GCE AnnouncementAnnouncementA Symphony of long-term GCE-LTER Data All: I want to draw your attention to an upcoming event: "Coastal Portrait: Cycles and Thresholds" is a musical composition written by UGA’s Peter Van Zandt Lane, an Associate Professor of Composition and Director of the Dancz Center for New Music in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music with support from Sea Grant’s Artists, Writers, and Scholar Program. It is based on 20-years of GCE data from the sondes (salinity, temperature, etc.) and fall plant monitoring at 8 of the long-term monitoring sites. Over the past year or so, Peter has been collaborating with Amanda, Daniela, Merryl, and Steve to learn about GCE and to understand, process, and interpret subsets of our long-term data (see description below). A version of his composition was installed as part of the Waves of Wonder Exhibition in the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum this past summer. But the World Premiere by an orchestra will be on November 12 at 7:30 PM in the Ferst Center for the Arts on Georgia Tech’s campus. It will be played by the GA Tech Symphony Orchestra which is led by Conductor Chaowen Ting (see info below). The performance is open to all and I hope to see you there! 349 Ferst Dr NW, Atlanta, GA 30332 https://music.gatech.edu/orchestras Coastal Portrait: Cycles and Thresholds is a work for orchestra and electronics, featuring spatialized electronic sounds derived from the sonification of environmental data gathered by scientists associated with the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research Project. Throughout the piece, there is a dialogue between intuitively composed orchestra music and data-driven electronic sound: synthesized sonic translations of tens of thousands of data points measuring temperature and salinity of waterways, marsh vegetation data, and data (both recorded and projected) relating to sea-level rise on the Georgia coast. Conceived in conversations between composer Peter Van Zandt Lane and Marine Scientist Dr. Amanda Spivak, the form of the piece unfolds through musical explorations of the GCE Project’s central focus: long-term patterns of ecological change in Georgia’s coastal estuaries and wetlands. Over 20-years of data collected by dozens of scientists from many disciplines and institutions describe natural cycles in these ecologically and economically valuable environments and how they are responding to global change – giving insight to how they may fare in the future. The transmutation into music invites a meditation on these concepts – cycles, transformation, and fate– as broader metaphors through three continuous movements. Throughout the piece, we hear musical cycles echoing the cyclical characteristics of the data (largely repetition with variation), but also moments where thresholds are crossed: a rumination on the points where cyclical ecological patterns give way to unrecoverable change (e.g. the alarming data related to sea-level rise). The use of 8 speakers surrounding the audience corresponds to eight of the research sites throughout the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long Term Ecological Research domain. Many of the sounds feature synchronized data representing distinct geographical locations. While hearing all 8 data streams can be somewhat chaotic, the aggregate sound highlights the cyclical patterns of fresh water and salt water exchange and local temperatures (while also making outliers more noticeable). Gliding sounds represent average plant heights each year at each site, creating chords that transfer between the orchestra and electronic sounds. The resolution of the piece immerses us in the environments themselves, featuring soundfield recordings sources by the composer near GCE-LTER ecological research sites. Contact Amanda (aspivak@uga.edu) with questions.
(Contact Amanda Spivak for additional information) submitted Oct 29, 2024 |
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22-Feb-2024 | Contact Us | Privacy |
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants OCE-9982133, OCE-0620959, OCE-1237140 and OCE-1832178. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.