Sonic Cetacean Art
BY DAVID ROTHENBERG
Whales and dolphins live in a rich acous-
tic world that is often inaccessible to us
because it’s underwater in an ocean under
aural siege, and sometimes far beyond the
range of human hearing. They can be ex-
perienced in a di=erent form through the
work of Mark Fischer, who makes digital
artworks out of whale sounds. An engi-
neer who previously worked for defense
and communications companies, Fischer
turns these sounds into images using a
technical process called wavelet analysis,
which is the same kind of magic that com-
presses your photos for e-mailing as JPEG
files. The parameters of this mathemati-
cal process can be adjusted for greater
simplicity or more wild beauty—Fischer
has chosen the latter course to bring us
pictures of amazingly complex symme-
try. In this sense his images are related
to the pictures of sound called cymatics,
a term coined by Swiss physician Hans
Jenny to describe the visible depiction of
sound in matter. These artists/scientists
have produced more than just scientific il-
lustrations; they are turning mathematical
techniques into tools for art.
White-beaked dolphin
False killer whale
Tool HarvesT
What if tools grew in your garden? The Growth assembly project imagines just such a possibility. Designers alexandra Daisy
Ginsberg and sascha Pohflepp envision the integration of biology and industry to change our conception of how commodities are
produced. Their plants are intended to be living robots, engineered to grow product parts that can be harvested and assembled into
finished products, replacing mechanical mass production with the diversity and softness of natural growth. Illustrations created in
collaboration with sion ap Tomos depict the process of making an herbicide sprayer —a tool, Ginsberg and Pohflepp contend, that
will be essential to protecting “delicate engineered horticultural machines from older nature.”
