Kristina Dutton

Bio: I’m a composer, musician, and interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on film and collaborative live multimedia performances with dance and visual artists. My personal projects are inspired by science and a love of the natural world. I also have experience with field recording in the tropics, and I co-founded an experimental school that offered free art classes in exchange for environmental restoration work.

PROJECT: My collaborator Lisa Schonberg and I will compose new music and sound work based on observation and field recordings as part of a larger ongoing project. We will illustrate contrasting ecological variables through our recording and composition processes. We will use hydrophones, ultrasonic mic, contact mics, and shotgun mic, and build the compositions using found instruments, a Critter and Guitarri Organelle keyboard, and Ableton Live. If there is mutual interest, we can create this work as a sonic aspect of another researcher’s work at Dinacon. We also want to interview (and with permission film) participants at Dinacon about larger questions related to artists and scientists producing work together.

Cherise Fong

8/24 – 8/31

Project: Field sound recording along Pipeline Road in order to create a radiophonic journey into its birdsong and wildlife around the clock. Hard science will inevitably be mixed with soft fiction, so zoological correctness not guaranteed.

Writer and journalist, budding birder, interested in both science and fiction involving non-human perspectives, zoology, ecology, technology, evolving ecosystems and documenting the sixth mass extinction.

Lisa Schonberg

DATES: Aug 24-31

BIO: I am a percussionist, composer, writer, and field recordist with a background in ecology and entomology.

PROJECT: My collaborator Kristina Dutton and I will compose new music and sound work based on observation and field recordings. I am particularly interested in the sounds of ants and the Passalid beetles, and have been researching these sounds in the Brazilian Amazon. Kristina and I will illustrate contrasting ecological variables through our recording and composition processes. We will use hydrophones, ultrasonic mic, contact mics, and shotgun mic, and build the compositions using found instruments and Ableton Live. If there is mutual interest, we can create this work as a sonic aspect of another researcher’s work at Dinacon. We also want to interview participants at Dinacon about larger questions related to artists and scientists producing work together.

www.lisaschonberg.com

Susan Booher

Dates: 04/8-10/8

Project: Susan will be recording her travels to and around Gamboa, Panama as well as the local flora and fauna (on land, in the air, and along the river) with a 360-degree camera to deliver an immersive experience in virtual reality to aging and/or disabled people through technology and digital recordings.

Bio: I’m a graduate student in Design Research and Development with a specialization in Aging at the Ohio State University. I practiced commercial interior design for 13 years before returning to academia to pursue an MFA. I’d like to continue with a career that supports the aging population and dementia. It’d be a dream to create an experience that can benefit the cognitive and emotional health of older adults who can no longer travel.

Phillip Hermans

Dates: 8/19 – 8/25

Project: Sonification of Rainforest Sensor Data
I plan to create a software system for transforming sensor data from DINALAB’s LARA network into audio. I hope to collaborate with other scientists, artists and researchers to create audio that is communicates information from the sensor’s via sound. I am also interested in using this system purely to generate music.

My backup plan is to use local materials to build some bio-degradable sound sculptures.

Bio: I’m a musician, programmer and educator interested in interactive audio, sonification, acoustic ecology and bio-acoustics.

Becky Scheel

Dates: 13-18 August

Project: Drexel University Bio-Inspired Design – with teammates Raja Schaar and Ann Gerondelis. Together we’ll be working to expand our K12 and Higher-Ed Biologically Inspired Design and Citizen Science pedagogy by studying indigenous animals and plants. We’ll analyze their structural, behavioral, and functional features and adaptations to look for ways people might use them to solve problems in the conservation and sustainability space. I don’t work at Drexel (just excited to be on their team), but I am a service designer in Atlanta.

I am a design generalist for human and nonhuman great apes. I focus on design in complex, dynamic, and unfamiliar environments with emerging technology. With more than a decade working as a designer at Zoo (in exhibit, web and graphic design) and an education in design and digital media, I hope that my work supports improving the lives of humans & animals.

My favorite animals are orangutans and red pandas, but I am really excited to see sloths, coatis, and Panamanian golden frogs!

Gratuitous red panda photo

http://www.beckyscheel.com/

Ann Gerondelis

Dates: 13-18 August

Project: Drexel University Bio-Inspired Design – with team mates Raja Schaar and Becky Scheel. Together we’ll be working to expand our K12 and Higher-Ed Biologically Inspired Design and Citizen Science pedagogy by studying indigenous animals and plants. We’ll analyze their structural, behavioral, and functional features and adaptations to look for ways people might use them to solve problems in the conservation and sustainability space.

Bio: I’m an architect, writer, designer, and university administrator. I recently moved from Atlanta to Philadelphia to lead the multi-faceted Design Department at Drexel University. That’s Fashion Design, Product Design, Graphic Design, Merchandising and Photography. Whew! I love the potential for designing human experiences at multiple scales in ways that activate our sensing bodies. I’m a design evangelist, often inviting STEM-strong students into my world through courses and workshops in bio-inspired design. I’m most happy exploring my environs by drawing them, and can’t wait to see what awaits in the forests of Gamboa!

Evan Buechley

dates: 08/04/19-08/10/19

As an ornithologist and conservation biologist, I track bird migrations around the globe with miniaturized GPS-GSM tracking devices that reveal novel migration routes and habitat use of endangered bird species. When mapped in 2 or 3 dimensions, the movement patterns of birds across continents are aesthetically stunning. I plan to collaborate with my sister (Leah Buechley), an expert artist, computer programmer, and tinkerer; my wife (Mara Burstein) an acrylic painter; and my nephew (Elan Solowej), a vivacious 5-year old, to co-design and create a project that fuses science, art, programming, and nature.

Mara Elana Burstein

dates: 08/04/19-08/10/19

project: I’m thinking about doing a layered project with Leah Buechely (coder/designer) Evan Buechley (wildlife conservation biologist), and Elan Solowej (5yr old master mind). For years, Evan has collected data on where vultures migrate. This information can be presented beautifully with our diverse skills. We thought we might print it on wood (Evan?), add some electronics (Leah) and paint (me) and local specimens (Elan).