VCUarts professor gives voice to a single atom’s journey

By Madeline Reinsel

In an Oregon auditorium this January, the sounds of Virginia birdsong filled the air.

Maids, maids, maids, put on your tea kettle-ettle-ettle-ettle! … sang one choir member, warbling like a song sparrow.

Drink your tea! Tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle! … trilled several others, imitating the Eastern towhee and Carolina wren.

The choir had just begun its live performance of "En Masse," a piece written by Sara Bouchard, a sound artist and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts adjunct professor in the Department of Kinetic Imaging. The 30-minute electro-acoustic performance was the culmination of Bouchard's year-long fluxART residency, which she completed in partnership with the lab of Chris Gough, Ph.D., the executive director of VCU's Rice Rivers Center and a professor in the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability, part of the College of Humanities and Sciences.

The fluxART program blends science and art. Artists collaborate with FluxNet, a global network of scientists who run atmospheric monitoring stations. Those data-collecting towers essentially track the biosphere's breath by measuring exchanges - or fluxes - of carbon dioxide, water vapor and energy between ecosystems and the atmosphere.

Bouchard has partnered previously with Gough, including through her data sonification course at VCUarts. Her latest work took her on the road - and took on a huge scale - as she brought scientific data to artistic life.

Bouchard's piece, performed by 12 singers and a percussionist at Oregon State University's Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts, represented the earth's carbon cycle through five movements: Air, Wood, Soil, Fire and Breath.

Gough, who attended the performance, was amazed.

"It really was a sense of awe for me - feeling the data in a way that I never had, feeling the emotion of the data and of those patterns and of what those patterns mean for the climate and climate change," he said.

"It really was a sense of awe for me," Chris Gough said, describing hearing "En Masse" for the first time. (Madeline Reinsel, Enterprise Marketing and Communications)

Bouchard's pre-residency work has also focused on the environment: She has twice staged a sound installation entitled "Breathe, River," which is based on James River water quality data collected by the lab of School of Life Sciences and Sustainability professor Paul Bukaveckas, Ph.D., at the Pump House in Richmond's Byrd Park.

Bouchard's partnership with the Gough Lab was one of four artist-scientist pairings in fluxART's pilot residency program. Her residency was also supported by the College of Humanities and Sciences.

Bouchard spent a year attending Gough Lab meetings and learning about the lab's research, from carbon dioxide and methane exchange in restored wetlands to forest resilience. She also attended conferences and lectures on climate science, which she said had a profound impact on the project.

"It dawned on me that climate change is not just about the future," she said. "It's embedded in data from decades past."

And though "En Masse" began as a data sonification project, Bouchard's intentions for the piece evolved as she wrote.

"I came into it imagining it would be way more sonification-based," she said. "But over the course of my conversations with Chris and the Gough Lab team, I came to the conclusion that the appropriate message was one of universality and a call to action. It became more of a poetic interpretation - a deep dive into community and a kind of exercise in empathy."

For Gough, the performance brought a sense of fulfillment as the auditorium of scientists, artists and concertgoers sang in unison.

"You could hear this whole room, hundreds of people singing," he said. "It almost brought me to tears. It was amazing."

Here is more about "En Masse" - including video clips that bring the work to life.

Air

The piece, which follows the path of one carbon atom, begins in the air, as the choir mimics birdsongs that Bouchard recorded in the woods in Virginia.

"I had fun with turning the mnemonics that birders use into something funny and magical," she said. "And I had one person come up to me afterward and say, 'I grew up in Kentucky, and I'm a birder. But suddenly I was back in the forest, and I was hearing it in a way that I never had.'"

As the birdsong fades out, the performers take the perspective of birds in flight, describing the weather and migration patterns.

The earth it turns, the sun it climbs. … they sing. … The heart it ticks, the days go by.

Wood

But carbon doesn't just stay in the air. Small openings on the surfaces of leaves suck in air, converting carbon dioxide into nutrients for plants and trees.

In the piece's second act, "Wood," the choir follows the carbon atom as it moves into a tree and is converted into a sugar molecule that fuels the tree's growth.

"Somehow, the magic happens," Bouchard said. "And then the world suddenly shifts. It's part of this being that has a much longer perspective on time than humans do."

Soil

The carbon atom soon makes its way into the tree's roots, where it is released into the soil.

At the beginning of the section, the audience hears a crackling sound, which Bouchard recorded by placing a small microphone probe into the compost pile in her community garden.

Pulse. Pass the message. … the singers trill, representing sugar molecules moving through the soil and fungi.

The Soil movement, Bouchard said, represents a cycle of generosity that she hopes humans can aspire to.

"In nature, we see branching network structures such as the 'wood wide web' that distribute resources, whereas human social systems are often hierarchical and top-down," she said. "I've been doing a lot of research lately into taking teachings from the natural world, and using those teachings to guide my own social interactions."

Fire

Eventually, however, the carbon atom must return to the air - sometimes through fire. The tempestuous movement embodies the world's changing climate through spoken-word reflections on climate change, which Bouchard collected from scientists and others.

It starts with a catch in my chest. … says one performer, as the singers gradually layer those climate anxieties. … It feels hopeless and inevitable.

The piece reaches its emotional height as the choir performs a sonification of approximately 15 years of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements, taken from the University of Michigan Biological Station, where Gough conducts fieldwork.

Breath

But Bouchard didn't want to leave the audience in that feeling of dread.

In the last movement, "Breath," a choir member guides audience members through meditation exercises and invites them to sing along with the chorus.

Breathing is singing. Singing is breathing. … they sing. … Let's be a forest.

The peaceful ending, Bouchard said, is meant to focus the audience and create a sense of togetherness, while also representing the carbon atom's return to the air through the tree's "exhale."

"I've felt strongly for the past year that the answer to the deep divisions in our world right now is care and trust and coming together - en masse," she said.

Footnote: The fluxArt residency program was launched by University of California, Berkeley research scientist Maoya Bassiouni, Ph.D., with funding from the National Science Foundation. Bouchard's piece was performed by Oregon State University's Vocal Ensemble and student Parker Williams.