Jana Irmert created her composition Portals entirely from sounds she recorded in the Amazon rainforest on recent travels to Brazil and Colombia. Looking for sounds that are normally hidden from human perception, she used microphones that capture part of the ultrasonic frequency spectrum that insects, amphibians and bats use to communicate, and hydrophones to record river dolphins and fish that use sound to navigate and hunt. Sometimes she left the recorder running unattended for several hours, to capture the transition of the soundscape from day to night.

Listening back to these recordings, it was as if she stepped through a portal every time she put on the headphones, and she started to imagine how the forest sounded if she could hear like a bat, like a frog or an insect, or, diving in the brown waters, like a river dolphin. Irmert transposed the ultrasound recordings to make them audible, carving out sonic elements from the dense ambiences of the rainforest and transforming them into melodic formations, harmonic clouds and rhythmic patterns. These echo her sensation that time in the forest is stacked and layered, moving in ever-expanding circles, like the rings of a tree. With this composition, Irmert tries to mirror her experience of encountering the immensity of a forest that can swallow you up easily and yet has become so fragile.

Commissioned by INA grm
Premiere: June 7 2024. INA grm’s event series Focus, in Paris, France

This work is available for touring.
Contact for Presentations: grm@ina.fr