17 June 2025 07:00PM
AFTER 8 BOOKS
Bookstore and Publisher
7 Rue Jarry, 75010 Paris
Is it difficult to reproduce the sounds of nature?
Welcome to a listening session and a LP launch of Environements 12 with James Parker & Joel Stern from Machine Listening, interviewed by Joseph Ghosn.
Environments 12 is a new, speculative addition to the once-popular Environments series: a sequence of 11 records released between 1969 and 1979 that anticipated a mass-market in mood-altering nature recordings. Unfolding across a series of historical, contemporary, and speculative scenes, the work is narrated by an ensemble of vocal performers and their generative voice clones. Together, this more-than-human chorus tells and retells stories of ‘psychologically ultimate seashores’, reef lullabies, natural symphonies designed for zoo enclosures, and large language models for whales and crows. A collection of songs and fables recovered from the ruins of a future history.