Ocean sense

Listening, technology and the sonic researcher

By Mark Peter Wright & Denise Risch

Abstract

This audio paper examines listening practices, technologies and cultures within the scientific study of marine ecosystems. It mixes recordings of whale song and ocean sounds with the voices of its co-authors, marine mammal ecologist Dr Denise Risch and artist researcher Dr Mark Peter Wright. Moving across three phases of argumentation and reflection, the paper questions how underwater knowledge emerges through tools such as hydrophones, spectrograms and Artificial Intelligence. It situates the ears, bodies and imaginations of researchers to ask what constitutes sonic data when listening to worlds beyond the human.

Listening on your mobile device? Here's a direct link to Soundcloud

Keywords

Listening practices

acoustic ecology and bioacoustics

technologies and AI

Bibliography

Bakker, Karen. The Sounds of Life. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2022.

Bijsterveld, Karin. Sonic Skills. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Eshun, Kodwo. »Songs of the Humpback Whale«. Frieze, June 6, 2007. Available online: https://frieze.com/article/songs-humpback-whale (accessed February 2020).

Mundy, Rachel. »Birdsong and the Image of Evolution«. Society and Animals, 17 (2009): 206–23.

Payne, Roger. Songs of the Humpback Whale [LP]. Los Angeles: Capital Records, 1970.

Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. PP 10-11.

Perkins, Paul J. »Humpback Whale« [archival recording]. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Macaulay Library.

Ocean sound recordings by Mark Peter Wright. Unpublished.

With thanks to Denise Risch for providing additional sound recordings:

Humpback Whale, Antarctic Minke Whale, Beluga Whale, pile driving, tidal

turbine and vessel noise.

18. September 2025

https://doi.org/10.48233/57