Keweenaw Soundscapes

Intersection of the Arts and the Natural World

In 2014 Libby Meyer, Susie Kilpela and myself started a collaboration between Art, Music and Sound to explore the interconnection between Art and the Natural World. We reached out to faculty in the sciences across campus and started some interesting projects.

The kick off was a Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA) grant that supported bringing Bernie Krause, John Luther Adams, and Sadashi Inuzuka to the Michigan Tech Campus. As part of the grant activities we held panel discussions with faculty across campus, created virtual hikes for the Keweenaw Land Trust, had a Champaign toast with John Adams when he won the Pulitzer, and created an installation art piece based on the auralization of data from the Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale Study.

The virtual hikes provided significant student work for Bernie Krause to respond to in a master class and the Wolf-Moose Aurilization was a great centerpiece for a master class with John Luther Adams. In both cases students had read their books before hand and were able to have in-depth serious conversations about the art at hand.

This also lead to a summer research fellowship for one of the students documenting the sounds of Point Abby, and we have been working to move the Wolf Moose art installation to the web. The current version can be seen here:

http://wolfmoose.paulkirbysound.com