a n a u d i t o r y e x p e r i m e n t
practicing
using a zoom h4n pro recorder and a stereo hydrophone, we did our best to listen.
in trying to hear a world that is not fully ours,
we have collected, processed, reimagined, and displayed an experimental aural landscape of the sea.
the late spring of two thousand and nineteen in southern california
was met with the early arrival of june gloom and the migration of millions of painted lady butterflies.
we are certain that the sand crabs, sea hares, anemones, algae, kelp, barnacles, hermit
crabs, snails, isopods, and striped shore crabs that we encountered heard and
* felt * a very different morning than we did on june eleventh.
but that morning, the waves and artifacts hitting the hydrophone made us feel ( even if just
for a moment ) just as small and connected to the sea as the creatures who call it home.
we submerged ourselves.
we swam out.
we danced with kelp and tasted salt.
we smiled through the post-production.
the beauty of many of our samples is their quiet, their low frequency, their “squips”, “pu-ip-ip-p-p“,
“whisss”, and “thkthktikthks”. as a result of choosing p5.js and developing this page with a deadline,
we were limited (although, we were limited to begin with and will remain limited).
we had to make decisions to increase volumes at times and decrease it at others, when the
mic recordings were too hot in order for our visualizations to be visible.