Roundware

What would it sound like to hear the thoughts of California ocean conservationists and Japanese fishermen together in a piece of music?  How about political activists and six-year olds?  Oceanic issues are rife with nuance, filled with emotion and broad enough to affect all life on this planet.  By collecting these personal expressions and presenting them back in a collective way, Ocean Voices intends to open minds and expand awareness through music and grassroots participation.

Ocean Voices is a collaboration between sound artist Halsey Burgund and marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols designed to collect spoken voice recordings from people around the world responding to a few personal questions about the ocean, including:

• How does the ocean affect you on a daily basis?
• Describe a world without oceans.
• What does it feel like to be in the ocean?

The voices will be collected via in person interviews, an interactive website, a kiosk at CAS and through software developed for Android phones and the iPhone.  The collection of these voices is the first crucial step in Ocean Voices as it is these recordings which will act as the raw material for related music compositions which Halsey will compose.  The voice recordings will not only act as inspiration from a content standpoint, but will be used in combination with acoustic and electronic instruments in the composition itself.  Halsey has been writing music using spoken voices for many years and Ocean Voices gives him an exciting opportunity to further his artistic goals within the context of a global environmental issue he cares deeply about.

The artistic “product” of Ocean Voices is two-fold.  First, as the voices are collected, they will be consolidated in an online database which participants will be able to access in the form of algorithmically generated audio collages.  These collages will present a user-selected group of voices in a non-linear, semi-randomized fashion which will not only give each participant a unique audio experience, but will also help them hear the thoughts of many other individuals in a musical setting.  The collages will be accessible online which will help spread the voices around the globe and as more voices are collected, the collages will become more and more varied.

The second product will be a semi-improvised, semi-composed piece of music which will be performed at CAS in June 2010 in celebration of World Ocean Day as well as the 100th anniversary of Jacques Cousteau’s birth.  Jacques Cousteau did more than anyone else to increase ocean awareness among every day people around the globe, and Ocean Voices endeavors to represent similar people and their stories collectively.  This musical performance will be staged by Halsey and his band, aesthetic evidence, and will also include live-generated projected visuals which will be tightly woven into the music/voice fabric.

Ocean Voices has both artistic and conservation goals.

• to bring together a global community to emphasize how ocean conservation is a global issue
• to focus on the individual and the individual’s thoughts about the ocean, making it very personal and therefore more impactful
• to bring together the creative/musical/artistic world with the environmental world, thereby broadening the audience and increasing accessibility
• to actively solicit grassroots participation from a wide variety of geographic and demographic groups and encourage cross-pollination of ideas

The Future and Now

The next BIG Roundware project……

Scapes is a sound installation at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA which augments the physical landscape of the park with a location-sensitive layer of audio.  This audio layer contains a mixture of instrumental music and spoken voices – contributed by participants – both of which are influenced by the participant’s location within the sculpture park.  As such, the participant’s body becomes the primary mode of interaction with this project; as they move through the park, they control how their individual audioscape unfolds by shifting the instrumental music and “running into” audio left by other participants. Museum visitors will use a handheld wireless device and headphones with which they can listen to audio as well as make their own recordings which will be immediately assimilated into the piece for everyone to hear.

More details…

The Future and Now

Round Stories intends to create a global community through the collection, filtering and musical dissemination of recorded children’s voices from around the world.  It will be produced in collaboration with UNICEF as an extension of an existing UNICEF project – called Our Stories – which aims to collect millions of audio recordings of children telling their own personal stories.  Round Stories will use this continually growing database of recordings as source material and inspiration for an evolving audio/visual piece, initially accessible online, which will aim to highlight the individual experiences of these children as well as the global nature of the community in which we all live.

The above is a short demonstration piece of music using the voices already collected by UNICEF staffers.  The process of creating this amazed me with the potential and power that this project can deliver to people around the world.  Sitting in my studio in suburban Boston listening to the raw voices of children talking (and often singing) about disease, freedom, hardships, war, family etc, transported me into a place in which I have little experience thus far but feel great empathy.  I hope Round Stories can provide participants with a similar eye-opening experience and a feeling of connection with the global community that we are all a part of whether or not we accept and embrace it.

The Future and Now