500 years of plants and animals
Year: 2016
Dimensions: Museum Scale
Materials: a soundwalk through the Tate Britain Collection
Curation: Tate Britain Sonic Trail
Science Collaborator: Paolo Viscardi
Produced by: Tate Britain
Exhibited at: Tate Britain
A Soundwalk for Tate Britain collection. guided through 500 years of British art by the voice of a zoologist.
500 years of plants and animals explores the evolution of the ways in which non-humans have been depicted across 500 years of British art. The art collection is a unique opportunity to observe the evolution of the relationships between humans and their environment as depicted by artists across half a millenium, a period so vast some of the living beings in question have radically changed their appearance. Time has transformed the morphology of living beings, and also our understanding of them. The second part of the walk explores how animals and plants would perceive the collection through what we understand of their sensorial systems.