Multispecies (2019)
Live performance by UAU ensemble at Z42 Gallery, Rio de Janeiro
Multispecies features the stridulation sounds of an Atta species (leaf cutting ant) and Pheidole species, and locomotion sounds of an Eciton species (army ant). I based the percussion parts on loops I constructed from these field recordings. I made the field recordings at Adolfo Ducke Reserve in Manaus, Brazil using various contact mic setups.
UAU (2018)
16 m audio/video loop with listener survey
UAU has been exhibited in Rio de Janeiro, Brooklyn NY, Portland OR and Manaus, BR. Listeners are prompted to answer questions about their thoughts about ants while listening to three of my soundscape compositions. The video features scientific information and my own thoughts and questions. I created a Portuguese version for the exhibits in Brasil.
ATTA is an ongoing interdisciplinary research project on ant acoustic communication in the Brazilian Amazon with entomologists at the Federal University of Amazonas in Manaus (UFAM). ATTA’s goal is to produce quality scientific knowledge to be used for environmental education with dissemination through music and art. We are “amplifying” the ants to bring attention to these thousands of species that play a critical role maintaining tropical ecosystem integrity. We have developed a field recording protocol and established baseline data for a catalog of ant acoustics. You can learn more about our field work here.
I am curious about how listening to these hidden sounds can influence opinions concerning invertebrates and insect communication. Can listening move humans to consider non-human perspectives and a more biocentric viewpoint? Can it affect an increased appreciation for habitat complexity and invertebrate biodiversity in the context of species decline? Can it help to bring more prolonged and active attention to fighting deforestation in the Amazon?
The Hylaeus Project:
A Documentation of the Endangered Native Bees of Hawaii
photo by Aidan Koch
Hylaeus bee, University Hawaii/Manoa collection
In 2008 while working for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation I co-authored petitions to the US Fish & Wildlife Service to list seven species of Hawaiian Hylaeus bees as endangered. The Hylaeus Project uses art to get the word out about these imperiled bees. In 2013 visual artist Aidan Koch and I visited Hawaii to document the Hylaeus through visual art, field recording, music composition and writing. I produced a 253 pp book featuring Aidan’s illustrations, and soundscape compositions. The book includes interviews with Hawaiian naturalists, watercolor plates and a chapter on each of our field sites. A new edition was published when the bees were federally listed as endangered species in 2016.
The soundscape composition methods I used include sampling of field recordings, representation of single-point calls in rhythm and melodies of individual parts, arrangements based on soundscape structure, and free composition based on synesthesia.
KIPUKAPUAULU (2017)
This composition is based on the soundscape of one of the few remaining habitat sites for the Hylaeus bees on the big island of Hawaii. I documented the continuous cacophony of a mixture of native and introduced birds through the juxtaposition of unexpected rhythms that mimic what I heard on-site. This track was released on Secret Drum Band’s album Dynamics.
Built Hidden Soundscapes
Built Hidden Soundscape: Pipeline Road, Gamboa (2019)
(you are encouraged to listen in headphones)
What do you think we are not hearing?
in 2019 I began experimenting with methods for constructing synthesized “built” soundscapes of hidden sounds. Built Hidden Soundscape: Pipeline Road, Gamboa is a preliminary result from this research. This spectrogram features ‘hidden sounds’ - sounds that cannot be heard by humans without the use of technology. Sounds that are easily heard by human ears are excluded from this synthesized, artificial rendering of a soundscape. I made these field recordings along Pipeline Road in Gamboa, Panama. This built soundscape includes ultrasonic sounds (above the range of human hearing, played back at lower frequency), substrate-borne vibrations, and otherwise very quiet sounds, and is bookended by hidden elements of dawn and dusk soundscapes. Sounds were recorded with ultrasonic microphone where indicated, and otherwise were recorded with various contact microphones.
Sounds featured, in rough order of appearance:
1. Ultrasonic component of dawn soundscape
2. Paper wasp nest on cecropia branch, through substrate
3. Atta (leaf-cutter ant) foraging trail: locomotion sounds
4. Azteca ants on Cecropia tree: locomotion sounds
5. Cicada: ultrasonic component
6. Odontomachus (trap-jaw) ant: stridulation (partially ultrasonic)
7. Atta (leafcutter ants): stridulation
8. Labidus (army ant) trail: sounds of locomotion and aggressive behavior
9. Ultrasonic component of dusk soundscape recorded from canopy
Secret Drum Band
Secret Drum Band is the main performance outlet for my compositions. I founded this percussion and electronic music ensemble in 2006, and we released our first full-length record, Dynamics, in 2017. Our second full length record will be released in 2020. Co-director Allan Wilson (chk chk chk) and I prepare music notation for the ensemble and will be publishing scores with the new album.
Surface of the Abyss at Ducke (2020) : recording and score
I composed this work in the Adolfo Ducke Reserve in Amazonas, Brasil. This piece features percussive and electronic representation of the keynote elements of the diurnal soundscape at Ducke. After being there for a few days, certain sounds are so common that they become your baseline, your background soundscape, and you mainly notice any unique additions to it. This “background” is quite penetrating, complex and beautiful, and so I find it remarkable that it can even came to be a background soundscape. Two colleagues and I talked about the concept of the “abyss” as the tight-knit cycling of dead organic matter into new life in the tropical forest. To me, these dominant sounds are the surface of this unending amount of complexity that cycles in and out of this abyss.
Stream Studies at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest
I have been a musician-in-residence at HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon since 2018. I have visited research sites, accompanied scientists in the field, and produced music, multimedia sound work and writing as part of the 200-year Long Term Ecological Reflections program. This work has been included in two exhibits at the Truckenbrod Gallery in Corvallis, OR. I am releasing an EP and publication from this work with Moon Glyph Records and the Institute for Interspecies Art and Relations in spring 2020.
Lookout Creek: Eighth Notes (2018)
This sound piece is modeled after HJA resident Leah Wilson's visual work, Ambient (2014). Leah sampled the reflections of light on a small stone placed in Lookout Creek. I took acoustic samples at the same location with a hydrophone to create a tangible representation of the indecipherable stream of sonic textures, pitches and combinations that occur at a single point in moving water. Through this work I have thought about the immense musicality of stream acoustics, how we might grow more familiar with each stream site's acoustic details through isolation and repetition. I did not effect or process the sounds beyond using an equalizer and adding a touch of reverb.
PUBLISHED WRITING
Recent published work includes articles in Tom Tom Magazine and She Shreds Magazine