Jeff Tallman’s fourth Bavarian Forest installation, Nature of the Night Sky:: May 7, 2011 - September 18, 2011 :: Opening: May 7, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. :: at the Berghof Gibacht, Bavarian Forest outside of the city of Waldmünchen near the Czech border ::

The installation features the resonance of numerous stars as provided by collaborator astrophysicist Daniel Huber of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (Australia), as its sole sound source. The fifty minute, mutli-channel sound program will play through once every evening just after sundown in a clearing in the forest that provides ample view of the night sky. A star chart is provided to identify some of the stars whose sounds are used in the installation.

Stars create thousands of roaring resonant sounds that cannot penetrate the vacuum of space. But stellar seismology, the study of the oscillations of star masses, makes possible the scientific reproduction of their sound. Astrophysicist collaborator Daniel Huber of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy (Australia) realized a set of uniformly scaled star sounds specifically for this project. Nature of the Night Sky originates in these resonances, whose cosmic reality infuses the installation with metaphor and the vast timelessness of space.

Talman analyzed these resonances noting that they do not exhibit the harmonic structures typically found in music. Stars issue dense and tightly woven packs of sound, somewhat comparable to the sounds of clangorous bells. The artist used these dense sonic bodies directly in the installation sound, but also unpacked them to examine the alien sound anatomy of stars, then reassembled them to structure the sound of the installation. Importantly, all sounds in Nature of the Night Sky are modeled sounds of actual stars. No other sounds were used in the installation.

Near Waldmünchen, Germany, Nature of the Night Sky sounds for about fifty minutes just after sunset every evening. In the dark, hushed mountain woodlands, the installation presents a surrounding sonic environment with loudspeakers poised in trees around the perimeter of a small forest clearing. Beneath the canopy of the stars Nature of the Night Sky explores the astonishingly rich harmonic coloration of truly celestial voices.

Please join the artist on Saturday, or visit the installation any evening (weather permitting) from May 7 to September 18, 2011. Flashlights are recommended for the access road and forest trail.