Erin Mallea
Cicada Chorus premiered in Muncie at the PlySpace Gallery on June 29, 2021 as a one-night only in-person exhibition. This event was a celebration of the Brood X emergence and a thank you to all chorus participants who made the work possible.
Cicada Chorus
In May and June 2021, Brood X of 17 year cicadas emerged throughout Indiana. Inspired by the buzzing, whirring, and chirping of cicadas and other insects during the late spring and summer, Erin Mallea, PlySpace Artist in Residence, collaborated with Muncie community members to listen to and observe insect noises in the area and develop a performance as a choral insect cacophony. The chorus celebrated the particularities of the region’s ecosystem and the often taken for granted others we live alongside that are integral to our ecosystem. The goal of the project was to create an opportunity for collective close-looking and listening as an entrypoint to playfully, yet earnestly inhabit a non-human sensibility.
Students of MCS Camp Adventure recording their cicada sounds
Mallea collaborated with the Muncie community to record sound and video that made Cicada Chorus possible. In addition to a series of free workshops lead by the Ball State Environmental Education Center and John Vessels of the Ball State University Theatre and Dance department, Mallea recorded sounds from community volunteers at an open studio recording session during June’s First Thursday Arts Walk event and led educational sessions during Muncie Community School’s Camp Adventure, introducing the students to cicada sounds and recording their voices to be layered in to the final project.
While in Muncie, Mallea explored the local nature reserves and state parks to find her insect inspiration. She recorded sounds at Munsee Woods and White River Woods, both part of the Red-Tail Land Conservancy, and Summit Lake State Park. She found the greatest local concentration of Brood X at Summit Lake State Park. Here the sound of the 17 year cicadas was immersive and this location became the backdrop for the Cicada Chorus video shoot.
During the filming at Summit Lake State Park, thousands of cicadas were flying, crawling along branches, and singing along with the chorus. While the cicadas were present for the video shoot the vast majority of sounds heard on the final video are human made.
PlySpace is a program of the Muncie Arts and Culture Council, in collaboration with the Ball State School of Art, Sustainable Muncie Corp, and the City of Muncie. PlySpace is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The PlySpace Gallery is located at 608 E. Main Street, Muncie, Indiana, and is open for special exhibitions and events. Please check the PlySpace events page for details.
