Last Monday morning we enjoyed a gallery visit, this time we visited Tate Modern in Bankside, just in front of the river Thames and close to St Paul’s Cathedral. The gallery is one of the most popular in terms of fine art and contemporary art in London, the building where the museum is hosted is the former Bankside Power Station, a huge warehouse with a massive turbine tower, welcoming us in the main entrance with a spacious hall where we can see seasonal installations.

My favourite piece inside the gallery was Something Going on Above my Head by Oswaldo Macia, this sound art installation features a number of loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling from which we can hear a wild soundscape mainly focused into birds sounds. This sound sculpture is divided between two rooms, the walls are handwritten with differents diagrams which explain the location and the name of the species of birds which are recorded and played in the audio installation.

Oswaldo spent five years recording bird cries and presents them in this installation in the form of an orchestra formed by these different birds. The artist’s inspiration was reading an article about nuclear waste being dropped in the Baltic Sea, the installation is trying to show us that sometimes we could miss important information hidden among other events. The sounds of the birds are representing that huge amount of information and the difficulty to distinguish between them.

I my opinion this was a very pleasant installation that I enjoyed by its format and the sound recordings were beautiful too, maybe the diagrams drawn in the walls doesn’t fit much with the sounds displayed and I personally would have enjoyed more some birds pictures or videos. The artwork overall was really nice and greatly performed as it is Sound Art focused and creates an experience which fills every corner of the rooms where it’s displayed.