INSTALLATIONS
Deep Listening Bathysphere
The Deep Listening Bathysphere is an immersive audio installation that creates an intimate connection between listeners and underwater soundscapes. The title of the piece has been created with permission from Pauline Oliveros and the Deep Listening Institute. This multichannel, immersive audio sculpture installation surrounds visitors with underwater sounds collected by a custom-designed and constructed hydrophone array.
Eight channel audio recordings are collected with a bespoke eight-hydrophone array in nearby bodies of water such as rivers, canals, or other local waterways specific to each installation site.
The installation explores the relationship between human perception and natural soundscapes, investigating whether musical order can be discovered within the apparent chaos of underwater environments. The piece connects the installation space with local waterways, creating a bridge between human-made and natural environments.
The title of this work is indicative of an amalgam of two streams of interest: Pauline Oliveros’s practice of “Deep Listening™” and the intersection of scientific inquiry with artistic exploration, as exemplified in the works of David Dunn, Paul Demarinis, and Alvin Lucier. At its core, the installation examines how focused listening practices might contribute to healing humanity’s relationship with the natural world, suggesting that our musical language originates from nature’s own acoustic patterns.
Through this immersive experience, visitors are invited to develop a more nuanced understanding of natural soundscapes by approaching them as musical compositions, challenging traditional boundaries between environmental sound and musical structure.
David Dunn’s piece Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond 1 is a conceptual jumping off point for Deep Listening Bathysphere. Dunn’s piece is simply and elegantly a collage of hydrophone recordings of life below the surface in an African pond, collected by Dunn in the early nineties. Dunn’s writing on the subject contains the essence of the ideas that I hope to explore in my own work:
“While the sounds above water are comfortable and familiar, those occurring under the surface are shocking. Their alien variety seems unprecedented as if controlled by a mysterious but urgent logic […] They appear to consist of an order of complexity greater than most human-made music, rivaling the most sophisticated computer composition or polyrhythms of African drumming. […]
“While I understand the scientific need to reduce the complexity of these sounds to their essential attributes, I cannot be satisfied with the standard explanation that these are merely instinctive behaviors. Nor can I accept the assumption that the creatures themselves are mindless specs of protoplasm forever doomed to reiterate a few automatic mating calls or territorial assertions. The musician in me cannot help but hear much more.” 2
1 David Dunn, Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond – a collage of underwater insect sounds for stereo playback, article retrieved from the webpage: www.davidddunn.com/~david/scores/Chaos.pdf (accessed February, 02, 2008).
2 David Dunn, Angels and Insects (Santa Fe, What Next? Recording 1992).
Soft Loud
“Soft Loud” is an exploitation of the phenomenon of repetition revealing variation and – as it happens – unexpected beauty. The pianos represented in this piece are 19 of the pianos in the practice rooms in the Mills Music Department. Each piano was filmed in its natural environment – a practice room with its own particular signature. The notes played on the piano are most often middle C, sometimes one of five other possible notes.
Incidental to stalking and filming the pianos, I was delighted to notice – and be able to document the great many approaches musicians have to making their practice room space a living space. The keen observer will notice these details lurking in the nether regions of the installation space.
Thanks to Jean Klimack, David Kwan, Tara Rodgers and Nathalie Senécal for their assistance and feedback.
Swarm
Swarm attempts to draw attention to the fact that as humans we are nature. In order to subvert the paradigm which suggests that human beings are somehow separate from the world we live in, Swarm figuratively places the participant in the midst of a flock of birds. The work underscores this ambivalent relationship by proffering a technological surrogate for the human/animal dynamic.
A movement-sensing camera tracks the position of a participant in the piece. As the participant navigates the installation space, audio and visual elements create the illusion that the participant is the lead in a flock of birds. Accompanied by the sound of flying birds, bright spots of light on the floor follow the participant in a pattern that mimics flocking behaviour.
Audio Caisson
Audio Caisson is a 9-foot diameter geodesic dome equipped with six internal speakers on its walls and ceiling, along with a subwoofer and two tactile transducers in the floor. This configuration creates an encompassing 360-degree, three-dimensional surround-sound environment. Audio signals are transmitted from a small, hand-built geodesic microphone sculpture positioned at least 100 feet away, ideally in a different acoustic space. The signal reaches the dome via cable or a short-range FM transmitter.
The caisson, a pressurized chamber used in underwater construction, historically provided a temporary, isolated air pocket for workers. This enclosed environment, filled with the sounds of labor and the muffled world outside, offers a poignant parallel and a contrast to my project Audio Caisson. Both environments isolate individuals, forcing them to confront the soundscape within and around them, highlighting the often-overlooked sensory world immerses participants in an intimate sound experience, evoking the way we are surrounded by everyday soundscapes. The enclosed environment, akin to air in a caisson, focuses attention on sound, challenging our habit of ignoring or disengaging from our auditory surroundings.
The experience can be passive, where participants simply listen to the sounds without visual distractions, or active, involving at least two people: one performing sounds around the microphone sculpture outside and the other listening inside the dome.
The piece is highly interactive. Sounds created near the microphone—using objects like seashells, rocks, or pinecones—are immediately transmitted and amplified inside the dome. Movements and gestures made around the microphone produce corresponding sonic effects, creating an immersive auditory experience for those inside.
Spontaneous performances often emerge. Participants typically start by listening inside the dome, then venture out to discover the microphone’s location. Once they find it, they frequently join others in creating new sounds or performances for those inside the caisson.
This interaction highlights the principles of cause and effect. Even the smallest sounds outside the dome are magnified and transformed into a rich auditory experience inside.
Amplified Brook
Amplified Brook creates an unexpected dialogue between the built and natural environment through an immersive listening experience. The installation features a living room incongruously placed outdoors alongside a flowing stream or brook. The unexpected appearance of domestic trappings in the midst of a forest or field creates a striking visual and conceptual juxtaposition that invites deeper reflection on our relationship with nature.
Visitors enter a carefully curated domestic space, complete with comfortable seating and a vintage 1970s stereo system. Through custom-built hydrophones submerged in an adjacent waterway, the installation amplifies the usually subtle sounds of flowing water, transforming them into an intimate acoustic experience. This technological mediation paradoxically brings participants closer to nature by encouraging focused, intentional listening.
The deliberate placement of familiar indoor comforts in an outdoor setting serves multiple purposes. First, it creates an accessible entry point for engagement with the natural environment, using the familiar to bridge toward the unfamiliar. Second, it highlights how thin the boundary truly is between our constructed spaces and the natural world that surrounds and sustains us. Finally, it suggests that our current separation from nature is a relatively recent development in human history – that we are still fundamentally creatures of the forest, capable of rediscovering our deep connection to the natural world through the simple act of careful attention.
Powered by solar panels and a portable battery pack with power inverter, this installation can be adapted to any location with flowing water, allowing each iteration to develop its own unique character based on the specific qualities of the local watershed and ecosystem. Through this combination of comfort, technology, and natural soundscape, Amplified Brook offers visitors a contemplative space to reconnect with their environmental heritage.