Sound (Visual) Art

Source: asci.org via minouette on Pinterest

"Bowhead," a picture of a sound made by a Bowhead whale, 2003 by Mark Fischer (using wavelet analysis of recorded hydrophone sound data)

Artist Mark Fischer was interested in whalesong and found that in the literature you could find information on the range of frequencies employed, or fourier transforms of recorded sound (so you could see it plotted as a function of frequency, or moreorless which 'notes' were used, if whales happened to use discrete notes like most human music). He decided to use a method common in my field - marine geophysics. He employed wavelet analysis. (If you're interested, this is something seismologists typically use. They take time series data, which means they measure the amplitudes of vibrations, which is often equivalent to measuring the intensity of sound, periodically, so they get a series of measurements in time. They convolve the time series with a wavelet, a specific function. The result is a matrix of numbers which can be displayed as a 2D image if you simply map numbers onto colours.) It suffices to understand that there are a series of numbers (equivalent to the whalesong) to which he applies a mathematical procedure to produce an image. As he writes,

The procedure I have developed to pursue this exploration is, to me, a form of photography- with mathematics as the lens and a computer as a camera. What results is something I call 'the shape of the sound'.

More recently he's produced wavelet images of birdsong and insect noises and what he calls 'AguaSonic' videos of various species, so you can hear the animals too.

Source: asci.org via minouette on Pinterest

Pseudorca Pontinha by Mark Fischer, 2009 17.75" x 23.75" archival digital print on Crane's Museo Max paper

Sound as visual art can also be of sounds closer to the human experience (and not only those which require hydrophones to record). Epic Frequency makes prints of famous audio clips. This one is Martin Luther King, Jr. beginning, "I Have A Dream" On August 28, 1963.

Source: epicfrequency.com via minouette on Pinterest

Or, here is a way in which natural sounds combine with sculptural art. 'Hear Heres' is a set of four giant ear trumpet sculptures designed to highlight the sounds of nature, by London architecture firm Studio Weave.

Source: laughingsquid.com via minouette on Pinterest

Hear Heres

Source: laughingsquid.com via minouette on Pinterest

Hear Heres

Source: laughingsquid.com via minouette on Pinterest

Hear Heres

Whale Fall

Whale Fall (after life of a whale) from Sharon Shattuck on Vimeo.

Directed by Sharon Shattuck and Flora Lichtman for Sweet Fern Productions.

This beautiful short film (paper puppetry, by the way, not stop-motion) details the after-life of a whale. I don't mean it's about the ghost of a whale; I mean it details quite literally the life supported for decades, by the deceased body of a whale. The choices made in terms of medium (paper) and music, help emphasize the wonder of the ecology, the diversity of life supported, and avoids the sort of bias we may have that the subject matter is somehow gruesome, rather than the most natural thing. I love the idea of paper puppets employed in, essentially, a short of science documentary.

Sharon Shattuck describes herself as a "director-animator and botanist", so it makes sense that she would make art about science. (via Bioephemera)

I am familiar with several of these critters from research cruises where we've employed remotely operated submersibles. The rattails are always the most common thing we see on the seafloor.

If you are interested in the ecological afterlife of animals which fall to the seafloor, you can check out, for instance, the VENUS pig experiment, where a dead pig was placed on the seafloor and monitored with a cabled seafloor observatory, offshore Vancouver Island.