Sonificiation of a biological process resulting in a drifting ambiental electronic drones and gentle glitchy sonic detritus. The sound-form calls for a deep listening session while the underlaying concept foregrounds the disruptive human intervention.
“Saša Spačal’s Anatomy of a Symbiosis is the outgrowth of a dynamic, living biotechnological installation, Symbiome – Economy of Symbiosis, originally presented as a generative 22 hour broadcast of the sonified data it generated, now edited and collected as a condensed listening experience, enabling wider transmission of the intrinsic messages and ways of being in the world which it invokes.
On the surface, one is listening to the audio artifact of the disintegrating symbiotic bond between soil bacteria Rhizobium trifolii and red clover Trifolium pratense caused by human intervention with the introduction of nitrogen fertilizer, eliminating the necessity for this unlikely and fragile collaboration which had developed in the deep past, hidden from human cognizance by its macro time frame and micro scale, buried within the earth.” – from liner notes by Brandon Rosenbluth
Saša Spačal · sound, concept
Red clover Trifolium pratense and soil bacteria Rhizobium trifolii · symbiosis
Mirjan Švagelj · experiment setup, data collection and scientific consultation
Pim Boreel · software design and programming
Ana Čavić · poem proofreading
Tina Ivezić · graphic design
Miha Godec · photo
Brandon Rosenbluth · liner notes
Katja Kosi· proofreading
Luka Prinčič, Luka T. Zagoričnik · executive production
Anatomy of a Symbiosis was commissioned in 2022 by Radio Art Zone, a joint project by the artist duo Mobile Radio (Sarah Washington & Knut Aufermann) and the Luxembourg community station Radio ARA, which broadcasted for 100 days as part of the European Capital of Culture Esch2022. In 2023 the work was published as an album by Kamizdat.
Anatomy of Symbiosis was also released as part of Are You For Real Phase 2: Cosmo-clusters on computation, agency, and magic. The ongoing web-based project Are You For Real was launched by IFA – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in 2020, the second phase is shaped curatorially by Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás. Are You For Real Phase 2 aspires to situate and question a multiplicity of cosmotechnics (following Yuk Hui’s term) shaped by a diverse, decentralized community of artists through a sequence of cosmological propositions, alternating between planetary and terrestrial, ecological and technological, magical and decolonial. They enable us to grasp various aspects of digitalization, and to explore a reality now irreducibly entangled with the online sphere.
Free streaming, downloads (name your price) and limited edition USBs are available through our Bandcamp shop kamizdat.bandcamp.com.
Some rights reserved under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence www.creativecommons.com/licence
Production: Zavod Emanat s podporo Mestne Občine Ljubljana