I’ve been commissioned by the Cambridge Arts Council to create an audio installation throughout the city of Cambridge, MA.  Tentatively called ROUND: Cambridge, this piece will be a location-sensitive, participatory musical composition with a focus on gathering experiences and opinions related to the public art that exists in Cambridge. As the name suggests, this piece is related to my installation ROUND at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2008 where I asked participants to react to the artwork in the museum and I created an evolving piece of music with those voices and instruments.  R:C is scheduled to open sometime in the fall; I’ll keep everyone updated!

I was extremely honored to receive an ‘Ocean Advocate’ award last month from Céline Cousteau.  I felt more than a little out of place given the other recipients’ track records, but am very pleased that music/art is recognized alongside scientific efforts as playing an important role in ocean conservation.

Ocean Inspiration Announces Winners of “Ocean Advocate” Awards

This article on National Geographic’s site captures the spirit of this event nicely:

Even the Ocean Has Grass Roots

I am very excited to announce the release of the Ocean Voices app for Android.  The app allows users to record their voice for inclusion in the Ocean Voices project as well as listen to customizable audio streams of music and the voices of over 1200 other participants.  Hopefully this new app will increase participation globally!

Huge thanks goes out to Rob Knapen who developed the bulk of this app and who, more importantly, exhibited extreme amounts of patience and grace throughout the somewhat convoluted process of bringing this app to fruition.  Thanks, Rob!

I will be performing Ocean Voices in the nation’s capital on May 20th as a part of Céline Cousteau’s ‘Ocean Inspiration’ initiative as well as the opening night of the 2011 Blue Vision Summit. I’m excited to bring Ocean Voices to more people and to perform in a city I have never performed in before.

The show is at 6:00PM on Friday, May 20th at the Carnegie Institution For Science. Peter Bailey, Marissa Licata and Javier Caballero will be joining me.  It’s free and open to the public!

Here’s a video of excerpts from our performance at the Museum of Science in Boston last July.

My newest sound installation is open now in the Art/Science Gallery at Boston’s Museum of Science.

This 6-channel piece contains the voices of over 250 people from eastern Massachusetts talking about their experiences with race; the good, the bad and the ugly.

The audio in the gallery is composed to constantly evolve in real-time and hence never repeats. The following is a snip I recorded from the live stream and is probably as representative of the whole piece as a two-minute sample can be… (more)

Check out the newly released Patagonia Music initiative.  It’s another great way for Patagonia to expand its philanthropic efforts while promoting some great music simultaneously.

“Buy a song; benefit the environment”

And of course, I have an ulterior motive, which is to say that ‘Ocean Voices’ is included in the ‘New Music Stream’ section for everyone to enjoy. They have a super-slick iPhone app as well which will stream all the music and let you make purchases/donations.

Jump in!

Yes, you are looking at it…there is still much work to be done to flesh it out, but thankfully, I now have a flexible framework in place that I can use to organize things better between all of my sites as well as dynamically post new content etc…

Please be forgiving for the time being of all the little bits of weirdness (and gaping holes) that will exist while I make this transition.  I’m not technically savvy enough to do a nice, clean cut-over, so this is going to be a bit more of an organic process!

My sound installation called Scapes, at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, enjoyed an extended run and captured more than 800 recordings from museum visitors. Look for more Scapes-like projects in the future!

Scapes is a location-sensitive, evolving, interactive piece of music. It allows participants to augment the physical landscape of the museum’s sculpture park by leaving audio commentary in locations of their choosing for others to hear within the musical setting. Video.

I have been working with marine biologist, Wallace J. Nichols on a project called Ocean Voices for a number of years now on and off. Finally I have gotten the time (and technology) to launch an initial version online:

We are collecting voices from across the world responding to several questions about the ocean in hopes of fostering communication and collaboration in the name of ocean conservation and participatory sound art. Anyone can participate so check it out and become an ocean voice! You can listen to other voices from around the world too.

On May 1st, I put on a performance at the MIT Museum which was a part of the Cambridge Science Festival as well as Boston Cyberarts. I worked with guitarist Peter Bailey as well as video artist Francois de Costerd to create several new pieces based on the theme of ‘the elements’.

We collected voices to use in this performance at schools, community events, the Science Festival opening event at MIT as well as via an online system. Watch video redux of the show!