Island Soundscape Project

Learning About the World by Listening TO IT

WHAT WE DO

The Island Soundscape Project is a Maine-based arts research collaborative. Our work sits at the intersection of art, ecology, and education. We are inspired by the idea that through listening we can gain a unique understanding of the world we inhabit, one that can both complement and contrast with the world we see.

The soundscape—our sonic environment—is at the center of our mission to partner with local cultural and ecological institutions and schools to promote the idea of the soundscape as an element in the understanding, preservation and identity of the various communities of Maine’s coastal regions.

WHO WE ARE

N.B.Aldrich

N.B.Aldrich is a New Media artist, musician and educator residing in Sedgwick, Maine, USA, who creates installation, performance and acousmatic art. He is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Maine and cofounder of the Island Soundscape Project. He has had work shown internationally at such venues as Artists Space, Engine 27, Art Interactive, the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, the Festival de Arte Sonore, Hipersonica Festival, The National Museum of Singapore, the Optica Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop, Bates College Museum of Art and many others.

N.B.Aldrich’s website

KAREN beeftink

Dr. Karen Beeftink is an educator and soundscape researcher who lives in Machias, Maine. She is Associate Professor in Outdoor Recreation and Leadership at the University of Maine at Machias where she teaches courses focused on outdoor recreation programming, management, and outdoor leadership. She has collaborated on soundscape research in Patagonia and is on the board of the Downeast Coastal Conservancy, a nonprofit committed to conserving essential habitat and connecting people to coastal and forested environments. Karen is excited to work with the ISP to help connect people with natural environments through the practice of active listening.

Karen Beeftink’s website

ADRIANA Cavalcanti

Adriana Cavalcanti is an artist and plant biologist, educator, soundscape researcher and community outreach specialist who lives in Orono, Maine. Her art practice consists of a variety of media and primarily addresses humans’ paradoxically dependent and detached relationship with their environment. These media include ceramics, sculpture and installation. She finds soundscape research an effective, cross-disciplinary tool with which to investigate ecological balance. Adriana holds an MFA in Intermedia from the University of Maine. She joined the ISP in 2022.

Adriana Cavalcanti’s website

Steve Norton

Steve Norton is a sound artist, musician, researcher and educator living in Orono, Maine. He is focused on understanding the world by listening to it. His practice is focused on field recording and soundscape composition, tapping into his life-long interest in biology, ecology and the outdoors. His field-recorded materials are used in soundscape study, electroacoustic composition, and performance and presentation contexts. Steve is co-founder of the Island Soundscape Project and a board member of the Bangor Land Trust.

Steve Norton’s website

Projects & partnerships

SURVEYING BIODIVERSITY AT PENJAJAWOC MARSH (2024–2025)

Working with Bangor Land Trust’s consulting wildlife biologist, the Island Soundscape Project will begin compiling a baseline of acoustic data taken during dawn and dusk choruses over the course of this and next year in order to assist in determining the density and breadth of the biodiversity in one of the most studied and important inland wetlands in the state of Maine. This data will be collated with existing datasets and kept on record at the Land Trust’s office as part of the ongoing effort to understand and protect Penjajawoc Marsh for future generations of inhabitants of Maine, both non-human and human.

LISTENING AS LAND CONSERVATION (2023–2024)

The ISP is partnering with Maine’s largest land conservation organization, Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT), to help to expand their understanding of the sonic nature and richness of their land holdings, and to then communicate these to their visiting public and to other land conservation organizations. To accomplish this, we are regarding and engaging MCHT’s soundscape riches as community, educational, aesthetic and artistic resources to be documented and worked with.

A CRANBERRY ISLES SOUNDSCAPE (2022–2023)

Undertaken with the support and encouragement of the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society, a Cranberry Isles Soundscape was composed from audio materials gathered, during 2022, on each of the five islands which make up Maine’s Cranberry Isles township. This four-channel sound piece was installed in the Historical Society’s museum and heard every day during their 2023 season.

TWO RUMFORDS (2020)

Commissioned in 2020 as part of the Architectural League of New York’s American Roundtable project, Two Rumfords is a soundscape composition juxtaposing two distinct yet important sonic environments available in the region known as River Valley along the Androscoggin River in Maine. The piece is evocative of the tensions of modern, industrial life in an area of mountains, lakes and streams.