Friday marked our second trip to Thetford Forest. After a morning of prospecting for more potential sites for the piece, we met Neal Armour-Chelu, the Forestry Commission’s regional ecologist, who will be working with us on a full overview of the area’s ecology for Living Symphonies.

We’ll be conducting a prototyping of the piece in Thetford over the last week of September, which will allow us to test the infrastructure behind the piece in situ — not to mention experiencing first-hand the challenges of working in the forest environment for a long period. We are particularly excited to be able to trial the 24-channel speaker system that will be installed across the canopy, spatially mapping the sound across the forest’s topography.