The Physicist and the selkie
Jan 15, 2023, 12:04 PM
"The work is inspired by the communication of the Weddell seals who use the ice and the sea to communicate and locate themselves and each other over long distance. At the same time the meditative chanting from the Song of the Selkie enhances the beauty and poignancy of “the last great wilderness”. Physicist Ben Keitch explains how sound propagates which is how the mysterious space sounds also find their way to Antarctica… The haunting melodies invoke the emptiness of Antarctica, but remind us this is not a lonely place but how it has always been…
"There is a link between Weddells, Space weather and humans, all trying to use the best frequency to transmit along a resonant path in the medium they are in. The Weddells find their frequency by “chirping” up and down. The Space weather naturally gets funnelled to Antarctica, and humans have to tune their radios to the correct frequency each day to find a long-range transmission. It all results in strange pitch explorations.
"There are some of the very subtle beats and clicks and whistles within the recording but quite a lot of muffled hiss, which I tried to reduce without losing details. Some of the stronger call sounds I isolated, and experimented with putting through a MIDI controller keyboard for the first time. By playing just one call sound through the octaves and shifting the pitch, I created many other sounds that are within the piece – the long drawn out polar atmospheres, that cross the boundaries of underwater and over ice, with some subsonic rumbles; melancholy drawn out moaning scales and drones, and some stretching of sounds. Additions were the space sounds of spherics, whistlers and chorus picked up from the magnetosphere by the Halley Research Station, some pewws of ice, and underwater bubbles. For the most part, the piece is made from the Weddell seals hydrophone recording, and a couple of other reverbed key players: The Sing Your Heart Out Stroud choir, and physicist Ben Keitch who spent 18 months in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey as engineer.
"Each time I make an audio piece I am experimenting and learning something new. On a practical level I find myself trouble-shooting a lot of basic audio tech. Too many late night ‘how to’ video tutorials – how to make ambient music and drones, use a MIDI controller keyboard, noise reduction and effects, techniques of my DAW reaper, update my OS so that new and existing apps were compatible!
"For the project I got drawn into a lot of research, and spent several hours interviewing Ben, reading through all the transcripts, with my head overflowing from stories and ideas, how to do them justice. There is so much potential in this material, and I’m inspired to weave the conversations into future chapters.
" In the end, I have 2 versions of this piece, one which only includes a few emotive quotes, and focuses on the sounds and atmosphere, the other interweaves snippets of the musings of physics that underlie the mixing of sounds, and is the work in progress. The whole subject of being in Antarctica and all the research that happens there got under my skin. Warning – sound pressure level - some subsonic sounds.
"Many thanks to:
Ben Keitch and the British Antarctica Survey for all his stories and insights shared, and passing to me the sounds from space.
And to my sister and the choir she sings in, Sing Your Heart Out Stroud, for the recording of them singing ‘Ionn Da’ - ‘The Seal-woman’s Sea-Joy’
"At the beginning of this year I met Ben and was fascinated with his stories of living in Antarctica, and a shared interest in radio. Soon after I visited the RSS Discovery in Dundee and exhibitions about shipbuilding the great expeditions and the work of the British Antarctic survey. As an artist I am always interested in finding different ways to bring stories to life, and have been exploring radioart. I also find it important to connect with nature and environmental issues.
"This callout was a wonderful serendipitous opportunity to dive into the underwater world of sounds of Antarctica, and find out more from Ben about his experiences, knowledge of the physics of frequencies and waves. I was drawn to the a theory and spacey sounds of the Weddle seals, and have always loved the Scottish tales of the Selkies – drawn onto land and a half human life, rediscovering their skins, dive back to their underwater world – there is a quality of both joy and melancholy in those tales. In this piece, the song of the Selkie emerges in a half human half weddell seal choir, and the different frequencies and pitch changes interweave, of environment, elemental, animal and human sounds transmitted and received.
"The mix of bio marine research, the science of sound, radiophonic spaciness, mythology, exploration, the strangely peaceful and wild isolation of the melting Antarctic all resonate in a strange and poignant ambience."
Weddell seal reimagined by Tara Downs.
Part of the Polar Sounds project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Explore the project in full at http://citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds.
IMAGE: Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia
"There is a link between Weddells, Space weather and humans, all trying to use the best frequency to transmit along a resonant path in the medium they are in. The Weddells find their frequency by “chirping” up and down. The Space weather naturally gets funnelled to Antarctica, and humans have to tune their radios to the correct frequency each day to find a long-range transmission. It all results in strange pitch explorations.
"There are some of the very subtle beats and clicks and whistles within the recording but quite a lot of muffled hiss, which I tried to reduce without losing details. Some of the stronger call sounds I isolated, and experimented with putting through a MIDI controller keyboard for the first time. By playing just one call sound through the octaves and shifting the pitch, I created many other sounds that are within the piece – the long drawn out polar atmospheres, that cross the boundaries of underwater and over ice, with some subsonic rumbles; melancholy drawn out moaning scales and drones, and some stretching of sounds. Additions were the space sounds of spherics, whistlers and chorus picked up from the magnetosphere by the Halley Research Station, some pewws of ice, and underwater bubbles. For the most part, the piece is made from the Weddell seals hydrophone recording, and a couple of other reverbed key players: The Sing Your Heart Out Stroud choir, and physicist Ben Keitch who spent 18 months in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey as engineer.
"Each time I make an audio piece I am experimenting and learning something new. On a practical level I find myself trouble-shooting a lot of basic audio tech. Too many late night ‘how to’ video tutorials – how to make ambient music and drones, use a MIDI controller keyboard, noise reduction and effects, techniques of my DAW reaper, update my OS so that new and existing apps were compatible!
"For the project I got drawn into a lot of research, and spent several hours interviewing Ben, reading through all the transcripts, with my head overflowing from stories and ideas, how to do them justice. There is so much potential in this material, and I’m inspired to weave the conversations into future chapters.
" In the end, I have 2 versions of this piece, one which only includes a few emotive quotes, and focuses on the sounds and atmosphere, the other interweaves snippets of the musings of physics that underlie the mixing of sounds, and is the work in progress. The whole subject of being in Antarctica and all the research that happens there got under my skin. Warning – sound pressure level - some subsonic sounds.
"Many thanks to:
Ben Keitch and the British Antarctica Survey for all his stories and insights shared, and passing to me the sounds from space.
And to my sister and the choir she sings in, Sing Your Heart Out Stroud, for the recording of them singing ‘Ionn Da’ - ‘The Seal-woman’s Sea-Joy’
"At the beginning of this year I met Ben and was fascinated with his stories of living in Antarctica, and a shared interest in radio. Soon after I visited the RSS Discovery in Dundee and exhibitions about shipbuilding the great expeditions and the work of the British Antarctic survey. As an artist I am always interested in finding different ways to bring stories to life, and have been exploring radioart. I also find it important to connect with nature and environmental issues.
"This callout was a wonderful serendipitous opportunity to dive into the underwater world of sounds of Antarctica, and find out more from Ben about his experiences, knowledge of the physics of frequencies and waves. I was drawn to the a theory and spacey sounds of the Weddle seals, and have always loved the Scottish tales of the Selkies – drawn onto land and a half human life, rediscovering their skins, dive back to their underwater world – there is a quality of both joy and melancholy in those tales. In this piece, the song of the Selkie emerges in a half human half weddell seal choir, and the different frequencies and pitch changes interweave, of environment, elemental, animal and human sounds transmitted and received.
"The mix of bio marine research, the science of sound, radiophonic spaciness, mythology, exploration, the strangely peaceful and wild isolation of the melting Antarctic all resonate in a strange and poignant ambience."
Weddell seal reimagined by Tara Downs.
Part of the Polar Sounds project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Explore the project in full at http://citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds.
IMAGE: Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia