Pando Suite
Pando Suite is a series of audio works exploring the hidden and interconnected sounds of the Pando aspen grove in south-central Utah. Known as "The Trembling Giant," Pando is one of the world's largest organisms, consisting of a sprawling forest of genetically identical trees, or "stems," connected at the roots.
With audio recordings, videos, and photographs by Jeff Rice. Support comes from the Jack Straw Artist Program and Friends of Pando. Some sounds for the exhibit were recorded as part of a commission from The New York Times Magazine.
Jack Straw New Media Gallery
January 19, 2024 - March 8, 2024
Seattle, Washington
Pando challenges our basic understanding of the world. The notion that this immense 106-acre forest could be a single organism defies our concept of the individual. Its vastness humbles our sense of space. At 8-12,000 years old (give or take a million years) it is beyond our personal experience of time. There may be nothing more fundamental than the questions it forces upon us.
Suite: “A group of things forming a unit or constituting a collection, such as a group of rooms or a musical composition in several movements of different character.” — Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary
Resonant aspen cube with multimedia
Within the gallery, a resonant cube made of aspen wood emanates with the low, drone-like rumble of Pando’s underground soundscape as perhaps millions of aspen leaves tremble in the wind, passing their vibrations through the tree and into the earth.
An installation by Jeff Rice with support from Friends of Pando and the Jack Straw Artist Foundation. Fabrication of the resonant aspen cube was by Bob Huskey of Saturn Design.
Related recordings
Soundscape
Ambient sounds of Pando’s leaves, animals, and weather.
Beneath the tree
A recording of Pando’s underground soundscape.
creature
A tiny voice coming from somewhere beneath Pando.
related music
Invocation
“Invocation” pairs a soundscape of birds with a pitch follower. The pitches are created by the computer relative to the pitches of birds recorded at the Pando aspen grove. The pitches aren’t ‘one to one,’ but the birds create a sonic palette that the computer follows. The music can stand alone as an ambient work or it can be accompanied by spoken word, chanting or art song. Produced as part of an artist residency with Friends of Pando.
Basho’s frog
“Basho’s Frog” is inspired by the famous haiku, “The Old Pond,” in which a frog is heard jumping into the water. The poem holds within it everything there is to know about nature sounds and the vital connection between cause and effect. I think the poem is about many things, but it makes me wonder in particular what it means to hear something. That is the question I have been wrestling with throughout this project. The music in “Basho’s Frog” is created by the reaction of an envelope follower to the sounds of Pando’s roots. The rumbling sound is mostly atonal (although maybe somewhere near a D on the scale) but changes in amplitude and intensity trigger the envelope follower to play different notes within a major pentatonic scale. The computer essentially plays a duet with itself. It hears the sound of the roots and feeds back the sounds in various patterns. It’s a live recording of the computer. The frog jumps into its own sound. Produced as part of an artist residency with Friends of Pando.
Collage
“Collage” explores the Pando Forest through a series of recordings made with contact microphones. It includes the sound of bark being pulled off a tree, ants walking over a branch, piezo mics attached to leaves that rattle in the wind, the sound of water, recordings of the tree’s underground soundscape and roots, and the voice of a mysterious creature. There is some minimal processing of the sounds within the piece. Produced as part of an artist residency with Friends of Pando.
More Context
Pando journal
A first-person account of my time recording in the Pando forest. The essay was written as part of an artist residency with the group Friends of Pando.
Media coverage
National and international news outlets have featured many of the recordings from the project.
Postcards
Send the sounds of Pando through the mail. Contact me to receive a free postcard from the exhibit. Get them while they last.