Mungo Thomson and Michael Webster: Crickets

For "Crickets," artist Mungo Thomson has collaborated with composer Michael Webster to transcribe field recordings of crickets from around the world into a musical score. The result is a dynamic composition for a 17-person classical ensemble: violin, flute, clarinet, and percussion. The score contains 25 chapters, or "movements," such as "12. Reunion Island, the Cirque de Cilaos at 1,300 m altitude, February 1998, nightfall in a banana plantation." "Crickets" was performed in Los Angeles as part of The Pacific Standard Time Public Art and Performance Festival (2012), and this year a concert will take place on the High Line in New York. * * Mungo Thomson is an artist whose work frequently touches on silence, blank space, and cultural motifs around reception. "Crickets" sums up Thomson's interests in ambience and in audience succinctly: crickets are such a ubiquitous aural backdrop that they have come to stand in for silence, and in the realm of performance, crickets are what is heard when a performance bombs. * * Mungo Thomson has had solo exhibitions and projects at SITE Santa Fe (2013); the Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2013); Aspen Art Museum (2012); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2008); The Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2007); and GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy (2006), among others. His work was included in The Istanbul Biennial (2011); The Whitney Biennial (2008); and The Performa Biennial (2005), among others. He has produced many artist's books, including "Negative Space," with JRP|Ringier, in 2006. He is based in Los Angeles. * * The publication is part of the series of artists' projects edited by Christoph Keller.