Inside Cartier’s New Immersive Exhibition in Salem
The audio-visual experience “celebrates our planet’s rich biodiversity and raises awareness of its alarming decline.”
Many of Cartier’s pieces explicitly reference animals. Take the nature-inspired Fauna and Flora collection, or the iconic Panthère watch beloved by It girls from Bella Hadid to Dua Lipa. (The panther has been an emblem of the house dating back to 1914). Keeping that in mind, a recent commission by Fondation Cartier—Cartier’s cultural center dedicated to promoting contemporary art—is a perfect fit. Billed as an immersive audio-visual experience, “The Great Animal Orchestra” at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts features soundscapes of biodiversity across North America, Latin America, Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe recorded by soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause—over 50 percent of which, sadly, has been lost.
Equal parts alarming and enlightening, the exhibition kicks off in the Amazon rainforest, where the sounds and its biophony, originally recorded in 1990, can no longer be heard due to increased logging and mining in the region. Next, you’ll hear baboons at the Mungwezi Ranch in Zimbabwe, followed abruptly by birds, coyotes, and mountain lions at Crescent Meadow, a picturesque clearing in California’s Sequoia National Park. Via trippy, ephemeral spectrograms created by United Visual Artists creative director Matt Clark, visitors become deeply engrossed by the ecosystem. (I, for one, even missed a few breaking news alerts.)
“The Great Animal Orchestra” is an exploration of sound: how we digest it, the ways in which animals express it. It’s also a reminder to sit back and immerse yourself in a remarkable display of wildlife. Below, get a closer look at the exhibition, open until May 22, 2022.
The seven soundscapes were specially curated to represent the fleetingness of the natural world.
United Visual Artists developed special software that produced animated spectrograms as visual representations of where and when Krause made his recordings (many were at remote locations in the early hours).
The KM41 Amazon soundscape features sounds of rare species like tree frogs.
“The work is as much about what you hear as what you don’t hear,” says Krause.
Visitors are encouraged to either sit or lie down to absorb the sounds.
Krause’s recording from Mungwezi Ranch demonstrates what he calls “acoustic niches,” which can only be generated by one particular species in one place at one specific point in time.
The exhibition concludes with a melange of soundscapes from oceans all over the world.
Claire Stern is the Deputy Editor of ELLE.com. Previously, she served as Editor at Bergdorf Goodman. Her interests include fashion, food, travel, music, Peloton, and The Hills—not necessarily in that order. She used to have a Harriet the Spy notebook and isn’t ashamed to admit it.
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