We are delighted to share our EcoRift VR experiences in an upcoming exhibition Listen to the World thanks to Darren Copeland
EcoRift: nature sojourns – Embodied sonic experiences by the Listen(n) Project
The EcoRift delivers immersive experiences of being present in highly valued natural environments without needing to travel and without degrading the environments by visitation. The prototype is designed with an explicit accessibility strategy that provides open access to the experience of pristine natural environments across the globe, including for the elderly and people with disabilities who may otherwise not have access.
EcoRift can be used in exhibitions in the partner communities and in festivals and galleries internationally. Extension to this system will allow individuals to capture their own National Park experience and upload it easily into the system.
Along with the other rich media tools developed by the project (Dr. Paine helped develop the Unity3D Ambisonic tools with Blue Ripple Sound), EcoRift directs community awareness to issues of sustainability, environmental engagement, critical enquiry and interpretative discourse around questions of how digital technology and rich media environments can be used to deepen value systems around these precious, yet fragile ecosystems. Given the ongoing need to increase ecological consciousness, the EcoRift is designed to provide new virtual immersive environmental engagement cultivating environmental awareness and community agency.
The EcoRift system was created by Dr. Garth Paine and student programmer, Andre Maestas and was launched during SXSW Eco in Austin, Texas in 2014. EcoRift experiences have been developed for each of the Listen(n) locations and this project is a core stream of the overall Listen(n) Project, democratizing access to nature and building community stewardship around important protected environments.
The success of the EcoRift experience is largely due to the fact that the PointOfView (POV) of both auditory and visual streams moves without perceptible latency and produces such a tightly correlated experience as to be perceived as an embodied relation to the content. This critical accessibility and embodiment is essential in exploring how digital technology and rich media environments can be used to create experiences of being present in remote environments.
Weekly Soundwalks run by Anne-Marie Shaver and Hunter Langenhorst
Wednesdays
5:15 – 6:15pm
ASU School of Music
Tempe, AZ
Meet at the fountain
Need a mid-week break? A soundwalk is the perfect way to invite relaxation in the midst of a busy schedule. We will begin and end the soundwalk at the fountain in the School of Music courtyard. The walk itself will last about 20 minutes, and all are welcome to share their observations and thoughts afterward.
Garth Paine is a researcher/composer in residence at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris and at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany for 2018.
He has been at IRCAM since the beginning of February developing a new concert work for field recordings and composed sound for an immersive ambisonic sound playback and for webAudio and WebVR – a truly immersive concert experience. In this talk he will demonstrate some of the technology developments and talk about the value gained by teaching listening skills and embedding acoustic ecology within the community.
The talk will be followed by a performance using your smart phone – demonstrating some fo the techniques they have been developing at IRCAM over the last 2 months.
The Acoustic Ecology Lab’s Sabine Feisst and Garth Paine and running a series of workshops with Joshua Tree National Park through the JTLab initiative.
Feel free to come and join in
Hearing Joshua Tree National Park – Workshops
Sound gives life to our environment and heightens our experience of place. Sound artists Sabine Feisst and Garth Paine offer 2-hour workshops that draw attention to nature’s pristine voices and their relationship to the environment. The workshops will teach listening skills and include creative activities such as soundwalks, sound mapping, sonic meditations and sonic story telling. These workshops also serve as a basis for their Field Recording Workshops to be offered in December 2017 and February 2018.
October 28, 2017 6-8:00 AM location: Barker Dam
October 29, 2017 7:00-9:00 AM Cap Rock
Please wear: Soft and comfortable warm clothes,
Please bring: headlight, notebook and pen/pencil.
Recording Sounds in Joshua Tree National Park – Workshop
Capitalizing on the power and beauty of sounds in the park, sound artists Garth Paine and Sabine Feisst offer 2-hour workshops that teach both listening skills and field recording techniques. These workshops include creative activities such as sonic meditations and sound mapping.
Saturday 16 December 2017, 4-6pm @ Barker Dam Car Park
Sunday 17 December 2017 , 7-9am @ Cap Rock Car Park
Saturday 17 February 2018 4-6pm @ Barker Dam Car Park
Sunday 18 February 2018 , 7-9am @ Cap Rock Car Park
Please wear: Soft and comfortable warm clothes
Please bring: headlight, notebook and pen/pencil and if available, smart phone with recording function or other portable recorder and headphones. Some recorders and headphones will be provided for use during the workshop
Joshua Tree Sonic Placemaking Workshop
This workshop directed by Garth Paine and Sabine Feisst builds on the previous listening and field recording workshops. Listening skills, field recordings and sound stories are combined into a collaborative Joshua Tree Sound Map and a musical work exhibited and performed in the park (4 and 5 May 2018).
Site: Rattlesnake room or at Black Rock camp ground
Saturday 14 April 2018, 5-7pm
Sunday 15 April 2018, 7-9am
Please bring: Notebook and pen/pencil and if available, smart phones, tablets and laptops with sounds recorded in Joshua Tree National Park.
Joshua Tree Sonic Placemaking Exhibit and Concert
4 May, 2018 – Indian Cove 7:30-9:30pm 5 May, 2018 – Harrison House in Joshua Tree (TBC)
Thanks to ASU Now for the opportunity to share my passion for how listening can make your life much richer
Garth Paine on Listening from ASU Now on Vimeo.
Listen to the sounds of the SW USA on our Listen database http://www.ecolisten.org/sonic_events.php – gathered by ASU faculty and citizen scientists in National Parks across the SW USA, the recordings help document the transformation of the environment over time due to climate change and other environmental impacts.
Photographs generously provided by Lynne Russell and Dennis Eckel
The Acoustic Ecology Lab was selected to present a poster and demonstration session on EcoRift for Health and Wellbeing at the Arizona Wellbeing Commons, hosted at the Tempe Center for the Arts on 6 September 2017. The poster presentation offered attendees of the event an opportunity to experience virtual sojourns in nature sanctuaries in the United States, Mexico and Europe, showcasing ambisonic recording technology and 3-D sound on several VR headsets. The Arizona Wellbeing Commons is a forum for interdisciplinary collaborations between Arizona’s three public universities, health providers and representatives from communities to advance research in preventive care, in the treatment of and recovery from a wide range of diseases.
The conference created a forum for artists and scientists to examine the ways in which sound can advance our knowledge about the environment. Feisst discussed Weyant’s activist creative placemaking endeavors along the U.S.-Mexico border where he turns fences into sonic bridges. Hear him talk about his work on the US/Mexico boarder on NPR
Watch Glenn Weyant talk about his work on the boarder here
Great to meet Keynote Chris Watson at the conference too.
Listen to Nature’s Symphony on International Dawn Chorus Day (May 7)
ASU’s Acoustic Ecology Lab will participate in this year’s International Dawn Chorus Day events by contributing live streaming of birdsongs from Tempe to the “Reveil” broadcast on the Sonus Locus network. In the course of 24 hours Reveil gradually moves west from microphone to microphone set up in places around the whole world to continuously feature birds singing at dawn. Go to the Locus Sonus Soundmap and tune in to the morning sounds of places near and far: http://locusonus.org/soundmap/051/.
Dawn Chorus Day is an event initiated by the Urban Wildlife Trust in Birmingham, England in 1984 and held annually on the first Sunday in May to encourage listening to bird song.
Sabine Feisst, co-director of the Acoustic Ecology Lab, was one of three keynote speakers at the annual meeting of the Finnish Musicological and Ethnomusicological Societies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 19–21 April 2017. Her keynote was titled: “U.S.-Mexico Border Chords and Discords: Perspectives on the Changing Sonic Ecologies in the American Southwest.” It critically examined the U.S.-Mexico borderlands’ aural space which in the last two decades has undergone dramatic changes prompted by increased border fortification and militarization.
The Acoustic Ecology Lab is pleased to announce that the Joshua Tree Art Innovation Laboratory selected in a competitive review its proposed Ecolisten Artist Program. In the coming year we work with the Laboratory to conduct a series of community listening and field recording workshops in Joshua Tree National Park. These workshops will generate several creative outcomes including crowd-sourced ambisonic field recordings, audio works and virtual reality experiences.
The Joshua Tree Art Innovation Laboratory “explores new roles that arts professionals and arts students can play in helping the National Park Service pursue its mission of preservation and engagement.”
The program is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Imagine your Parks” initiative honoring the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.
The Acoustic Ecology Lab partnered with the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy to preset our virtual reality work as part of Junior Citizen Science Festival on March 10, 2017 outdoors at the Lost Dog Wash Trailhead.
The event attracted more than 300 students who engaged with a number of researchers around ecosystems and environmental awareness. Our Ecorift VR system helped share the experience of virtual reality sojourns into the national parks of the SW, USA.
They loved it!! and wanted to go there immediately!
Photographs generously provided by Lynne Russell and Dennis Eckel
Junior Citizen Science Festival
03/10/2017 – 09:00AM
Location: Lost Dog Wash Trailhead
Calling all inquisitive young minds! Bring your kids for a fun, interactive exploration of science and nature at the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy’s Junior Citizen Science Festival. Held in conjunction with the Arizona SciTech Festival, this event will introduce kids to the incredible diversity of the Sonoran Desert through the lens of citizen science. Children will interact with live desert animals, use scientific tools to make discoveries, and learn how they can contribute to science!
Come and experience virtual reality sojourns into the national parks of the SW, USA with the Acoustic Ecology Lab
– See more at: http://mcdowellsonoran.org/event/index#sthash.RGTiQnBC.dpuf
We have started several new projects working with Dr. Helen Rowe, Director of the Field Institute of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve in Scottsdale, Arizona. The projects range from looking at anthropocentric sound interference in migration pathways, to the development of sound quality metrics for environmental land management – we are thrilled to have such a strong partnership with the McDowell Sonoran Preserve – More to come on these projects as they develop
McDowell Sonoran Preserve
Today we released a number of field recording tutorials to support our citizen science volunteers who are making monthly recordings in national parks across the southwest USA
Sabine Feisst and Garth Paine look forward to sharing their acoustic ecology-based research and art at the upcoming international conference “Music and Landscape – Soundscape and Sonic Art” at the Kunstuniversität Graz, Austria 27–30 October 2016.
Feisst will deliver a paper on Sonic Placemaking in the American Southwest. Paine will present a perambulatory performance of his Oscillations for Tibetan Singing Bowl Robots and his acousmatic work Becoming Desert. Paine will also participate in a Round Table discussion on “Soundwalks, Sonic Art and Landscapes” with such other artists as Thomas Gerwin and Jacqueline Waldock. For more details see here
Join Sabine Feisst, Co-Director of the Acoustic Ecology Lab on Friday, November 4, from 8-10 pm for “Art and Advocacy in Environmentalist Music: Tensions, Dimensions, and Perceptions,” a special AMS session involving artists based in the Vancouver area. It takes place in Pavilion Ballroom A of the Sheraton Wall Centre (1088 Burrard St, downtown Vancouver) and features interactive performances by singer-songwriter Dana Lyons, activist ensemble the Solidarity Labour Notes Choir, children’s music duo Bobs & Lolo, and environmentalist rock group The Wilds. Sabine Feisst (Arizona State University), Tyler Kinnear (University of British Columbia), Stephen Meyer (University of Cincinnati), and Mark Pedelty (University of Minnesota) will facilitate discussion. Please join us for an entertaining and stimulating evening of music and discussion.
October 13th 12 Noon – 481 GIOS, Wrigley Hall @ASU
lunch provided
The Acoustic Ecology Lab is excited to announce a talk by Bina Venkataraman in partnership with GIOS
Bina Venkataraman
From Satellites to Supermarket Aisles: Marshaling Science and Innovation for Action on Climate Change
We face a crisis of planetary proportions — a direct result of our cumulative, everyday decisions. How do we bridge an understanding of broad trends on planet Earth with the information we need in our lives and communities to prepare for and prevent climate disaster? Vast data resources and science of all stripes need to be marshaled to help us act on climate change. Policy and technological innovation from the granular to the grandiose are also mission critical. What’s the most promising progress — and what do we need to do next?
Bio
Bina Venkataraman leads efforts that draw on science and technology to improve public policy and sustain the health of people and the planet. Currently, she is a Fellow at the New America Foundation and teaches in MIT”s department of science, technology, and society. Bina previously served as Senior Advisor for Climate Change Innovation in the Obama White House, where she developed policies and stood up coalitions with a particular focus on private sector and community resilience to climate change. She is a former journalist for The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Bina is an alumna of Brown University and Harvard’s Kennedy School, and the recipient of Fulbright, a Princeton in Asia fellowship, a Metcalf fellowship, and a James Reston fellowship. She serves on the Brown University President’s Leadership Council, the advisory council of the Institute at Brown for the Environment and Society, and the Board of Directors of Earthwatch. She was named a 2015 Global Young Leader by the French-American Foundation.
We will be presenting workshops and a concert in Joshua Tree with partners JTLab, Joshua Tree National Park, the Mohave land Trust at the end of April – thanks to the generous funding from Invoking the Pause
Poster here – Community Pause – Invoking the Pause and the Listen Project 
Sabine Feisst and Garth Paine look forward to sharing their acoustic ecology-based research and art at the upcoming international conference “Music and Landscape – Soundscape and Sonic Art” at the Kunstuniversität Graz, Austria 27–30 October 2016.
Feisst will deliver a paper on Sonic Placemaking in the American Southwest. Paine will present a perambulatory performance of his Oscillations for Tibetan Singing Bowl Robots and his acousmatic work Becoming Desert. Paine will also participate in a Round Table discussion on “Soundwalks, Sonic Art and Landscapes” with such other artists as Thomas Gerwin and Jacqueline Waldock. For more details see here 
