Jana Winderen - Rats – Secret Soundscapes of the City

Munchmuseet on the Move - Contemporary Art and nyMusikk.

In this collaboration with nyMusikk, Jana Winderen has created a new sound piece based on the communication between rats. The work will be installed underneath Nylandsbrua in Trelastgata by the mouth of the Aker River, and will be available from 08.00 to 23.00 during the autumn of 2017.

Parallel to the world of people is another bustling society – a world of rats. Some of their communication with each other cannot be registered by human ears, as it is located in an ultrasound frequency range – over 20.000 Hz. 

A stone’s throw from the white-marbled Opera house, and based on the hypothesis that rats serenade one another with love songs, Jana Winderen will record the ultrasonic landscape of Bjørvika and slow the sound down to human hearing levels. Based on her fieldwork and findings, she will create a new multichannel composition for Munchmuseet on the Move 2017 with spatial audio software by Tony Myatt (University of Surrey). The new, multi-channel sound piece will be installed at the mouth of Akerselva, where the river meets the sea in this rapidly developing district of Oslo.