Created in collaboration with environmentalist Alice Besterman, this system takes Virginia Barrier Islands seabird census data (specifically recordings of the prevalence of 95 species of sea and shorebirds sighted on Cobb and Hog islands), seabird habitat preference data, and Virginia Barrier Islands habitat information (from GIS) to create an interactive, immersive sonification of birds on Cobb and Hogg islands, one of the premiere destinations in the world for birding.
The following short video demonstration uses binaural audio (headphones required):
By default the system uses a set of 95 bird calls (recorded by myself or taken from the Xeno Canto database), but each of these may be replaced with a different audio file, such as in the following example, which makes use of a spectral decomposition of a drum loop (splitting it up into different frequencies). This results in an intriguing artistic application: a 2-dimensional field of sound files organized by animal habitat preferences that may be moved through to diffuse them over speakers.