RhumbLine: Plectrohyla Exquisita

Artistic Statement and Instructions

Global climate change has triggered a blaring silent alarm. This silence is a clarion call, a soundless scream from the environment itself for stewardship and protection. Against this silence, RhumbLine: Plectrohyla Exquisita (RLPE) enacts a sonic reckoning, calling attention to forcibly silenced non-human victims of environmental destruction, and allows humans to sound on their behalf in acts of sonic retribution. Portending a dystopic future in which acoustic ecology is encountered only through the mechanical reproduction of environmental sounds, the sounds of this installation are created by a chorus of robotic frogs—a recognition of the catastrophic global population declines amphibians are facing. The virtual environment the robotic frogs inhabit, divided into two web pages, invites visitors to become temporary members of this fragile ecosystem. The first page creates an acousmatic listening experience—listening to a sound whose source is unseen—in which the frogs are heard but veiled from view and visitors use sound alone to produce a map of the frogs’ collective formation along the contours of an imaginary pond. The second page allows visitors to peer behind the acousmatic “veil” that occludes the sound source from the visual field, see the robotic frogs, and control the listening experience of other visitors.

Instructions:

Each numbered button below corresponds to a robotic frog, perched on the bank of an imaginary pond in a remote location (currently on Long Island, NY).

  1. Play a short call with a sequence of mouse clicks, or finger taps on a mobile device, on a numbered frog button of your choice and become a member of the community. (Note: grayed-out buttons are in use by other visitors to the website.)
  2. Listen (headphones recommended) as your call is mimicked by the other frogs and then transformed through artificial intelligence.
  3. Imagine the shape of the frogs’ formation based on the spatial information embedded in their calls by treating the calls rhumb lines—historic navigational tools that rely on magnetic north as a fixed reference point to establish a constant bearing. In this work, sound is a spatial bearing.
  4. Draw a map (at home) of the frogs’ collective formation along the bank of an imaginary pond, illustrating the contours of their perceived locations. (Note: visitors listen to the frogs from the center of the pond.) Can you hear how the frogs are spread out around their pond? Do they surround it evenly or are they in clusters? On all sides or only one? Note: The diamond-shape arrangement of the frog buttons on the website does not depict the frogs’ actual positions around their pond.
  5. See the actual formation of the frogs by clicking through to the second page, where you can control the listening experience, see one of the frogs up close, and see your calls performed in real-time.