experimental Projects

With over 25 years of experience in musical composition, ocean acoustics, and interspecies analysis, I bring a unique interdisciplinary lens to decoding whale song. My background in violin and traditional African drumming informs my understanding of rhythm and phrasing, while my scientific training enables rigorous analysis of whale vocalizations using tools from information theory, artificial intelligence, and bioacoustics. 

Fieldwork in Hawai‘i since 1999 has allowed me to document the evolving structure of humpback song firsthand, from my small kayak, experiencing encounters with whales that have shaped both my research and my artistic practice. I’ve witnessed mothers bringing calves to my boat, entrusting me with their young while they rest beneath, moments that underscore the emotional depth of these creatures.

In Alaska, I’ve participated in scientific expeditions focused on feeding calls and bubble-net behavior, observing whales in high-density environments while developing personal familiarity with individual animals. These experiences have deepened my understanding of whale social roles, vocal specialization, and acoustic tool use. 

My interest in SETI stems from participating with the WhaleSETI team in Southeast Alaska 2021. My role was to deploy hydrophones and document what led to be a rare 20-minute vocal exchange with a whale named Twain. The whale responded to our playback experiments with intricate variation, suggesting a level of engagement that transcended passive listening, hinting at genuine dialogue and emotional response. In my role as coauthor of the resulting paper: Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale paper (PeerJ), I analyzed the rhythmic structure of the interaction and measured deviations, mapping the emotional response to metrical fidelity. 

My current research integrates methodologies from music theory, linguistics, information theory, and Indigenous science to decode the symbolic and emotional dimensions of whale song. Music theory guides the segmentation and analysis of song structure; information-theoretic tools help quantify complexity and detect rule-governed patterns; and Indigenous epistemologies offer relational and ecological perspectives on context and meaning.

This interdisciplinary framework has direct implications for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Traditional SETI efforts focus on technosignatures such as radio waves, but alien civilizations may communicate through acoustic or symbolic systems more akin to whale song than human language. By expanding SETI’s conceptual toolkit to include musical structure and intelligence, my work helps overcome cognitive blind spots and helps define a universal structure for message transmission.