Overheard Underwater uses historic whale recordings, the artist's own soundscapes, maps, photographs, and drawings of the contemporary ocean to challenge the deafening legacy of whaling. This project dramatizes the importance of protecting the migratory routes of whales in a changing climate.
Through an immersive soundscape, vast visuals, and community engagement, Overheard Underwater invites audiences to reestablish intimacy with the sea at a time when our oceans and coastal communities are more vulnerable than we have ever known. The exhibit amplifies the ephemeral beauty of whale songs to confront a noisy future.The presenting partner for this work is the New Bedford Whaling Museum, an institution founded on the changing tides of our relationship with the sea.
Exhibition Dates: May 16th - November 11th, 2025
Year 2022
Site Traveling Sound Installation
Ocean Alliance World Headquarters
Gloucester, MA USA
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL USA
Once Upon A Whale Song is a sound installation with tactile elements designed to raise public awareness of the damaging effects of marine noise pollution on great whales and other sea creatures. Working from audio archives at Ocean Alliance, the artist utilized signature hydrophone whale recordings, from the expeditions that led to the discovery that whales not only vocalize, but sing songs. These recordings echo through the gallery space, filled with hanging textile scrolls, each printed with spectrogram imagery visualized from the recordings.
Year 2021
Site Gloucester, MA USA
Field recordings from Inner Harbor, the Eastern Point Breakwater, and a local whistle buoy, affectionately nicknamed, "The Groaner." This aid to navigation is also a fishing hotspot for Striped Bass. Recorded while in residence at the Rocky Neck Art Colony. Vessel services and navigation by Mark Hayes.
Year: 2021
Site: Coastal waters of Puget Sound, WA
Field recordings, photography, and photogravure from the Harbor Defenses of Puget Sound. Fort Worden, Fort Casey, and Fort Flagler are just three of over seventy-five coastal forts that protect our harbors, cities, and waterways in the United States. Many of these emplacements are on the front lines of climate change, but were never designed to face this sort of surge. This work harnesses the power of sound to tell the little-known story of Coastal Defenses in the United States, their stalwart past, and present day vulnerabilities.
Year: 2020
Site: Montello, Nevada
Field recordings from a cattle drive across the Winecup Gamble Ranch in Nevada's Great Basin. 400 head of cattle were driven 20 miles over the course of two days. Recordings were made at the Wildhorse Well, where the cattle rested for the night. Completed while in residence at the Montello Foundation.
For three solitary weeks in October 2020, I explored the texture and timbre of the Great Basin in Nevada and Utah - walking fencelines, dropping hydrophones in livestock troughs, listening to Junipers, and burying geophones in the Bonneville Flats. This was through an artist residency at the Montello Foundation. Due to high winds, fast cars, and prolonged, deafening silences, the process was often more interesting than the outcome. Still, there is a body of work that came out of this time, and it wants to meet the world, eventually. Here is a short sketch.
Year: 2011 (October)
Hydrophone, contact microphone, and ambient field recordings from a research expedition in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary aboard the Oceangate submarine, Antipodes. This mission provided teachers, students, and researchers with an opportunity to experience the undersea world of Monterey Bay, to raise awareness of the need for ocean exploration, and to inspire students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
More about Oceangate
Year: 2018
Raw field recordings of Howler Monkeys heard, but not seen, in the tree canopy above Lamanai, Belize.
Year: 2020
A soundscape from Twisp-Winthrop Eastside Road in rural Washington State. Field recordings and photography capture the unique texture and timbre of a gravel road.
Site: Elon University/Cornish College of the Arts
Size: 12’H x 12’W x 12’D
Materials: Recycled Wood, Corrugated Cardboard, Audio
“Boxing the Compass” is the action of naming all thirty-two principal points of the compass in clockwise order. Also used as naval slang to describe a ship that has lost its rudder or with no one at the helm, slowly circling in a “directionless” manner.
In this installation, each box represents one heading. Audio recordings feature the sounds of lapping waves and the voices of 32 people reciting all points of the compass. Navigation is presented as a multi-layered process, ultimately rooted in our own perceptions.
Audio field recordings and images from time in residence as a fellow with the Civita Institute. Based in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy, I generated a series of site-specific works in image and sound, honoring the history and fragility of this enduring place.
Featured at SOIL gallery and the Jackstraw New Media Gallery in Seattle, WA.
Location: Jackstraw New Media Gallery
Size: 13 Images, 15″H x 10″W
Materials: Lamda Print, Audio Field Recordings
Status: Complete – September 2003
”Precisely Known, Completely Lost” features visual and audio samplings from survey stations recovered during a two year period of time. In the images, each survey station is paired with the sky directly overhead to create a composite landscape. The audio possesses a similar arrangement. Field recordings from the ground plane are paired with aerial perspectives to create directional sounds within the gallery. Navigation is portrayed as a multi-layered process, ultimately rooted in one’s own perceptions.
Survey stations are the tangible remains of a lost navigation. Historically, these small bronze disks were used to make maps, assess property, and draw boundaries. Satellite mapping has rendered survey stations nearly obsolete, but over 500 still remain, imbedded like fossils in the streets, sidewalks, buildings, and parks of King County. These disks are slowly and steadily being paved over, plowed under, and otherwise obliterated. My goal is to document these landmarks, in image and sound, before they disappear.
Site: Northwest Film Forum – Seattle, WA
Size: 19 Images of various sizes
Materials: Chalk on Blackboard
Status: Completed October 2004
Exhibition: “Release and Capture”
“Radio Truths” features text harvested from news broadcasts. On a daily basis, I transcribe the first phrase that catches my attention when the car radio clicks on. This practice documents the moment, each morning, when I first begin listening. The resulting compendium releases phrases from the flatland of our grey, miserable, national news.
Mundane events become epic sagas. A momentary impression becomes a universal truth. A small town happening becomes a myth for all time. The images are my mind’s eye view of what is heard. The audio recording is handwriting on blackboard. The surface is unfixed. Like the news itself, nothing is permanent.
Sample track from the headphone-based sound installation. “Repeater” investigates the relationship between technology and the physical world. Field recordings of cheeps, beeps, dots, dashes, pulses, and pings are combined to convey the multi-layered process of receiving, reflecting and relaying information through the landscape. Installed at Seattle's Art-In-Nature festival and Elon University.
Underwater hydrophone recordings are paired with ambient sounds from the surface of the water to tell the story of the remarkable science of solitons, the discovery of these waveforms, and the doppler effect. This audio installation captures the moment when two solitons pass through each other.
The audio was installed on headphones. The images where drawings on chalk board. Installed at Consolidated Works, Seattle, WA.
The Conveyance Project (TCP) is a portable sound installation installed at various locations in North King County during 2013.
Because we cannot look at infrastructure without looking at ourselves, this work will explore the process of water treatment and purification in ways that inspire and engage the broader community around this essential process that is part of our daily lives. Through shaping sound as a spatial force, one will be placed at the center of this dynamic, critical process that so often goes unseen and unheard.
Learn more about The Conveyance Project
Site: Camp Long, Seattle, WA – Arts In Nature Festival
Size: 17’L x 11’W x 9’H Camping Cabin
Materials: Stone, Sand, Survey flags, Astroturf, Earth, Weeds
Client: Nature Consortium – Seattle, WA
Status: Completed – August 2005
Audio recordings from The Pacific Northwest are interwoven with sounds from the Indian Subcontinent to convey the basic human need to explore. The familiar and the exotic are interwoven through gridded tableaus, artifacts, and mythic tales to form a sensory landscape between two worlds.
Year: 2012
Site: Covas Do Rio, Portugal
Dimensions: 12’ x 12′ x 8′
Materials: Audio Installation, Chalk, Flowers
Commissioning Agency: Binaural|Nodar
Temporary work installed in an abandoned bandstand in a rural village, Northern Portugal. Commissioned as part of the Binaural|Nodar Rural Architecture Residency.
4-channel Audio features field recordings from the region and voices of villagers describing the history and abandonment of their village due to economic downturn.
Chalk text is excerpted from the interviews and printed on the bandstand floor.
Transformed a deteriorating structure into an art “happening” and place of pride for residents.
