In 2013, as SOUNDICIAN, ‘Insects’ was released. It was a departure from previous releases, as it is one 28 minute track consisting of several pieces of music interwoven representing a variety of insects. This piece is meant to be played and listened to as a whole and has never been released as separate tracks. 

Due to its length, I always felt that it would be great to try and create a video to go with the music, not for commercial purposes but solely as an artistic endeavour. I was never able to find the right images or film to work with, until I discovered the work of Peter Kuttner – https://vimeo.com/user1632860

In Peter Kuttners’ own words –

Since 1998 I have been creating a video artwork celebrating the biodiversity of one small place on earth… Tamborine Mountain.

My artwork documents the exceptional biodiversity of Tamborine Mountain. Amid subtropical rainforest in South East Queensland, Australia, a thriving community lives cheek by jowl with a species-rich flora and fauna whose sustainability is threatened by population growth and global warming.

I film the range of species from lichen and minute bugs to mighty rainforest trees visible to the unaided eye on Tamborine Mountain by day and by night…

…To acknowledge the wondrousness of their very existence by showing what they look like as clearly as I can and to give people a sense of the unfathomable variety of living things to be found in this one small place on earth. Nothing about a species is more remarkable than the fact that it exists. I film species simply because they and I are alive on earth together.

Taken from Biodiversity of Tamborine Mountain, Australia – http://www.biodiversity.com.au/

Advance several years and time has flown. It’s been five years since I began this huge endeavor, and my video project remains unfinished mainly due to the video software I was using being defunct. Also, other projects with Museleon have taken me away.

When I was thinking about this Music Weeklies challenge ( www.musicweeklieschallenge.com/ )- #Butterfly, I thought about ‘Insects’ and Peter and his project and visited his vimeo page. I was relieved to see it still there with lots of new videos and began watching the vast array of flora and fauna, when I came across the Orange Palm Dart. It’s resting on a phlox type flower and feeding, probing into the flowers, with minute movements, always aware of the environment, ready to flit away at any moment.

Orange Palm Dart from Peter Kuttner on Vimeo.

So, taking and editing the audio file as a base track, I created an audio response to the film. 

Watching Peter’s videos again has spurred me to try and complete this mammoth task of the Insects film but you can get a feel of it from a couple of videos I have already completed and up on the Soundician vimeo site –

Moths from soundician on Vimeo.

Jewelled Beetle from soundician on Vimeo.

Peter Kuttners’ Vimeo channel has a wide range of short films showing the variety of flora and fauna of Tamborine Mountain and they are downloadable under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (ccBy 3.0) Licence – http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Peter Kuttner Vimeo Channel – vimeo.com/user1632860

The Biodiversity of Tamborine Mountain – biodiversity.com.au

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence – creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Insects (2013) – SOUNDICIAN – Insects | SOUNDICIAN (bandcamp.com)

Artwork is based on a frame of the Orange Palm Dart video.