 – April 6, 2008
- In the event that the stag horn fern becomes metallic and that each of its bifurcating leaves rings like a tuning fork, please turn off this recording, by Mark Booth, June 3 - September 30, 2007
- Chorus, by Shawn Decker, November 5, 2006 - April 30, 2007
- The Fifth Pythia of Deir el Qamar, by Michael Zerang and Mazen Kerbaj, July 16 September 30, 2006
- Pseudorniphones, by Bob Snyder (Chicago), November 13, 2005 - February 28, 2006
- Calls and Songs, by Hal Rammel (Chicago), June 18 - September 28, 2005
- Next 3 Miles, by Amnon Wolman (Brooklyn), November 2004 - January 2005 *
- Was It For This?, by Stephen Lapthisophon (Chicago), June 2004 - September 2004
- Transgenesis, by Olivia Block (Chicago), November 2003 - February 2004 *
- Bira, by Douglas R. Ewart (Minneapolis), July 6, 2003 - September 28, 2003
- Music for a Greenhouse, by Walter Faehndrich (Switzerland), November 7, 2002 - April 6, 2003 *
- Something More Than Night, by Terri Kapsalis, John Corbett, and Ellen Rothenberg (Chicago), June 29, 2002 - September 22, 2002
- Fern Room, by Ernst Karel (Chicago), November 8, 2001 - January 6, 2002*
*presented in conjunction with The Outer Ear Festival of Sound
