Sound Anthology: Program Notes

EcoSono Environmental
Computer Music and Sound Art
Compilation: Matthew Burtner,
Curator

About the Music

I am thrilled to share a selection of
music from the EcoSono Institute
and from the first EcoSono Festival
of Environmental Music and Sound
Art in Anchorage, Alaska, 2017. The
music here celebrates the beautiful
soundscape of Alaska and world ecoa-
coustics with a focus on computation-
ally driven and computer-mediated
approaches. The EcoSono philosophy
and methodology emphasizes close
collaboration with the sounds and en-
ergies of the natural world that we can
hear or feel, but that rarely become
part of human music. We do this
using a combination of computer-
aided techniques, including digital
transduction technology; interactive
mediation based on the performance
of natural materials, and sonification
(the computational mapping of envi-
ronmental data into sound). Some of
this music is made in collaboration
with scientists who help interpret the
data for music and whose discoveries
are interpreted into music by com-
posers. Some of the music features
unedited field recordings, set in coun-
terpoint with computer-generated
sound. In addition, some of this ecoa-
coustic science/technology music
is performed by human musicians
who bring expressivity, emotion, and
humanistic interpretation.

EcoSono is proud of the diverse
international composers and sound
artists we present. Many of these
artists attended the EcoSono Insti-
tutes in past years. Daniel Blinkhorn
(Australia), Nashim Ximena Gargari
(Mexico), Stephanie Cheng Smith
(California), Siyang Sophia Shen
(China), D. Edward Davis (Connecti-
cut), and Yingjia (Lemon) Guo (China)

doi:10.1162/COMJ e 00452

are just some of the featured artists
who joined the EcoSono Institute
in past years and have gone on to
innovate in the emerging field of
ecoacoustic music.

Through creative human/nature
interaction, EcoSono pursues a phi-
losophy of sustainability and noncon-
formity. In some ways, our approach
to music is as old as music itself: The
first music likely imitated sounds
of nature, and rocks and sticks were
certainly among the first musical
instruments. Around the world, the
history of music is also a history
of environmental music. In other
ways, ecoacoustic music is quite new
and revolutionary, not only because
the tools we use to create it (such
as portable computational systems,
real-time interactive technology, and
sensitive measurement instruments)
did not exist until relatively recently,
but also because music made in
collaboration with the environment
takes on new meaning in a time of
human-caused climate change, mass
extinctions, and global warming. The
human–nature dialectic embodied in
environmental music questions the
current relationship between humans
and the environment, seeking a new
music that reclaims fundamental
human values of cohabitation with
the natural world of which we are but
one part.

For listeners curious to learn
more and become involved with
the activities of EcoSono, the sum-
mer festival, and other concerts
around the world, please visit us at
http://www.ecosono.org, or contact
Burtner at burtner@ecosono.org.

1. Golden Sparrow—Matthew

Burtner

Performed by Glen Whitehead,
trumpet

Golden Sparrow (2012) for trumpet,
computer, and container of light, is
based on the call of a sparrow fam-

ily living in Alaska’s Chugach State
Park who sing in the midnight sun.
The computer sound is made out of
a single bird call, expanded into a
harmonic framework that supports
an original trumpet melody. As the
trumpet plays, a second performer
gradually opens a container of light,
releasing it into the concert space.
Golden Sparrow was composed for
Whitehead and premiered in Anchor-
age at Alaska Pacific University on 23
June 23 2012.

Track Duration: 7:24

Matthew Burtner (http://www
.matthewburtner.com) is an Alaskan-
born composer and sound artist whose
music explores embodiment, ecoa-
coustics, polymetrics and noise, and
human–environment–computer in-
teraction through music. Burtner has
won the Musica Nova International
competition (first prize), an NEA Art
Works award, and an IDEA Award,
and his music has received honors
and prizes from Bourges (France),
Gaudeamus (Netherlands), Darm-
stadt (Germany), and The Russolo
(Italy) international competitions.
His music has been performed in
festivals and venues throughout the
world and commissioned by ensem-
bles such as NOISE (USA), Integrales
(Germany), Peak FreQuency (USA),
MiN (Norway), Musikene (Spain),
Spiza (Greece), CrossSound (Alaska),
and others. Burtner works closely
with politicians, scientists, artists,
and musicians, creating music in
support of free imagination and sus-
tainability. In 2014, he was invited to
Brazil to work with former Vice Pres-
ident Al Gore on the Climate Reality
Project, and in 2015 he was invited
by the U.S. State Department to cre-
ate the music for President Barack
Obama’s visit to Alaska. He teaches
composition and computer music at
the University of Virginia, chairs the
University of Virginia Music Depart-
ment, and directs the environmental
arts nonprofit organization, EcoSono
(www.ecosono.org).

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

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Figure 1. Matthew Burtner.

Figure 2. Nashim Ximena Gargari.

Figure 3. Daniel Blinkhorn.

2. Baleines Spectrales—Nashim

Ximena Gargari

Baleines spectrales was composed
in Nice, France, using sounds of
humpback whales in the Gulf of
Alaska recorded at the EcoSono Insti-
tute recorded at the EcoSono Institute
Alaska in 2012. A spectral wash
of sound submerges the voices of
these great marine mammals inside
a deep electroacoustic mass, resem-
bling their beautiful and endangered
existence in the oceans.

Track Duration: 7:54

Nashim Ximena Gargari studied pi-
ano, painting, biology, and graphic
design before joining the Electro-
acoustic Composition program at
the National Conservatory of Nice,
France. Her work focuses on envi-
ronmental composition with piano,
and often involves video, theatri-
cal rituals, and live electroacoustic
improvisation. She collaborates with
biochemists, geneticists, and environ-
mental activists. Gargari’s works have
been performed and commissioned for

sound installations, photography and
architecture expositions, museums,
concerts, collective meditations, and
many other contexts. She pursued re-
search in ecoacoustics with EcoSono,
and contributed to EcoSono’s World
Electroacoustic Listening Room at
CalState Fullerton in Los Angeles
in 2014, and the EcoSono Festival
in Anchorage, Alaska, in 2017. Her
music has also been performed in
Montreal, Quebec; Quer ´etaro and San
Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Nice,
France; Toronto, Canada; La Pampa,
Argentina; and Brussels, Belgium.

frostbYte–CO2—Daniel
Blinkhorn

Performed by Matthew Burtner,
soprano saxophone

The work frostbYte–CO2 is from
the frostbYte cycle, a collection of
ongoing pieces central to which are
location-based field recordings I made
while exploring the Arctic, a part of
the world that continues to inspire
awe and fascination, and is often at
the heart of our collective conscious-
ness for its ecological and climatic

sensitivity. The frostbYte cycle of
works seeks to portray some of these
sonorities in a highly abstracted, yet
clearly discernible way. CO2 is a
playful (if not eccentric) ecoacoustic
audiovisual musing that situates two
outspoken environmental commenta-
tors together. Former U.S. Vice Presi-
dent Al Gore has been sampled along-
side Christopher Monkton, former
finance adviser to Margret Thatcher.

Track Duration: 11:29

Daniel Blinkhorn is a multi-
international award-winning com-
poser and sound and digital media
artist whose music gravitates around
a synchronicity of frequency, tex-
ture, gesture, space, location, and
motion, all of which form (often
metaphorical) frameworks within a
given piece. Although often working
in the electroacoustic, videophonic,
and ecoacoustic domains, Blinkhorn’s
output includes chamber, symphonic
and wind orchestra works, sound
installations, music for film, dance,
radiophonic composition, and vari-
ous hybrid/intermedia environments.
Blinkhorn’s works are performed,
exhibited, and presented interna-
tionally, and his compositions have
received nearly 30 international and
national composition awards in-
cluding winner of the prestigious
Giga-Hertz-Prize (Germany). He is a
Scholarly Teaching Fellow in Compo-
sition and Music Technology at the
Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

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Figure 4. Sophia Chakri.

Figure 5. Yingjia (Lemon) Guo.

melodies emerged. There is an entire
sound world in those frequencies that
we as humans cannot hear—what
we hear as silence is not silent. I
then simply layered these altered
frequencies, hoping to convey the
sense of wonder that struck me when
I first heard that melody.

The title is a play on Wei Yingwu’s

poem, On Sound:

Ten thousand things are heard when

born,

But the highest heaven’s always still.
Yet everything must begin in silence,
And into silence it vanishes.

(Translated by Irving Y. L)

The orca song was recorded as a group
effort (EcoSono Institute) in 2013 in
Alaska, using a hydrophone and a
Zoom H4N portable recorder. The
higher frequency in this recording is
limited by the sample rate (48 kHz).
Orcas can vocalize up to 40 kHz, but
the highest frequency this recording
was able to capture was 24 kHz.
Although my intention was to explore
the songs of orcas, in reality the
original recording also captured many
other environmental sounds, such as
boat engines and water movements.
What resulted in this piece was
a transposed version of the entire
inaudible underwater sound world as
captured by that hydrophone.

Track Duration: 3:05

Yingjia (Lemon) Guo is an interdis-
ciplinary artist from China. With a
background in Chinese folk music,
Guo graduated from the University of
Virginia in 2015 with a distinguished
major in music composition (BA),
and is currently a second-year MFA
student in Sound Art at Columbia
University. Bringing together mu-
sic, sound arts, visual arts, fashion,
theatre, dance, and technology, her
recent solo and ensemble works

here: https://www.usda.gov/nass
/PUBS/TODAYRPT/hcny0516.pdf.

4. Bee Population Decline

Soniﬁcation—Sophia Chakri

Track Duration: 0:56

Bee populations are declining dramat-
ically in the United States because
of disease, parasites, loss of habitat,
and pesticide use. Beekeepers lost
44 percent of bees in the 12-month
period that ended in April 2017.
This comes on the heels of annual
10 percent declines since the 1990s.
The decline in bee population has a
significant impact on human lives
and the environment around us. As
pollinators, bees provide an impor-
tant function for humans, affecting
about 75 percent of our food. This
sonification was created as part of
the Ecoacoustics STAGE Project at
the University of Virginia, working
with the Blandy Experimental Farm.
The piece sonifies the decreasing bee
population in Virginia, tracking the
percentage of bees lost in the state
of Virginia every three months from
January 2015 to March 2016. The
data comes from the United States
Department of Agriculture’s Honey
Bee Colonies report that can be found

Originally from Casablanca, Morocco,
Sophia Chakri studies Music and
Media Studies at the University of
Virginia. She studied Technosonics
and Ecoacoustics with Matthew
Burtner.

Into Silence They
Appeared—Yingjia (Lemon)
Guo

Human ears cannot hear frequencies
under 20 Hz or above 20 kHz. Orcas
can produce sound waves that are
wider than that range. I wonder
what is in there in those ranges that
we cannot hear. I filtered out all
the frequencies between 20 Hz and
20 kHz in an orca whale recording.
I sped up the low end and slowed
down the high end, at different rates,
into an audible range for the human
ear. No other signal processing was
applied to the audio source. Incredible
things happened quickly. Chords and

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

101

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Figure 6. Glen Whitehead.

Figure 7. Anant Das.

create intimate yet distant listening
situations for evocative and subtle
vocal performances. Her recent work
often creates intimate yet distant
listening situations for evocative
and subtle vocal performances. She
pursued studies in ecoacoustics with
the EcoSono Institute and Matthew
Burtner.

6. Mysticeti—Glen Whitehead

Performed by Glen Whitehead,
trumpet

Mysticeti is an improvisation piece
for instruments and a soundscape
recorded on the ocean in Stewart
Bay, Alaska, in 2012, rendered from
hydrophone recordings of humpback
whales “bubblenet feeding” amid
the sounds of glacial melt, strong
currents, and background tapestries
of faraway human activity. The push
and pull of forces beyond our control
is paramount to the aesthetic of this
piece. Thus, this is a performance
for the imagination. The improviser
should adopt the mindset as a pod
performing a sound-dance ritual, as
if transducing the phenomena of this
oceanic experience: humans peering
into portals far beyond our compre-
hension, the hints of unimaginable
depths, uniquely alien sounds, un-
sustainable thresholds, sound-beams
of astral inversions, sub-aqua sonic
projections confronting a fast melt-
ing geo-plasma, and calling to living
bio-mountains who carve earnest
tone-shaped glissandos encoded with
time, memory, and action.

Track Duration: 7:48

Glen Whitehead explores environ-
mental collaboration and improvi-
sational phenomena between liv-
ing cultures, technologies, and the

received his BMus in Performance
from the New England Conservatory
of Music, and MA and DMA degrees
from the University of California, San
Diego.

7. Landﬁll Audiﬁcation—Anant

Das

Americans throw away approxi-
mately 1,500 to 2,000 pounds of
municipal solid waste every year,
almost four times more than in 1960,
and according to the World Bank this
number is supposed to double by
2025. Landfills are already closing
at an alarming rate as they fill up
with trash, forcing states to transport
trash further, at ever-increasing cost.
The ratio of closing of landfills to
opening new landfills reveals how we
are running out of space to put our
trash. This piece sonifies the closing
of landfills and the applications for
new landfills in Virginia from 1900 to
the present.

Track Duration: 0:41

Anant Das studies Commerce and
Computer Science at the University
of Virginia, where he pursues an inter-
est in sustainable business practices.
Music has played a significant role
in his life, including learning the
double bass, drums, and singing in
choir at a young age in Washington,
DC. Combining his interests in sus-
tainability, computer science, and
music, his ecoacoustic works focus

natural world. As a trumpeter, inter-
disciplinary artist, and improviser,
he seeks in his work to expand in-
strumental and vocal music creation
into new media, platforms, and in-
terdisciplinary contexts across the
arts and sciences. His work with the
EcoSono Institute as the Director of
Performance has taken him across the
United States, Canada, Alaska, Aus-
tralia, Tasmania, and New Zealand
as well as a soloist and guest artist
in Mexico, Europe, and Korea. His
group Psychoangelo’s disc panau-
romni was on Time Out Chicago’s
list of top ten CDs of the year. Awards
include the Innovations in Teaching
with Technology at the University of
Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS)
and multiple awards from Pikes Peak
Arts Council. Whitehead is artistic
director of the Peak FreQuency Cre-
ative Arts Series, principal trumpet
in the Chamber Orchestra of the
Springs (Colorado Springs), codirector
of the Bachelor of Innovation pro-
gram, a Conn-Selmer trumpet artist,
and associate professor at UCCS. He

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Figure 8. Tom Sobolik.

career in music technology. Whether
playing, composing, programming, or
collaborating with others, he believes
music brings people together and
enriches life. He has worked at the
University of Virginia’s radio station
WTJU and at Atlas Music Publishing,
and he is a staff writer for the Cavalier
Daily. He studied Ecoacoustics at the
University of Virginia with Matthew
Burtner.

Kevin Davis is an improviser, com-
poser, and cellist. Originally from
Appalachian Tennessee, he has at
various times been based out of
Memphis, Chicago, New York, and
Istanbul, where he has played in
and composed for a large variety
of musical situations across a wide
spectrum of contemporary music.
He has recorded and performed in
the United States, Europe, and the
Middle East. He has degrees in music
composition from the University of
Memphis (BMus) and the Centre for
Advanced Musical Studies in Istanbul
(MA). This spring he completed a
PhD in Composition and Computer
Technologies at the University of
Virginia.

9. Ensifera Ventum 1—Nashim

Ximena Gargari

Ensifera Ventum 1 evokes the ancient
and small forms of life that dominate
the desert—scorpions, bats, snakes,
crickets, woodpeckers, thousands of
different insect varieties, and even
ancient bacteria called cyanobacte-
ria that date back to as early as 3.5
billion years ago. The piece features
prepared field recordings made in
Cuatrocienegas Desert, Coahuila,
Mexico. We placed local crickets
inside a box with food and recorded
the tiny noises of their legs moving.
The music starts with low frequen-
cies, representing human sound for

insects, then moves to the sounds of
metal interacting with the wind at
night where we camped in an open
field at the remarkable white Dunas
de Yeso (Gypsum Dunes).

Track Duration: 6:15

10. Sands That Move—Glen

Whitehead

Sands That Move is based in the Great
Sand Dunes National Monument,
highlighting the long history of this
site and the people who, from age to
age, have stood in awe and wonder
of this geographical phenomenon at
the northern edge of the San Luis
Valley in southern Colorado. These
constantly shifting sands have gone
by many names; the Navajo called
them Saa waap maa nache [Sand
That Moves], and the Apaches who
settled in New Mexico called them
Sei-anyedi (It Goes Up and Down).
This fixed-media piece was created
using samples made by an ensemble of
“performers” playing the sand dunes
as a sonic membrane. The trumpet-
based computer accompaniment
emulates these efforts and starts
gathering its own momentum, much
like a dune fueling its own energy
once it is engaged.

Track Duration: 5:02

11. Atrazine Soil

Soniﬁcation—Abigail
Johnson

Atrazine is a herbicide, banned in the
European Union because of health
risks and its devastating effects on
macroinvertebrates, amphibians,
and fish. Atrazine is widely used
in U.S. agriculture, including in 75
percent of all U.S. corn, and annual

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

103

primarily on the alarming increase in
human waste and the negative effects
of landfills on the planet. He hopes to
tackle some of the nation’s housing
development and sustainability issues
through a business or real estate
career while continuing his passion
for music. He studied Ecoacoustics
at the University of Virginia with
Matthew Burtner.

8. Trespass—Tom Sobolik

With free improvisation
performed by Kevin Davis, cello

Trespass is about energy infrastruc-
ture trespassing on natural space.
The piece uses natural field-recording
source sounds to make all the ma-
terials, applying resonance, rhythm
generation, spatialization and chain-
ing effects of overdrive, saturation,
and dynamics and frequency process-
ing to model the insidious creep of
pipeline infrastructure and the per-
manent threat of damage it brings
to an ecosystem. The sounds were
recorded in Shenandoah National
Park.

Track Duration: 6:35

Tom Sobolik studies music and
computer science at the University
of Virginia, and hopes to pursue a

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Figure 9. Abigail Johnson.

Figure 10. Siyang Sophia Shen.

Figure 11. Cory Ryan.

use of the chemical is recorded
as 76.4 million pounds, making it
the most commonly used herbicide
in the country. Although atrazine
is difficult to remove from water,
current research explores methods of
using aquatic plants to filter it from
the water table. This piece sonifies
one study involving atrazine in soil:
The concentrations of atrazine in the
soil over time were converted into
frequencies and used to filter the
sound of water.

Track Duration: 2:52

Abigail Johnson is a student of English
and Environmental Thought and
Practice at the University of Virginia.
Her current research focuses on
the digital humanities and their
applications in investigating the
intersection of science, politics, and
literature in the 19th century. In her
spare time, she enjoys composing
music and identifying moss. She
studied Ecoacoustics with Matthew
Burtner at the University of Virginia.

12. Membrane—Siyang Sophia

Shen

Membrane captures a most unforget-
table experience during a recording
session in the middle of the ocean on
the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska: the
sonic waves traveling between the

land and the underwater space. Under
the peaceful appearance of the surface
was an incredibly dynamic world that
I had never before encountered, and
everything was vividly unveiled in
my headphones. When I put down my
headphones, everything seemed to
disappear suddenly—only the world
that I live in was left.

Track Duration: 3:07

Born in Zhangzhou, a small city in
southeast China, Siyang Sophia Shen
is a composer, sound artist, pipa per-
former/improviser, and pianist who
believes in the subjective, evocative,
conceptual, and ineffable nature of
music and sound. She makes intan-
gible connections with performers
and listeners by creating music that
evokes memory and imagination. She
is interested in bridging the divide be-
tween cultures by using instruments
to disassemble and synthesize new
sounds. Shen is currently based in
the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds

an MFA in Electronic Music and
Recording Media from Mills College,
where she also studied composition
and improvisation. She received a
BA degree in Music and a BA degree
in German from the University of
Virginia.

13. Eagle River Study—Cory

Ryan

Eagle River Study investigates the
sonic potential of sounds within
Chugach State Park in Alaska and
beyond. The salient elements of these
environments are explored, highlight-
ing their underlying sonic potential.
Timbral connections drive the work,
yet interconnectivity is acknowl-
edged in an aural environment of
equality. The piece was created dur-
ing EcoSono Institute Alaska 2013.

Track Duration: 1:57

Cory Ryan is a New York-based
composer praised for music that is

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Figure 12. Jack Patton-Smith.

Figure 13. D. Edward Davis.

“timbrally striking” (HurdAudio) and
“full of wind, height, and velocity”
(Baltimore City Paper). Working in
phonography, in free improvisation,
and with saxophone and electronics,
he engages in found composition:
relinquishing most musical decisions
to observed environments. Deeply
informed by his life as a vegan, his
work explores themes of perception,
time, sustainability, and the inter-
connectivity of our fragile planet. His
work has garnered performance cred-
its including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln
Center, Steinway Hall, the Experi-
mental Media and Performing Arts
Center, and others throughout North
and South America, Europe, Asia,
and Australia. Ryan’s music can be
heard on New Focus Recordings and
SEAMUS. He has written for Com-
puter Music Journal and has given a
TEDx talk. Ryan is a former faculty
member of Morgan State Univer-
sity, Bluefield College, and Mansfield
University.

14. Light Pollution

Soniﬁcation—Jack
Patton-Smith

There are 9,096 stars visible with
the naked eye. At any given loca-
tion, we can see an average of 2,500
stars. In the suburbs of New York
City, one can only see 250 stars.
Within New York City, only 15
stars are visible. This project ex-
presses the loss of our night sky to
human-made light pollution. The
base texture of the piece is com-
posed with sonified data from the
constellation Orion. The stars are
mapped into notes. Harmonies and
melodies are crafted from the most
luminous stars in the constellation.
Field recordings of the night are
incorporated in the beginning. As
the piece progresses, field recordings

of electrical equipment impede upon
the sound. These electrical sounds
overtake the stars’ texture. This
represents the loss of our stars to light
pollution.

Track Duration: 3:55

Jack Patton-Smith grew up in up in
rural Appalachia and studied Music
and Astronomy at the University of
Virginia, where he studied Ecoacous-
tics, was active at the University
of Virginia’s WTJU, and performed
as a member of the New Music
Ensemble.

15.

Imago Hymns—D. Edward
Davis

Imago Hymns was created for the
EcoSono Environmental Music and
Sound Art Festival in the summer
of 2017. It draws on field recordings
made by the composer in a pair of
“sky islands” that soar above high
deserts: the Chisos Mountains in
the Big Bend region of Texas and the
Santa Rita Mountains in southern
Arizona. These recordings, featuring
singing grasshoppers and katydids, are
abstracted and layered into a massive
shimmering chorus.

D. Edward Davis is a composer whose
work engages with the sounds of the
environment, exploring processes,
patterns, and systems inspired by

nature. His pieces have recently
been presented in Massachusetts,
California, Alaska, North Carolina,
Maryland, Arizona, and Nebraska.
Davis holds degrees in composition
from Duke University, Brooklyn Col-
lege, and Northwestern University.
Davis currently lives in New Haven,
Connecticut, and he teaches at the
University of New Haven.

16. Gull Island—Stephanie

Cheng Smith

Featuring recordings made on Gull
Island in the Gulf of Alaska.

Track Duration: 7:59

Stephanie Cheng Smith is a com-
poser, performer, and programmer
who creates interactive pieces, instal-
lations, improvisations, and through-
composed works. She often uses
electronics, violin, and light, and her
latest explorations with motor arrays
have been featured in the 2016 is-
sue of Experimental Music Yearbook.
Smith has conducted residencies with
the Studio for Electro-Instrumental
Music (Amsterdam), the PACT Zol-
lverein (Essen), liebig12 (Berlin), the
Re-New Digital Arts Festival (Copen-
hagen), and EcoSono (the Caribbean).

Sound Anthology: Program Notes

105

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Figure 14. Stephanie Cheng Smith.

for the temple walls. His sound of
tapping stones mixed with the wind,
flapping prayer flags, and distant
chanting. He let me stay and listen
to his work. It took a long time for
him to make one stone. Built on the
face of the mountain from countless
similar stones, the temple stretches
into the sky. The mountain rises
in staggering verticality behind the
temple. This man’s work embodied a
vertiginous sense of time, where the
human and geologic scales meet. In
the piece, these field recordings are
set in counterpoint with digital noise
and dynamic computer resonators,
tracking the wind and the roughness
of stones.

Track Duration: 5:52

About EcoSono

EcoSono (www.ecosono.org) is a
nonprofit organization pursuing
commonalities between innova-
tive musical creation and ecological
sustainability. Through education,
engagement, and artistic production,
EcoSono defines a unique method-
ology for environmentalism and
the arts. Matthew Burtner formed
EcoSono as a nexus for work in eco-
acoustics. National Geographic News
Watch called EcoSono Ensemble’s
performance of Auksalaq “a signif-

icant cultural event that marries
science as the brain, art as the heart,
and culture as the soul in our search
for awareness and sustainability.”
EcoSono has organized concerts from
Alaska to Namibia and venues in
between.

The EcoSono Ensemble is a music

collective combining chamber mu-
sic performance, improvisation, new
technologies, and the environment.
The group gave its debut perfor-
mance at the 2012 premiere of the
Auksalaq telematic opera performed
simultaneously in Bergen, Norway;
Montreal; Indianapolis, Indiana; Fair-
banks, Alaska; Washington, DC; New
York; and Charlottesville, Virginia.
Since then, EcoSono Ensemble has
given concerts in Alaska; Wash-
ington, DC; Colorado; California;
and Canada. Director of Performance
Glen Whitehead spearheaded a tour of
California in 2016 and a tour of Aus-
tralia, Tasmania, and New Zealand
in 2017. The EcoSono Ensemble re-
cently performed The Ceiling Floats
Away, a new work of poetry music
by Matthew Burtner and Rita Dove,
at the Smithsonian American His-
tory Museum Accelerate Festival.
EcoSono is currently in residence at
the Center for Energy and Environ-
mental Research in the Human Sci-
ences (CENHS) and performing at the
Moody Center of Rice University in
Houston.

She has also made appearances on
Webcasts such as EarMeal, Experi-
mental Half-Hour, and dublab. Smith
frequently performs electronic music
under the name Stephie’s Castle, is a
member of networked music ensem-
ble bitpanic, and has composed for
and performed as a member of the
Dog Star Orchestra. Serving on the
wulf.’s Artistic Advisory Board, she
also curates and produces experimen-
tal music concerts in the Los Angeles
area.

17. Stones Touch the

Sky—Matthew Burtner

At the Sera Monastery near Lhasa,
Tibet, a monk was shaping rocks with
a hammer and chisel to make stones

106

Computer Music Journal

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