Soil pore water: A SOUND installation
PLAYA, Summer Lake, Oregon, Spring 2025
During our residency at PLAYA: A Center for the Intersection of Art and Science, in the Oregon Outback, we explored various puddles and ponds as the seasonal Summer Lake receded with spring temperatures. We learned about "soil pore water" from eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen (U. of Waterloo). The thick mud contains pores, like our skin, that hold water between the soil's solid particles. The water, high in saline and mineral content, upwells and makes interesting sounds that we recorded using a hydrophone. By perturbing (stomping on an area with boots), we observed that the sounds changed as the pores were compressed and closed. We could hear that the pores were expelling less water and decreasing sounds after perturbation.
Paul extracted MIDI data from the recorded hydrophone sound files and revoiced the transients (sound peaks) onto orchestral instruments such as piccolo flute, clarinet, tympani and Persian santoor. We installed these individual sound and musical loops into a seven-pipes circle for the other cohort residents to experience as an expression of underwater activity while in close proximity to the lake.
Eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen
Eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen
Eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen
Isabel Jorgensen pointed us in the direction of perturbing lake puddles to test the effect on soil pore water. We recorded sounds before and after, and found a reduction in audio output after perturbation.
Comparing Water Samples
Eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen
Eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen
We measured a series of water samples for bio-electric output using Clattersmachines Pocket Garden Listener, including tap water, filtered water, bottled water and various pond and lake puddle samples for their energy outputs.
Listening to Ponds
Eco-hydrologist, Isabel Jorgensen
Ponds and puddles where more algae was present produced more energy and sounds. In these environments, critters like brine shrimp or caddisfly larvae could be present, yet we didn't hear "physical" sounds (e.g. scraping the hydrophone). What we heard were more clicks and pops which we attribute to soil pore water.
Seven Pipe Installation
Seven Pipe Installation
Paul revoiced hydrophone recordings mapping them through MIDI to orchestral sounds such as piccolo flute, clarinet, tympani and Persian santoor. We installed these loops with the original recorded sounds from the lake puddles.
The Lake We Touch
Seven Pipe Installation
The Lake We Touch
PLAYA's mission is to support interactions at Summer Lake between scientists and artists in a place for environmental study and experimentation - a perfect place for Myrtle Tree Arts to continue our exploration of the natural world through artistic expressions.
Open Studio Event
Seven Pipe Installation
The Lake We Touch
We shared our process, observations, and resulting installation with the ten other artists. The cohort of awarded residents included writers, sculptors, painters, illustrators, mixed media artists, scientists, sound designers and composers from a range of states and countries.
Sound Walk: Music for 33 Drain Pipes
Music for 33 Drain Pipes is a sound art installation that allows listeners to experience the rivers, ponds, reservoirs, and biology life in the watershed of El Dorado County, created by composer and musician, Paul Godwin, with additional music by Miguel Noya, and photography and writing by Ameera Godwin.
At the RIPE AREA Arts + Nature Festival on June 2, 2024, the piece premiered as a sound art walk made up of seven listening stations installed along the lake at American River Conservancy's historic Wakamatsu Farm, Placerville, CA. Each station offers a unique array of speakers set into drain pipes that play back nature sounds and processed music composed from underwater field recordings made at various sites within the American and Cosumnes River watersheds.
Underwater Field Recording
"New to underwater recording, I was puzzled by the wealth of burbling and popping coming from the shallows. Was the “boiling” sound a mistake of the technology? Did the clicks come from little creatures? I learned I was mostly hearing plants responding to light. The soundscapes were actually emergent fields of interspecies communication. Mapping the sounds to instruments yielded surprising compositions, which are then further randomized by playing back the recorded loops asynchronously as people walk by.
In our workshop Miguel and I invited participants to explore Nature Journaling through field recording at Wakamatsu Pond. Listening to and interacting with invisible underwater sound-makers felt for us like a devotional dance with nature."
—Paul Godwin, Musical Director, Myrtle Tree Arts
Miguel Noya Creates Biophony: The Lake is Singing
"I have been listening to the sounds of nature for so many years and have found that composing music can break the randomness we perceive at first, to realize that sounds happening at a single moment in different seasons are original pieces in a continuous infinite music piece.
In this piece to be installed in a woody glade near Wakamatsu Pond, I include sounds of a frog community recorded in the riparia of my Venezuelan family farm, as a metaphorical experiment in species migration, perhaps due to forces connected to globalization, or to climate crises we are facing. In earlier experiments I exposed frogs to their own sounds or singing from the past, from a month to years, and found out that they react to their own species sounds even coming from artificial means of playback. I will extend this concept to other beings like insects, plants and certainly to the geological elements too, like water sounds. In this case, bringing in the sounds from South America will give an extra layer to the original local voices with family members from a distant part of the planet, like introducing a family from abroad.
—Miguel Noya
Venezuelan musical pioneer, Miguel Noya has over 15 albums to his name and continues to collaborate and release ground-breaking, gorgeous electronic music worldwide. His concerts across Europe, South America and the US are always unique with his design for surround-sound psycho-acoustic environments
Secret sounds of Ponds
RIPE AREA guest educator and performer, David Rothenberg is a leader in the exploration of natural sounds and music. He shared his wisdom and experiences in the RIPE AREA workshop, “Secret Sounds of Wakamatsu Pond.”
A musician and philosopher, David Rothenberg wrote Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Survival of the Beautiful and many other books, published in at least eleven languages. He has more than forty published recordings. In 2024, he won a Grammy Award for his work, For the Birds, in the category of Best Boxed Set. Whale Music and Secret Sounds of Ponds are his latest books.