Polar Sounds is a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).

The sound clips chosen for the project were recorded from hydrophones located in the Arctic and Antarctic seas and consist of a mixture of biotic, geophonic and anthropogenic sounds.

Taking the world of polar sounds to an entirely different place, each recording has been reshaped and reimagined as a creative composition by more than 100 musicians and sound artists from all over the world, in turn reflecting on the memories and feelings those sounds evoke as they think back to hearing them throughout their lives.

The project documents not just the sounds of life at the ends of the Earth, but also urges us to consider the fragility of our polar ecosystem in the face of the climate crisis. With Earth’s poles warming faster than the global average, this collection of sounds aims to draw attention to a fascinating but rapidly changing environment, and encourages us to think about ways to preserve it for future generations.

Out of all the senses, sound is the one that travels the furthest in the oceans. Because of this, acoustic methods are becoming a critical tool that scientists are using to better understand the Polar seas and the marine biodiversity within.

When sight is impossible, acoustic data can give scientists invaluable information on breeding habits, migration patterns and the ways in which human-made noise negatively affects marine environments.

One of the instrumental figures in bringing the music of the drone to the West is the Sufi musician Hazrat Inayat Kahn. His musical treatise from the early 20th century, simply titled Music, is an incredible sonic-spiritual composition on the potentials and possibilities of music as law, as cosmology, as harmony. “Music is behind the whole working of the universe”, the Sufi Master wrote, “We live and move and have our being in music”. In contemplating natures music, in finding ears to hear it, a body to feel and dance it, a mind to celebrate and (re)think it, and -all together- a spirit to create it, I fatefully encountered this incredible ‘unidentified sound #1’ from AWI’s PALAOA observatory in Antarctica. This strange, long, low frequency drone from somewhere in the Antarctic Ocean has an unknown origin. Is it from a creature? From water? From some geological feature? A nearby machine or ship? All that is known about the origin of this sound is that no ship was within a thousand km radius when it was recorded. What we can say for certain is that it is a subaquatic sounding of Earth, of universe, captured expertly and offered for us here to resonate with, to find resonance in the unknown of the sonosphere. When I first heard recording 033, I immediately felt that it was already so beautifully strange that it required only very little to elicit its charms. I only wanted to amplify its qualities, saturate its mysteries. Considering it as a vocalization of Earth I simply play along with it, in amity and community. To get there, I put myself into a trance through a listening meditation and recognize the sounder. I reflect the sound multiply into the eternal of drone. I play back to the sounder an image of itself that is also me. This track operates as an attentional strategy for rediscovering ourselves in the more-than-human world. Water, amongst other things, is a specifically acoustic environment. Sound travels faster than light in water, and whale song is thought to produce holographic ‘images’ within the mind of the ancient creatures as they communicate with one another across vast distances. Creatures both aquatic and terrestrial use sound as a form of sight: sonar. If we consider this ‘sonic sight’ in an expanded sense, then when I deeply listen to this sound, I am, in a sense, recognized by it, or whatever emanates it. In coming to witness one another -over time- we come to recognize each other. In that unspeakable recognition between myself and the sound, I believe we have a camaraderie, we are in, of, and as the thought(s) of the world beyond the human. If you take a look at the wave/sonogram of this composition, you will see an audio Rorschach figure swimming or flying out of the vibration. This has to do partly with the way the structure of the composition was prepared: first playing the original recording backwards (to get to know it better), and then forwards. In that reflection between the polar edges of the Earth and my Farfisa (an electric organ) I acknowledge and celebrate mystery as mystery. I find solace in what is immeasurable, intangible, uncertain. It is there in the musicality of resonant Earth that the radical plurality and multiplicity of worlds and thought resides and resounds in a relational dynamic that exists beyond experience.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/38299