The bat cloud, an interspecies listening journey
Knörnschild Mirjam
Antoine Bertin is a european artist working at the intersection of science and sensory immersion, field recording and sound storytelling, data and music composition. His creations take the form of listening experiences, immersive moments and audio meditations exploring our relationships with the living world. His work has been presented at Tate Britain, Palais de Tokyo, Serpentine Gallery, KIKK festival, STRP festival, Sonar+D, CCCB Barcelona, Dutch Design Week, Nuit Blanche Paris, le 104, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Gaité Lyrique. He produces a quarterly show called “Edge of the forest” on NTS radio weaving together field recordings, data sonifications and science inspired meditations.
The Bat Cloud is a proposition for an interspecies installation, exploring the language of bats through artificial intelligence.
The installation was the winning submission to an open-call from AZULIK and interdisciplinary arts center SFER IK, that prompted artists to create art exploring biodiversity, ancestral knowledge, and nature through the use of artificial intelligence. SFER IK Museion, announced Bertin as the recipient of the inaugural SFER IK artist award during Miami Art Week and the artwork is currently being produced.
The work operates simultaneously as a bat habitat, a scientific station, a multispecies art studio and a public listening space, located in the jungle surrounding the museum.
The objective of the Bat Cloud is the sculpting of new sustainable relations between humans and other species, through the elaboration of artist lead scientific rituals, harvesting the capacity of machine learning to decode non-human communications.
The Bat Cloud is a multifaceted art project, weaving together elements of sensory
immersion, sculptural exploration and ecological fiction to explore as it unfolds before our ears the cultural revolution brought about by digital acoustics.
This discipline allows us to hear beyond our senses, and reveal the ways other forms of intelligences have to speak, beyond the limitations of our senses and umwelt.
The Bat Cloud is a collaboration between artist Antoine Bertin and researcher Mirjam Knörnschild, head of the Behavioral Ecology and Bioacoustics Lab at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Germany.
With this project at the confluence of architecture, art, science, and music, our objective is to amplify the voices of non-human intelligences, fostering a deeper sense of empathy and awareness.