On a summer morning, an irritating alarm wakes me. I open the window, still tired, to the repeated calls of unseen min-min cicadas. After a shower and some time at the keyboard, I leave home in the afternoon. The restless buzzing of aburazemi clings to me with the summer heat. It is both exhausting and strangely energizing. Leaving work later, I feel a cool breeze and hear higurashi calling like the voice of the forest. Their calls announce the end of the day, bringing both satisfaction and melancholy.
Although we group them together as cicadas, their varied calls evoke different feelings throughout the day. We rarely perceive the insects as individuals when we hear them. Instead, they surround us as an ambience, suggesting a diffuse ecological presence at once small and vast.
Making the harmony beneath the noise perceptible
I use cicadas as a medium that evokes these feelings and as a way of approaching “cicada” as an environment—an Umwelt—rather than as an individual organism.
Cicadas call intensely in competition with other males and other species to reproduce. The resulting noise is vast and enveloping, yet so chaotic and ubiquitous that it is difficult to perceive its underlying relationships. This work tries to make them perceptible by connecting cicadas to a computer.
The work begins with a melody played by a single cicada. Others gradually join with different parts until four cicadas perform Pachelbel’s Canon. Their calls are controlled through electrical stimulation. The result is as chaotic as the cicadas outside, but careful listening reveals a melody within it.
It is irritating, expansive, and somehow poignant. After listening to cicadas as music, stepping outside to hear them again can bring those feelings into focus and draw attention to their ambient presence. This may offer a way to perceive the elusive environment formed by cicadas.