Local Culture

Nature’s Melody

Museum of Science features Wild Music

Nov 6, 2009

Nature’s Melody

 

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There are commonalities between man and animals that we often take for granted. We see, hear and smell. We take care of our young and fight for our lives. These are the natural, basic similarities of the human and animal kingdoms. But what of music? For mankind, music has been around as long as human history. It holds a unique place in our lives as cultural connector and avenue to higher purpose–in art, spirituality and society. But with such lofty purpose, it is also important to remember that song and music are as natural as the other, more basic connectors we share with the rest of the animal world. Whales compose, bullfrogs chorus, songbirds greet the dawn, and people everywhere sing and dance. What do we all have in common?

The Museum of Science explores this question with its new exhibit Wild Music: Sounds and Songs of Life. The new exhibit (on display through January 3, 2010). The interactive exhibit offers museum visitors the opportunity to learn about music through a variety of interactive venues. Highlights include three different “soundscapes” which invite visitors to explore music as created in the ocean, the forest, and the city. Visitors will learn to interpret spectrograms, or “pictures” of bird songs, learn what whale cries tell us about the animal’s life cycle, see samples of instruments from around the world, experiment with how sound travels underwater, explore how music influences memory, and more.

Visitors can also participate in the Jamming Room and the Bioacoustic Lab. In the first, is a soundproof practice studio where visitors can use pre–recorded audio soundscapes, animal voices, percussion instruments, and live vocals to compose their own musical masterpieces. In the second visitors can experiment with how the human voice works and how it compares to that of other animals, specifically birds. Here, visitors can explore a model of the human larynx and the bird syrinx, feel what it’s like to communicate through an electrolarynx device using vibrations of the throat to “speak” and “feel” their voices through a set of vibrating metal reeds.

For more information and museum hours, visit www.mos.org.