A Half-Light Chorus

A sound installation by Lykanthea for Experimental Sound Studio

Exhibition Information:
May 6 - July 22, 9am - 5pm daily
Lincoln Park Conservatory
2391 N. Stockton Drive
Chicago, IL 60614

July 22, 3pm: Closing Performance:
Lakshmi Ramgopal (vocals, sruti box, movement)
Lucy Little (violin)
Subi Shah (vocals)
Sonal Aggarwal (vocals)
Asha Rowland (movement)
Rosé Hernandez (movement)
Kiam Marcelo Junio (movement)

After hearing an unknown bird sing for years outside her grandmother's house in India, Lakshmi Ramgopal wonders about the importance of birdsong to how we think about memory and kinship with A Half-Light Chorus, her installation for Experimental Sound Studio’s Florasonic series.

Located in the Fern Room of Chicago's Lincoln Park Conservatory, the installation features a ninety-minute, four-channel recording of vocalists imitating the calls of birds from India and in Sanskrit literature. Punctuated with original Tamil odes to individual birds, this shimmering tapestry of arias, whistles, clicks, and cries plays with the diurnal rhythms, forms, and functions of birdsong. These sounds immerse the Fern Room's greenery in a cross section of India’s avian bioacoustics.

"Being surrounded by their calls feels eerily like wandering into a forest where the birds have suddenly developed human intelligence." - Chicago Reader