Launch - Monday 29th July 2024
Sonic Nature is an opportunity to connect with the natural world through the senses. To touch, hear, feel and experience the fragile and yet resilient stories that are often overlooked and yet offer deep connection through eco-time travel, from the first flowering plant, to the fossils that make the very fabric of Wales, Sonic Nature invites you to sense nature through your whole being.
My name is Cheryl Beer. As one of the 8 artists selected for the Future Wales Fellowship, I am based at the National Botanic Garden of Wales exploring new ways of engaging communities with nature through the senses, using hybrid techniques that enable you to access my work both at the Garden, or wherever you are in the world, inviting you to contribute to my research with your thoughts and reflections. My creative enquiry began by exploring my own relationship to the natural world. As a hearing impaired environmental sound artist, I work with visual cues from nature to compose music led by the natural world, creating a platform for fragile ecologies to speak through their own voice. As part of my Fellowship research, I have developed a new practice called 'Sonic Sketching', working with the markings of 310-million-year-old tree fossils, the sacred skin of the Himalayan birch tree, the lifecycle of the magnolia, Earth's first flowering plant, to compose music led by the environment.
I have also worked alongside the beekeeping team exploring vibration as a way of connecting, recording inside a colony of 30,000 bees and using a vibration vest to enable visitors to experience the sound beneath the skin and feel what it might be like for a bee living in such a community.
My Artist Research Trail finishes with a Silent Walk to a 200-year-old Oak tree growing in Waun Las, Wales National Nature Reserve. Since my hearing loss, I have gained the most remarkable insight into experiencing nature through the senses. Silent Walk is an invitation to experience the natural world, in the ways that I do. I will be running some in person Silent Walks through the Summer. It will be lovely to meet with you. Click the link below to book your place.
My Artist Research Trail finishes with a Silent Walk to a 200-year-old Oak tree growing in Waun Las, Wales National Nature Reserve. Since my hearing loss, I have gained the most remarkable insight into experiencing nature through the senses. Silent Walk is an invitation to experience the natural world, in the ways that I do. I will be running some in person Silent Walks through the Summer. It will be lovely to meet with you. Click the link below to book your place.
