In January of 2022, I joined the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) because I was seeking an organization dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of sound. The journal copies that started arriving did not disappoint, bouncing between topics like physics, bioacoustics, medicine, music, linguistics, and noise. I followed up by attending their December 2022 conference in Nashville and presented research from my sabbatical on the patterns of helicopter overflights in Northeast Scotland. It was an exhilarating week full of great conversations with people from a range of disciplines who were all passionate about sound. Each person had a wealth of experience in their specialty, but also an openness to receiving input from other perspectives on sound.
If you are interested in learning more about this research started during my Fulbright stay in Aberdeen, visit the following links:
This past summer, I was contacted by Dr. Steven Shepard, who wanted to interview me for an episode of his podcast called The Natural Curiosity Project. It has been awhile since I had to chance to talk about my work in this way, and it was well before I took this career turn into acoustic ecology and field recording. Steve did a great job producing a final result that blends my comments with excerpts from my field recordings. It’s nice to have an updated overview of where my work sits in the grand scheme of things. You can listen to this 23-minute episode of his podcast here:
In summer 2020, I began a collaboration with my student Grace McEllroy to explore the potential of 3D printing. We wondered if this might be a tool for creating tactile learning aids. The work was motivated by what was then an upcoming project called Young Sound Seekers, taking blind and partially sighted students on excursions to Canaveral National Seashore.
In July 2022, we are presenting our research at the International Computer Music Conference in Limerick, Ireland. The paper focuses on the design process and how the resulting models can be used to teach about specific features of sound. We’ve learned a lot about the process of converting visual representations of recorded sound in tangible models that you can hold in your hand, and we are looking forward to sharing that knowledge with others.
If you are interested in reading this research or printing your own copies of these models, visit the following links:
3D model based on a short field recording from Canaveral. It features a few sharp peaks in the lower right corner created by an owl hooting, some wide vertical ridges created by a frog croak in the middle left, and a horizontal ridge toward the upper edge created by crickets.
There have been many highlights recently for my continuing community engagement project Young Sound Seekers. Arguably at the top of that list was a week-long summer camp that we developed and delivered in June 2022. The camp was a partnership with Atlantic Center for the Arts and Stetson’s office of Continuing Education and Outreach, and funded entirely by a grant from the National Environmental Education Foundation. It allowed us to teach audio editing (using Reaper and OSARA) and story telling skills that are associated with podcasting, with each student producing a unique audio story by the end of our camp. The residential camp format allowed us to develop skills much faster than our typical once-a-month format. It also allowed us to bring in Andy Slater, a sound artist and disability advocate, to mentor our kids in Young Sound Seekers. Everyone involved consistently speaks of how meaningful that week was, and perhaps the best compliment is that the kids keep asking me, “When is the next camp at Stetson?”
To summarize the week, Connor Bradt, a 2022 graduate of Digital Arts, served as a counselor during the camp and produced this 10-minute wrap-up video:
Wrap-up video from our Young Sound Seekers Audio Camp.
Since late 2020, I have been collaborating with my Stetson colleague Chaz Underriner to establish a live audio stream from Lake Beresford. This project took a lot of twists and turns, starting with some small-scale tests, working through the Raspberry Pi configuration, and installing the necessary cabling. But I’m happy to report that the Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience now hosts a 24/7 live audio stream from the Sandra Stetson Aquatic Center.
Our live stream is part of the Locus Sonus soundmap project which promotes and supports a network of similar open-mics throughout the world. I wrote the following summary of what you can expect to hear:
Overnight and pre-dawn, you will often hear frogs and insects chorussing. During the day, you will hear various birds, including osprey and hawks that like to perch in a nearby pine tree and sandhill cranes that sometimes visit the shoreline. Florida thunderstorms can be powerful sonic events whenever they pass through. You will also hear the train whistle and clatter passing through daily via the tracks found on the opposite shore. Finally, because this is an actively used building, you will occasionally hear people and their associated sounds throughout the day.
Sunset on the shore of Lake Beresford at the Sandra Stetson Aquatic Center. The two-story building is on the left with its lights on and the large doors to the lower-level storage open. The water’s edge begins in the lower right corner and extends out of the frame. Several tall palm and oak trees dot the shoreline. Because the water is calm, the surface reflects the image of several trees.
In DIGA 366, I gave my students six weeks at the end of the term to develop advanced creative projects. There were a range of options, but only three requirements:
reach for 4-6 minutes duration
apply learning from the overall course sequence (DIGA 365 & 366)
demonstrate improved skill with hardware or software tools
The final results were amazingly diverse! There were some live performance by laptop performers, original sound designs for video, procedural audio for video games, sonification of COVID and threatened species data, and soundscapes for theatre.
This year, I decided to change up the sound design project in the middle of DIGA 365. As part of their introduction to modular synthesizers, I asked students to create an original sound design for a robot at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. I started with source video from some home movies in the public domain. I wanted students to get inspiration from other examples, a got some great recommendations from people on Twitter. Before creating their own projects, students researched the following robots & the creators behind their sound design:
Audio field recording is an activity that involves taking equipment out into environments, whether natural or urban, to capture sound. It is an activity that can capture the rare vocalizations of individual species, like oystercatchers and lapwings. It can also capture the sound of a place, or its soundscape. These soundscapes can be an important tool for understanding the unique elements of a location and how the local environment evolves over time, a practice that is often called acoustic ecology. Acoustic ecology is an interdisciplinary topic that draws on music, acoustics, geography, environmental studies, and so many others, which makes it a great vehicle for engaging different parts of the university in conversation.
After six months spent recording in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, I have a much better understanding of why its coastal soundscapes so special. Thanks to my Fulbright, I was able to visit dozens of sites managed by a variety of organizations (NatureScot, Scottish Forestry, National Trust, RSPB, and others) around northeast Scotland and captured over 34 hours of audio. I also captured the soundscape of many places with very few visitors (and sometimes none), because I was often ready to visit as soon as they opened from any lockdown restrictions. I will be leaving Scotland with over 90 gigabytes of audio recordings, and also agreed to leave a copy of this data with my counterparts on the faculty at the University of Aberdeen.
A map of Scotland with blue pins representing each place I recorded. There is a dense cluster around Aberdeen, with other pins scattered throughout the Cairngorms and on the North Coast near Thurso.
My primary collaborator on the Aberdeen faculty has been Dr. Suk-Jun Kim, who I have actually known for about 20 years. He spent four years living in Gainesville to do his doctoral work at the University of Florida, about 2 hours drive from where I teach at Stetson University. I was born and raised in Florida and spent most of my working years there, so I am very familiar with the state and its coastal soundscapes. Now that I have spent six months living in Aberdeen, we have this unique connection as professors in the same discipline familiar with both Florida and Scotland. It would be a shame not to continue to collaborate and capitalize on that connection.
Dr. Kim and I have discussed a framework for continuing the collaboration between Stetson and Aberdeen, and we both agree that getting our students involved is essential. Neither campus currently has a course in acoustic ecology, so we have a blank slate. When I first wrote my Fulbright proposal, I had dreamed that it might be possible to eventually use my research and experience in Scotland to design a travel course. It would be something that would allow me to first study a topic with Stetson students on campus and then lead them on a short-term visit to Aberdeen that puts theory into practice. Prior to the pandemic, these were popular offerings at my institution and really helped get students thinking globally about significant challenges, like our collective environmental responsibilities. Since the pandemic, the immediate future for these types of learning experiences is unclear. Things like quarantines and COVID testing add to the already complicated logistics. So we’re hesitant to begin planning something like this until the restrictions on travel become more relaxed.
Because it will be a difficult climate for travel courses in the immediate future, we brainstormed a bit and thought we could instead leverage online learning to connect our campuses. Both institutions are more comfortable with these technologies since the pandemic essentially forced their mass adoption, so why not leverage these tools to foster international exchange? Our idea is to embed online meetings between our students into new courses that we each teach for our respective campuses. Students in Aberdeen and Florida could discuss readings and issues that explore the topic of acoustic ecology together. They could also return to specific sites that I recorded this past year and report on how the soundscape may have changed, which would help form the basis for long-term monitoring of how both places are evolving. We also want both courses to be open to students from any discipline, which would enhance the diversity of perspectives on this issue. It’s going to be a challenge, but if it works, it will mean this Fulbright experience has set the foundation for some exciting long-term, interdisciplinary collaboration in acoustic ecology.
Because the creative outcome from Canaveral ended up being significantly larger than I originally planned, I felt justified focussing my time in Scotland more on collection of material and field work. As I was fond telling people, “the one thing I can’t do back in Florida is record Scotland.” It was certainly an adventure collecting the sound of species like guillemots and gannets that I would never encounter back home. My plan is to head back to Florida with my treasure trove of Scotland recordings and figure out something creative to do with them when time permits. Even though I am happy with what I personally achieved in Scotland, I left with a palpable desire to return to Scotland when circumstances are more normal to explore the soundscape again and enjoy a few more face-to-face conversations with the wonderful people I met along the way.
I posed for this photo after capturing the soundscape at Fowlsheugh Cliffs. Over 100,000 seabirds nest on these cliffs facing the North Sea, causing them to look white and providing a complex soundscape of overlapping bird calls.
Sign for the University of Aberdeen at the campus entrance on King Street.
Frankly, planning to move a family to the United Kingdom in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic was overwhelming. The immigration offices were working with a skeleton crew, an airline cancelled one of our scheduled flights, and the rules seemed to change every few days. Once we arrived, we were faced with the reality that Scotland’s national lockdown was far more restrictive than Florida’s equivalent measures. It meant that very few businesses were open and we were confined to the city limits. Although the many hours stuck in our apartment have been mentally taxing, we were thankful for the many spaces for outdoor exercise without leaving the city.
While here in Aberdeen, I am co-teaching their Digital Musicianship course (a required for all music majors) with Dr. Suk-Jun Kim and two doctoral students. My first lecture was about basic principles of acoustics and hearing, topics that cover frequently in my own courses (and with the Young Sound Seekers). My second lecture was a survey of instrument builders in the 20th century, which allowed me to revisit my love of electronic music history. To supplement that topic, I built a 43-minute playlist on YouTube and a 47-minute playlist on Spotify with examples that others may enjoy. In addition to delivering my own lectures, I have enjoyed working with the doctoral students to support their lectures and help them better prepare them for a career in academia.
A map of Seaton Park found on signs within the park.
During the lockdown, I have focussed my field recording efforts on Seaton Park, a public park close to the university’s main campus. It’s a park with a varied history that I am learning about through online and library resources, and by connecting with the Friends of Seaton Park. The fact that academic buildings and residential halls are on opposite sides of the park’s boundaries means that students are frequently found passing through its 67 acres. Even in lockdown, outdoor exercise is considered an essential activity, so many people have been using the park as a place to escape for a bit of fresh air. But it’s wooded location on the River Don close to where it meets the North Sea also means there is wide variety of birds that frequent the park, including swans and oystercatchers. The park also extends a short ways down the river to the Donmouth Local Nature Reserve, another spot where people can go to be in closer contact with nature.
Now that COVID numbers in Scotland have improved and the lockdown restrictions are easing, I have begun to explore additional locations that are beyond the city limits. If you want to follow my progress, I’ll be posting on Twitter and Instagram throughout my time in Scotland. However, I feel sure that Seaton Park will feature prominently in whatever scholarly or creative project results from my time in Scotland. We’ll see what the next few months brings!
Looking out from the banks of the River Don in Seaton Park.
Looking out into the North Sea from the beach in Donmouth Local Nature Reserve.
Between all my recent projects focussed on field recording and acoustic ecology, I also continued my collaborations with Zürich-based composer Virgil Moorefield. I have known Virgil for over 20 years now, with our relationship dating back to when he was one of my professors in graduate school. It’s been nice to work with someone for that long as we continue to grow creatively, both as individuals and through our collaborations.
Work on this latest project began just before the COVID pandemic. He was working on a new composition called The Boat of Queen Mutemwia, inspired by a statue he had seen while visiting the British Museum. My role was developing a live visual instrument that allows for video panels to be “played” in real-time during performance like a musical instrument.
Designing the instrument used my extensive experience with Cycling’74 Max, but also required me to learn some new programming techniques in TouchDesigner. It will be interesting to see if I can bring some of this knowledge back into my teaching when I work with students on intermedia projects in the future.
Although the concert was initially delayed in hopes that we could have a live audience, it instead had to move forward as a livestream event only in April 2021. I couldn’t be there in person like we originally planned, since international travel out of Scotland was severely restricted and would have required long quarantine times on both ends of the trip. Despite this challenge, I still provided technical support to the team in Zürich from Aberdeen right up to the concert date using file sharing and frequent video calls.
Virgil and I are both extremely happy with the resulting 15-minute work, which can still be viewed on YouTube here:
