INA grm commissioned a new sound work by sound artist and composer Jana Irmert. The piece entitled Portals is premiered on June 7 2024 at INA grm’s event series Focus.

Portals is a composition made entirely from recorded sounds in the Amazon rainforest during recent trips to Brazil and Colombia. To search for sounds normally hidden from human perception,  Jana Irmert used microphones that capture part of the ultrasonic frequency spectrum to record communicating insects, amphibians and bats in these frequencies, as well as hydrophones for underwater recordings of dolphins and river fish which use sound to navigate and hunt.

Sometimes leaving the recorder running unattended for several hours, Irmert was able to capture the transition of the soundscape between day and night. Listening to these recordings again, she felt like passing through a portal every time she put the headphones on. She started to imagine the sound of the forest as if I could hear it like a bat, like a
frog or insect, or, diving into brown waters, like a dolphin river.

By transposing the ultrasound recordings to make them audible, Jana was able to extract sound elements from the dense ambiences of the tropical forest and transform into melodic formations, harmonic clouds and motifs rhythmic, echoing my feeling that time in the forest is stacked and superimposed, moving in ever-widening circles, like rings of a tree. With this composition, She tried to reflect her experience of encounter with this immensity, a forest that can swallow you up easily and
which has nevertheless become so fragile.

Commissioner: INA grm 
Premiere: 2024
This work is available for touring!
Contact for Presentations: grm@ina.fr