Congo Field Recording

I was commissioned to create the exhibition soundscape for a photo exhibition by New York-based photographer Pieter Henket, exhibited at Barberini Museum Potsdam. To capture original sound material for my soundscape composition, I spent two weeks with a small crew in the forests of the Congo Bassin, recording the mesmerizing environmental sounds of the second largest rainforest on earth.

In November 2017 we flew with a tiny propeller plane from the Republic of Congo’s capital Brazzaville into the heart of the rainforest and proceeded with 4×4’s to our first remote camp in Odzala National Park.

The Congo Basin is one of the most biodiverse places on earth; the sound of nature is continuously present and evolving with the time of day.

After the break of dawn,  I was surrounded by a constant, buzzing symphony of insects:

One night, I recorded the evening chorus of hundreds of frogs:

African forest elephants roam freely through the national park. A local guide mentioned to me that they usually gather at night to drink at a bay on the edge of the forest.

I wanted to capture the sounds of the elephants up close so I put one of my recorders in a dry bag, camouflaged it and placed it with a small set of microphones right next to the waterline. I left it there and let it record overnight, slightly worried if the equipment would survive the night.  “Trampled by an elephant” would have been a great insurance claim, but apparently the elephants did not care much about my setup. I was able to record many hours of the sound of free-roaming elephants, sometimes only a few meters away from my microphone rig.