Soundscape Developed by Peter Fee and Joshua Jones
Animation by Josh Tonies
Madeline Hamann, Science Advisor
Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab
Animation by Josh Tonies
Madeline Hamann, Science Advisor
Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab
Arctic Immersion is an audiovisual experience that strings together an acoustic soundscape of an Arctic Ocean environment, data from historic ocean and climate observations and abstract graphics generated from natural materials to produce a captivating and moving experience of rapidly changing conditions at the top of the world.
This curated “Arctic Soundscape” allows us for the first time to hear a full year underwater at a location far offshore in the Chukchi Sea, north of Alaska. We hear days as seconds, which carry us through weeks, months, and seasons, through ice formation and consolidation to breakup and open water, and through the migrations of whole populations of Arctic animals like bowhead whales and belugas. We can 'hear' storms and winter winds come and go. With help, we may be able to recognize with our ears all the Inuit seasons of ice and snow and melt and open water--there are at least six. For much of the year, this location is as inaccessible to most of us as the surface of our moon. In 365 seconds, this soundscape carefully reproduces a year of underwater recordings, the changing ocean background noise, and all of the things in it, which create the acoustic environment.
We can hear a year in one lonely part of the Arctic Ocean.
