leonardo@DjErassi Artist in residence 2026

I am honored to be an upcoming artist‑in‑residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in collaboration with Leonardo, where I will develop a new body of work at the intersection of music, whale bioacoustics, and astrobiology. During the residency, I will use the Djerassi landscape as a distributed listening laboratory, exploring how musical structure travels, fragments, and remains legible across space. Grounded in my research on humpback whale song and informed by the scientific frameworks of SETI and METI, the project investigates whether musical architecture can function as a universal communication protocol, recognizable across species and potentially across worlds. The residency will focus on experimental composition, spatial sound installation, and interdisciplinary exchange, extending my ongoing practice of treating music not only as an art form, but as a model for interspecies and interstellar communication.

This coming summer, I will return to Five Finger Lighthouse in Southeast Alaska as part of the Missed Signals Project, an ongoing research initiative led by SETI affiliate, Dr. Fred Sharpe. Centered on sustained, 24/7 acoustic observation of humpback whales, the project monitors sound simultaneously above and below the waterline using hydrophones and aerial microphones. During this field season, I will be filming Last Chance to Hear, a 30‑minute documentary that immerses viewers in the acoustic world of humpback whales. Drawing on the project’s multi‑sensor array, the film captures trumpet calls, explosive blows, percussive surface behaviors, and underwater social and feeding sounds. Interwoven with scientific insight, the work affirms the sanctity of an intact living soundscape and asks what becomes possible when we truly listen.

Since 1999, my fieldwork in Hawai‘i has centered on recording humpback whale song from my kayak, my floating observatory. This work has included real‑time acoustic interaction with humpbacks, allowing me to observe how whales respond, adapt, and engage in turn‑taking through sound. Over the years, I have tracked individual singers, correlating vocal behavior with movement and context, and documented how songs evolve over time. Often working in challenging conditions shaped by wind, waves, and weather, I’ve had close encounters with whales that were both humbling and transformative. The field recordings gathered serve as the foundation of my musical compositions.

Held from May 5–10, 2024, in Providence, Rhode Island, AbSciCon is the premier U.S. conference for researchers exploring the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. My presentation at this gathering contributed to a robust exchange of ideas among the over 1000 attendees including planetary scientists, biologists, chemists, physicists, SETI researchers, and interdisciplinary thinkers working at the frontiers of life detection and communication.  

I was part of the “Explore the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and novel biosignatures discovery” session which showcased how AI-driven algorithms and machine learning techniques are revolutionizing our approach to understanding and predicting potential signs of life beyond Earth and how AI can be used to quantify intricate features, discern patterns, and identify biological and emergent processes amidst background environmental interactions. The session was convened by Dr. Jian Gong (University of Wyoming) as Primary Convener, with additional conveners Dr. Kimberly Warren-Rhodes (SETI Institute, Mountain View), Dr. Michael Phillips (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona), and Dr. Atılım Güneş Baydin (University of Oxford).

In a landmark interactive playback experiment designed to explore the structure and dynamics of humpback whale communication, the Whale SETI team sustained a vocal exchange with a free‑swimming humpback whale.  As a participant in the exchange, I contributed field expertise and analytical insight, helping document, interpret, and contextualize the whale’s vocal response patterns within broader cross‑species communication research.

McCowan B, Hubbard J, Walker L, Sharpe F, Frediani J, Doyle L. 2023. Interactive bioacoustic playback as a tool for detecting and exploring nonhuman intelligence: “conversing” with an Alaskan humpback whale. PeerJ 11:e16349 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16349

Whale-SETI: Groundbreaking Encounter with Humpback Whales Reveals Potential for Non-Human Intelligence Communication