Skogsrå
an interactive web story, audio, and sequencer by Alia Synesthesia.
ExploreAs urban dwellers, we are alienated from the natural world. We are too preconditioned to treat living ecologies like parks, lakes, and forests as inanimate backdrops. This is especially true when it comes to the internet and the digital realm: the virtual hyperreality is so barren and void of life — nature itself exists there only as a symbol. I’ve always been intrigued by how to reconcile the natural and the digital, and how technology can help us see nature in new ways.
For the past three years, I’ve been learning how to make music with trees and bring small pieces of the real world into the digital barrens via a long-forgotten form of computational vanity known as web art. Skogsra is one of the creations stemming from such endeavors.
In Swedish folklore, Skogsra is something akin to a dryad. A creature of the forest, she was known for luring male hunters into the woods; most of them did not come back.
The soundscapes for Skogsra were collected in Swedish swamps, somewhere in the general area of Orebro, where at one point I stood at midnight, my shoes and the lower half of my pants completely drenched. It was a full moon, raining lightly. I grinned like a lunatic while pressing the record button on my field recorder.
Skogsra is not only about listening but also about engaging in storytelling yourself. After navigating the story, you are invited to experiment with the digital drum machine sequencer, which contains field recording samples, as well as instrument and voice recordings. You can arrange the haunting tune of Skogsra yourself and record it to keep as a keepsake.
To learn more about Skogsra field recordings, music with plants, and the overarching project Arboreal Opera, consider subscribing to the project’s mailing list.
Note: At this time, *Skogsra* can only be experienced on desktop due to requiring streaming permissions to record browser audio.
INSTRUCTIONS
- This story contains field recordings of natural soundscapes that can be played by clicking their corresponding symbols: bird, water, fungus, and wreath.
- Click the arrows at the end of each scene to progress through the story from morning to night. Clicking the final set of arrows will launch the in-browser Skogsrå Drum Sequencer, allowing you to create your own Skogsrå songs!
- Please note: this piece is not designed for mobile devices, and will require access to a browser tab in order to record your creations.
Alia was born in north-eastern Siberia, in the coldest city in the world. Growing up with radio as her babysitter, she learned to appreciate audio storytelling at a young age. In a way, radio sparked her love for both music and listening to stories, and over the years, both have conflated in strange and unpredictable ways. Raised as a perpetually bored child in a tough schooling system, Alia dipped her toes in many art forms: from writing to visual art, music, performance, and creative programming — and she isn’t ready to part with any of them! When her affinity for music was inevitably discovered at age 6, she was promptly off-loaded to a secondary music school for the next seven years.
As a multi-instrumentalist and a classically trained opera singer in an imaginary one-woman theatre, Alia is drawn to experimental music that pushes the boundaries of listening and erases the barriers between things. But her musical compositions are never really about the music itself — they are about stories told in musical images and colors.