Siren: Using Sound and Imagery to Highlight Humpback Whale Songs and Entanglement
Speakers: Annie Lewandowski; Cornell University; Senior Lecturer, Department of Music & Kyle McDonald, Code Artist
Abstract: Working collaboratively, artist and coder Kyle McDonald, set designer Amy Rubin, and musician Annie Lewandowski have created a large multimedia installation focusing on the interior and exterior worlds of the humpback whale in "Siren." Lewandowski recorded humpback whale songs in 2019 with Katy Payne and the Hawaii Marine Mammal Consortium off of Hawaii's Big Island, and her collaborators have used lighting changes in color, duration, and contour to visualize the whale songs via analyses employing machine learning. "Siren" also focuses on marine entanglement through derelict fishing gear used to build the "Siren" sculpture.
Bio(s): Annie Lewandowski is a composer, performer, and senior lecturer in the Department of Music at Cornell University. Lewandowski’s 2018 composition, “Cetus: Life After Life,” for humpback whale song and chimes, explores the evolution of Hawaiian humpback song from 1977-1981. She has collaborated with Google Creative Lab to create the broadly adopted public web tool Pattern Radio: Whale Song for teaching AI to recognize patterns in humpback whale song.
Kyle McDonald is an artist working with code who crafts interactive installations, sneaky interventions, playful websites, workshops, and toolkits for other artists working with code. McDonald works with with machine learning, computer vision, and social and surveillance tech to explore possibilities of new technologies and understand how they affect society.
Sponsors: NMFS and NOAA Central Library
Seminar contact: Lee Benaka ([email protected])
