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The Lincoln Park Conservatory's latest sound installation is meant for plants—but you can listen, too.

Monday Dec 15, 2008.     By Beatrice Smigasiewicz

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For most visitors—especially during the winter months—the Lincoln Park Conservatory offers a haven from Chicago's busy streets. They come here expecting a peaceful stroll through the expansive indoor park and little else. But from now through February, visitors to the Fern Room can experience something more: a concert.

Have no fear, plant lovers; your favorite flora won't be besieged by wailing guitars or clashing cymbals. The performance —"The Osmosymbiotic Echo," by Jenny Graf Sheppard—is the most recent installation of the Florasonic sound series, presented by the Experimental Sound Studio.

The site-specific installations began eight years ago as the brainchild of Studio director Lou Mallozzi and sound artist M.W. Burns. Mallozzi, who curates the series, says he chooses artists "who are aware of how the space works and who concern themselves with the dichotomy of the natural and the artificial world, as the Conservatory is both a natural and an artificial space."

Sheppard, a Baltimore artist who formerly lived in Chicago (you may know her as a member of the noise band Metalux), attempts to recreate the experience of a natural environment by fusing sounds sampled from the plants' natural co-habitants. The piece, which she refers to as a "composition for ferns," is almost entirely composed of samples from Kentucky wildlife. Bird chirps, frog croaks and insect buzzes blend together in a 22-minute piece that plays over the speakers throughout the greenhouse. Sound effects repeat, amplify and vanish in a loop (with the exception of the mockingbird’s call, which plays only once).

Sheppard's installation was inspired by the studies found in the popular 1970s book, The Secret Life of Plants, an "account of the physical, emotional and spiritual relations between plants and man." The book contains a theory which notes that sound—particularly that produced by birds—has been shown to stimulate plant growth by inducing absorption of moisture and nutrients. With "Echo," Sheppard simulates these sound patterns, furthering the creation of a natural world within the Conservatory's artificial space.

And though there is no word yet on whether the plants have begun to grow in earnest, the piece has certainly made an impact on visitors. The most common response so far: "I can't see the birds."

"The Osmosybiotic Echo" continues daily (9 a.m.-5 p.m.) through February 2009 at the Lincoln Park Conservatory, 2391 N. Stockton. Admission is free.