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
leave(leaf)/believe: A Meditation on the Complex Intersection between Emotions, Reason, and Faith
by Julia Miller
May 9 - August 31, 2009
Lincoln Park Conservatory Fern Room
Open daily 9am – 5pm
Free admission
Opening reception: Saturday, May 9, 3-5pm
Entering the Fern Room of the Lincoln Park Conservatory, you hear leave(leaf)/believe: A Meditation on the Complex Intersection between Emotions, Reason, and Faith—a sound work by
Miller began the auditory project with text; she combined names of common weeds with other poetic language, then used a mathematical text organization method called mesostics—a system developed by the American composer John Cage—to extract words, phrases and syllables. Then, through various types of sound synthesis, she created accompanying “pitch clouds” that are produced in specific locations throughout the Fern Room by means of four-channel playback. These electronic sound compositions are like shifting fields in which the transformed words float and interact, evoking complex emotional and metaphysical experiences.
Julia Miller (Chicago) is a composer, guitarist, educator and curator in
leave(leaf)/believe: A Meditation on the Complex Intersection between Emotions, Reason, and Faith 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. Special thanks to the staff and volunteers of the Lincoln Park Conservatory.
Florasonic featured in TimeOut Chicago
Past projects
- 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
