What is Ocean Voices?

What is Ocean Voices? Sound artist Halsey Burgund and marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols joined forces to collect the voices of people around the world recounting their personal experiences with the ocean. Combined with music written by Halsey, these voices will soon become audio collages which listeners can create to suit their own preferences. Help us by sharing your voice and spreading the words of all participants around the globe.

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

Ocean Voices will spread and be heard in two ways:

via this website which participants can use to access voices in the form of algorithmically generated audio collages
with the composition and premiere performance of a semi-improvised, semi-composed piece of music at the California Academy of Sciences in June 2010 in celebration of World Ocean Day as well as the 100th anniversary of Jacques Cousteau’s birth

The collages present a user-selected group of voices in a non-linear, semi-randomized fashion which not only gives each participant a unique audio experience, but will also help them hear the thoughts of many other individuals in a musical setting. The collages are accessible online which helps spread the voices around the globe, and as more voices are collected, they will become more and more varied.

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. The 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.

The voices are being collected not only via this web-site, but through in-person interviews as well as (soon) using custom Android and iPhone apps. 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. Please contribute!

Ocean Voices uses an open-source interactive audio platform designed by Halsey Burgund and built by Mike MacHenry called Roundware. The Roundware project is aimed at providing a flexible framework to capture and deliver audio content to and from different groups of people. It is primarily aimed at the artistic and educational fields, though likely has uses well beyond those two. Roundware has formed the basis of other installations by Halsey and is currently being used at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum for their educational audio tours.