Sound of Rivers: Stone Drum: a Multimedia Collaboration, with Sonified Data, Computer-Processed Narration, and Electric Violin

Sound of Rivers: Stone Drum is a multimedia collaboration, between choreographer Nicole Bradley Browning, animator and video artist Amber Marjorie Bushnell, poet and narrator Mark Gibbons, and composer and electric violinist Charles Nichols, with dancer Allison Herther and narrator Stephen Kalm. The piece illuminates research by scientist Mark Lorang, into how fish and insects navigate the ecosystem of floodplains, by the sound of rivers. The project began with three floats down the Middle Fork Flathead River, where audio and data were recorded, on and in the river, and at the field station. The data were used to ramp amplitudes of bandpass filterbanks, to process recordings above and below water, and to drive a bowed-string physical model. Poetry was written, based on an explanation of the scientific research, and choreography, animation, computerprocessed narration, and an electric violin part were composed around the structure of the poem. The piece was performed live with a narrator, dancer, video artist, and electric violinist, and later developed into a fixed media piece.