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When the Whales Take Back the Ocean

from Sonic Encounters Volume 01 by Mark Mosher

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Story:
As humans and their technology have evolved, they have encroached more and more on the domain of the whale and other sea life. Of course the whales have been evolving as well - and - unbeknownst to us, they have been patiently plotting and waiting for the right time put things back in balance. Listen as a group of humpback whales execute phase 1 of their plan to take back the ocean.

Science: From "Seismic Surveys Negatively Affect Humpback Whale Singing Activity off Northern Angola"
(journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0086464) "Discussion...The presence of oil and gas exploration activities in this region and globally, and the potential acoustic impact that anthropogenic noise sources may have on sensitive species are increasing areas of study and concern for industry, governments, biologists and conservationists [23], [25]. The intense pulses produced by seismic surveys clearly have the potential to cause direct or behaviorally mediated physiological harm at close distances [34], but more subtly at longer distances there exists the potential of disturbing animals and altering important behaviours, as well as masking acoustic signals and negatively affecting communication. ... It appears that whales are ceasing to sing, or moving to other areas to sing when seismic surveys are being conducted in relatively close proximity. We emphasize that this is documentation of disturbance of a breeding display for a baleen whale on a breeding ground, and thus has implied potential for affecting mating behaviour and success."

Artist Notes:
The entire piece was improvised and recorded in one real-time pass using only the Octatrack's unique an expressive capabilities, built-in-effects and ability to morph. The piece was recorded with a Zoom H2N with no edits (after much rehearsal). The fun and challenge of this piece was to see how far I could take a handful of similar recordings to tell a story and to go well beyond the sonic character of the source material. So I start off quite organic, and end quite "horror show".

Instrumentation & Instrumentalities:
The ONLY source audio for this piece is from public domain recordings of humpback whale song and vocalizations. The samples were loaded into multiple tracks on an Elektron Octatrack Dynamic Performance Sampler.

credits

from Sonic Encounters Volume 01, track released August 30, 2015
Music, Sounds, Stories, Notes by Cover* Mark Mosher
© 2015 Mark J. Mosher

*Cover was designed by Mark Mosher based on this image in the public domain commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Humpback_Whale_underwater_shot.jpg

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Mark Mosher Boulder, Colorado

I'm a synthesist releasing sci-if inspired techno, ambient, and experimental music with cinematic arcs. My catalog spans back over 10 years.

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