Peep Croak Growl

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: residencies
21 Jun
Echozoo

Happy Summer Solstice! Thank you to everyone who has supported the Echozoo Hatchfund project. If you missed the last email, Echozoo is a new smartphone App I’m developing which will play a musical score of re-imagined extinct animal sounds that lived in your part of the world. The App seeks to foster a sense of connection and wonder with our biological sound world past, present and future.

This is going to be one of the biggest projects I’ve even undertaken. It’s really a culmination of my work as a composer, sound design, meditator and Deep Listener. This Hatchfund will enable me to take the time I need to work on this project and not just work on it in my “spare time” away from work. I’m so grateful for the support I’ve received for this project so far.

However, we still need to raise about $1700 to make our minimum goal and there’s less than two weeks to go! If you’re thinking of pledging to the project, now is the time. Please spread the word and support this project if you’re curious about the largely untapped world of extinct animal sound design. Any level of support is appreciated and all donations are 100% tax deductible.

http://hatchfund.org/project/echozoo

The hood of the Ayatana van "Jellymoon"

I just returned from my week in Canada at the Ayatana Artist Research Program. I had the honor to live and work with a group of artists as we met with animal and field recording experts for various outings during the week.

Recording bird sound. Photo by Alexis Williams

We went on at least two excursions each day to listen to the rich biophony found in Ontario and QuĂ©bec. Above is a photo when we went on an expedition with a local bird expert.

Below is a photo of us at an animal acoustics lab at Carlton University. This team of scientists work with the audible communication and listening of caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers and crickets. 

Listening to Insects in the Lab

One of my favorite nights was listening to bats using an Arduino bat detectors we built with maker Michael Grant from Krazatchu.

Listening for bats at dusk. Photo by Nadya Edelstein

We all recorded so many sounds. Ayatana setup a SoundCloud page with many of our samples of birds, frogs, insects, bats, beavers, wind, earth, water and some man-made sounds.

Many of the sounds I recorded at Ayatana will make their way into Echozoo. I have another field recording trip planned for August in the Northwest US where I hope to record more animals sounds for the project.

Finally, I made this collage of sounds from the week in Canada. Please enjoy:

Ayatana Collage

Thanks for reading, watching, sharing and listening.

-Michael

Echozoo

Posted by: mikronesia
Categories: residencies • sound design
06 Jun

Hello everyone! I’m writing you this week from Canada at the Ayatana Artist Research Program. I am honored to be one of the artists selected for this week’s Biophillia Sound Art Residency. 

This week I’ll be traveling with biologists and researchers to record sounds of animals. I’m super excited and hope to post lots of photos and sounds when I return.

Today, I’ve launched a Hatchfund to raise funds for my next big project (which ties in directly with this Artist Residency) called Echozoo.

Those of you who know me, know that I’ve been talking about this project for a while and asking these questions:

  • What did extinct animals sounds like?
  • What would our current landscape sound like if some of these animals were still alive?
  • How connected are we to our current sound world?

Echozoo is going to be a smartphone app that uses geo-location to determine where you are in the world and will play re-imagined sound-design of the calls of extinct animals that lived in your region.

If you’ve ever watched behind the scenes features for some of your favorite films (like Jurassic Park and Star Wars) you know that sound designers like Ben Burtt would mix the sounds of many creatures together (like the slowed down croak of a frog, the pitch-shifted quack of a duck and the reversed growl of a tiger) to make the other worldly sounds of the creatures in the film. This is essentially what I’ll be doing. I will take field recordings of living creatures to try and extrapolate the calls of extinct animals from them. What would a dodo bird sound like? No one really knows for sure, but I imagine like a deep percussive penguin chirp mixed with an ostrich.

This Hatchfund will go to pay for the expenses of this artist residency at Ayatana, travel expenses to Canada and other sites around North America this summer and studio time spent sound designing and developing the iPhone and Android applications.

There’s some great rewards for backing the project including downloads of exclusive creature calls not found in the app, having a variable named after you in the code or even adding your own voice to the synthesized creature calls!

My hope it have it released by the end of the year.

Thank you for taking time to read, watch and listen. Any support you can give is much appreciated.

Also all Hatchfund donations are 100% tax deductible.

Like Kickstarter and other platforms, Hatchfund is do or die! If we don’t make the goal, the project won’t be funded. Please spread the word. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

http://hatchfund.org/project/echozoo