Krista Dragomer

This 2013 multichannel installation at the Southhampton Center was created by Krista Dragomer and Bob Pritchard. Inside a Yew tree, 8 speakers mounted to the branches played an aleatoric composition of recorded bird call sounds and cell phone tones. The installation utilized programing that allowed the sounds to respond to one another, resulting in an audio experience of birds and phones mimicking and duetting, often blending into one another. 

When birds imitate cellphone ringtones and mobile phone companies offer ringtones that sound like birds, what do the next generation of birds learn to sing? Is the ringtone version of a birdcall, sung by a mother bird, learned by her baby bird, natural? Rather than present a series of binaries—Man vs Nature, Natural vs Artificial—Where the Wild Things Were reflects on the environment of the present as a symbiosis of the technical and biological.

Click the play button to hear a stereo sample of the audio.