Museum of Design Atlanta’s “Designing RE: Climate Change - Steve Norton’s Requiem”
Atlanta, GEORGIA - The Museum of Design Atlanta, the only museum in the Southeast United States dedicated to design, sent us this submission and we just HAD to share it. This unique and beautiful sound installation created and designed by sound artist and musician Steve Norton was meant to be open to the public, but on March 13th, the museum was closed due to social distancing.
From the submission:
When visitors to Museum of Design Atlanta's Learning from Nature: The Future of Design exhibition enter the museum lobby, they encounter a sound installation called Requiem. Motion-activated sound domes hang from the museum’s ceiling and play Steve Norton’s Requiem, a work of acoustic ecology composed using the sounds made by ten bird species and two frog species that are now extinct.
Norton was able to use their sounds to create Requiem because these vanished birds and amphibians went extinct during the era of recorded sound. In each case, humans were to blame for their extinction.
Included among the animals whose sounds are featured in Requiem is Toughie, a Rabb's Fringe-Limbed Tree Frog. Toughie was the last known surviving member of his species and he resided at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens until his death in 2016.
Requiem reminds us that the soundscape — the natural noises and sounds that make up our environment — is irrevocably altered when species become extinct.
Through the link below, you will find a soundcloud link, and an interview with Steve about his work on Requiem! Also, explore the rest of the MODA website for more exciting content from the museum!
Experience ‘Museum of Design Atlanta’s “Designing RE: Climate Change - Steve Norton’s Requiem’ here!
Steve Norton’s Requiem at MODA