'Talking Trees'

DECORAH - Down in a valley, between majestic limestone bluffs and the rolling hills of northeast Iowa, the sound of music slowly dissolves from traffic whizzing by to the drone of a fly layered over a babbling brook, a bevy of birds, a band of frogs and a choir of insects.

They join their voices in a summer symphony springing from nature and enhanced by electronic gadgetry in an artistic installation titled "Talking Trees."

The sonic soundscape blends into the landscape of Heritage Farm, home to Seed Savers Exchange, just off Highway 52 a mile or so north of Decorah. Hikers along 1.25 miles of the farm's main trail can stop at four stations devoted to specific sounds, but as with nature, birdsong wafts through each one, creating a lilting, chirping counterpoint.

The details

• "Talking Trees" outdoor music installation
• Heritage Farm, 3094 N. Winn. Rd., Decorah
• 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through May
• Admission: Free
• Information: Seedsavers.org

This is the brainchild of Luther College Composer-in-Residence Brooke Joyce and collaborator Harvey Sollberger, a retired music professor and active composer who lives in Strawberry Point. Both were interested in developing music to be heard in an outdoor environment, so they contacted Seed Savers and got an immediate greenlight.

The composers secured $7,000 in funding seeded through a $4,800 Iowa Arts Council grant. Luther College helped pick up the overage and "Harvey and I kicked in a little ourselves," says Joyce, 39, of Decorah.

The bulk of the money grew into four metal tripod sculptures that create a kind of open dome over a wooden bench where visitors can sit and experience the changing music and scenery.

"This has really been a group effort," says Joyce, who has been on sabbatical from teaching duties at Luther this spring so he could complete the installation. Consultants aided with the solar aspects and computer programming that power the music. Local artist Kelly Ludeking created the steel sculptures that are designed to weather with the elements.

The installation is open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through May, and admission is free. In late August or early September, it will move to the nearby Luther campus, and Joyce hopes to take it farther afield after that.

Motorcycle speakers are mounted on the framework to pump out the sound. A computer memory card holds the music program and solar panels generate the power to operate the recordings via deep-cycle batteries set to turn off after hours.

Joyce and Sollberger traversed the site last May to capture environmental noises at different times of the day, which means visitors can hear the sounds change during the 10-hour cycle. Hikers also will pass by another art installation: "Grassfed," featuring larger-than-life paintings of the the Ancient White Park Cattle living at Heritage Farm. Artist is Valerie Miller of Steel Cow studio in Waukon.

"We came out in late evening and early morning and walked all over the property, which is vast," Joyce says. "Most people don't realize it's somewhere between 800 and 900 acres and there are trails all over.

"We walked on almost all the trails. Whenever we heard something that was particularly interesting, we would just stop and record a minute or two. By the time we were done, we had spent five or six hours out here had about two hours of recordings," he says.

"What you hear are exclusively sounds that were gathered from Seed Savers. The only thing I added was a wind chime sound you'll occasionally hear. But everything else are sounds that have been manipulated and pushed and pulled a little bit to get the effects that we want, using a computer program."

Joyce learned to much through the project -- from electronics to a new computer language -- and encountered a surprise along the way from a fly that followed the composers as they made their recordings and became an underlying drone that fit naturally into the music mix.

"One of the interesting things you can do when you record sounds is put them under a microscope and figure out what frequencies are present there and what the nature of the sounds are -- kind of analyze them," Joyce says.

He discovered the frogs were "croaking right round the pitch C" and a particular bird had a call that peaked around a C.

"And then this fly is also buzzing right around the pitch C as well. So when I injected some pitch into this piece, it's been basically a C or a G, the perfect fifth above it. So the piece – it's like it's in a key. I had no idea that would happen," Joyce says. "I don't know if it's coincidental. I don't know enough about biology to know if these creatures are actually communicating or being influenced by each other that way. But the environment here seems to be in the key of C. Who knew? Why not? C's a good note."

Sharing the nature of music and the music of nature is what it's all about with "Talking Trees."

"You will hear birds coming from the speakers but hear real bird sounds coming from birds around you, so you'll have that wonderful experience of 'what am I listening to,' and before you know it, you're really paying attention to your environment, which is what we want," Joyce says.

The five Luther students walking the trail this week were doing just that, as part of Andy Hageman's "Literature and Ecology" class.

"Being from Decorah, I've been to Seed Savers before, but this opened my eyes again to the beauty of northeast Iowa and how we can become closer with nature," says Erik Bay, 21, a Religion major. "The recordings did sound lot like the natural sounds."

Nils Johnson, 20, a Biology and English major from Madison, Wis., found natural tie-ins to their classroom work.

"It makes me think about a lot of what we've read in class, with more of just returning to a simpler kind of life. It's reminiscent of the past. It's simple and it's enjoyable in that sense, to kind of return to that."