Past Acoustic Ecology
Ohr am Wattenmeer / Ear to the Sea was commissioned through the University of Oldenburg, Germany, a collaboration with scientists to listen/surveil from a remote scientific monitoring the rare and delicate environment of the Wattenmeer mudflats. We embedded a hydrophone and interactive web camera on the Mess Station just off the island of Speikeroog one of several barrier islands off the coast of North Germany.
The follow movie documents the interactive web cam and underwater microphone embedded within the measuring post, which users could remotely observe approximately 250 degrees of the landscape and also listen to sounds below the surface of the North Sea 24/7 days a week. This was a year long project.
Sea Quiver, February 2010 sonified the North Sea high winds off the coast of Germany, commissioned by an arts and ecology collective from Oldenburg, Germany, to raise attention to the Wattemmeer mudflats. The installation was up for four hours. Materials: 5) 4X4″ wooden posts embedded in the mudflats, three tin water buckets with hardware and steel cables tuned to three different frequencies that made up a diminished traid C, an E♭ and a G♭, a minor triad with a lowered (flattened) fifth. Due to the high winds and extreme cold temperature, the turning went flat quickly.
Sea Quiver concept drawing.
TAP: OCEAN immerses the audience in the complex underwater sounds recorded just off the cast of the Netherlands at the south of the mouth of the Rotterdam harbor channel, Netherlands. The sound track documents the submersed and noisy interruptions to the natural underwater environment. Scale is variable. Treated cheer leader megaphones with two mid-range, 2 tweeters and a bass speaker.
Installation view.
CALL & RESPONSE
Project concept was to monitor and sonify & visualize changes in the water quality to users’ smartphones and to a more permanent kiosk located next door in the Water Works Museum that was defunded shortly after conceptualizing the project. Assistance from UMBC’s Imaging Research Center, Megan Willy, IRC Intern. 2011. Project was initially proposed at the Jones Falls watershed that terminates in the Baltimore Inner Harbor – next to the Discovery Museum, which unfortunately was shut down due to lack of city funding.