Working on the project today brought a range of different thoughts and emotions. It started with a lot of resistance, but thanks to my last-Sunday-self for setting a list of goals, it gave me just enough motivation to set up my laptop, make myself a tea and start working. Even better, the first goal I had set for myself felt very easy, so completing it quickly gave me some momentum to keep going.
Then came the step of finding some sound samples. Someone had recommended an open-source dataset, but turns out it wasn’t as simple and user-friendly to navigate as I had imagined, leaving me a bit discouraged. Cool learning though: wow, there are so many different devices I had never heard about that are installed in the ocean! It also made me reflect on how challenging it can be to organize large amounts of data and make it accessible. I find it interesting to think about, especially in a world where we collect so much data. But that’s another tangent, so let’s come back to the main topic.
Thanks to the internet, after a bit more research, I found a whale recording on another website and downloaded it for free (thanks to the peeps who made it available). I then extracted the frequency range of that sample and realized that my initial hypothesis on how I would use frequencies for this project won’t work as planned. I had a feeling this was coming, which probably caused the initial resistance, but it’s cool to see how hitting obstacles leads to new ideas. Sometimes it takes longer to overcome the discouragement, but for now, I’ll ride the wave of inspiration! 🏄♀️
If you’re curious, here’s the frequency spectrum of the whale recording:
There’s a bit of background noise in the recording, and I’m not sure what frequencies it corresponds to, but this plot confirms that some marine mammals emit sounds in a wide frequency range, so it’s not as simple as saying that blue whales correspond to 3 kHz for example. As I’m writing this, some ideas are popping up on what to explore next to make my vision happen. I’ll tell you more about it next week! Until then, take care. ✨🫶✨
Fun game for this week: listen to the sounds around you and observe how they make you feel. Tensed, irritated, joyful, relaxed? Happy exploration!
This week’s watercolor:
