"The inner sounds of objects and substances picked up with contact mics or hydrophones never cease to amaze. For Inner Out, Italian sound designer and artist Nicola Giannini uses contact mics frozen in ice, and performs a concert on them by playing the ice. Using different objects and techniques, such as grinding, tapping, hitting the ice, or pouring hot water, he creates the source material which he processes with live electronics to create a surround concert."
"Silencing of the Reefs is a long-term (started in August 2011) project by sound artist Jana Winderen, supported by TBA21. Jana Winderen listens into the lively, diverse and dynamic, though threatened acoustic environments of coral reefs and their neighbouring ecosystems. By using the latest technology in terms of recording equipment and hydrophones, she is able to get the best-quality recordings possible."
"Jana Winderen is an artist, widely known for her recordings that reveal sounds from hidden sources - oceans, ice crevasses, glaciers - using a variety of technology, from high quality hydrophones to ultrasound detectors. Her work is published on Touch Music (same as Chris Watson) and her biography boasts of a long and impressive list of art installations."
"The table is made of steel rods and filled it with beach rocks, then it was lowered into the ocean near Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, where over the course of two months it accumulated living accretions from the ocean. Atop the table is an oversize sound-amplifying funnel reminiscent of the hailing horns used on whaling ships, which is constructed of laser-cut panels of polycarbonate lashed together with nylon zip ties. The horn amplifies and concentrates a sound recording made by a hydrophone close to where the table was submerged."
"In May 2019, Kathy Hinde invited people to join her on a 'Deep Listening Walk' to focus on the hidden sounds of Europe's largest blanket bog in The Flow Country in the far north of Scotland. Using specialist listening devices such as hydrophones, she made audible the sonic qualities of peat gently moving, and tuned in to the minuscule sounds emitted by small organisms living within this rich and biodiverse ecosystem. Blanket bog is a very special ecosystem, and the idea of 'Deep Listening' in this context was to listen into the peat at different depths, and to think about listening 'back in time' as these deep layers of peat have taken centuries to form, preserving organisms within its layers. What is it like to listen to these layers and different depths that hold deep time?"
"You can look across a vast expanse of ice, all white and blue and cold, and see nothing. The lead is choked with pack ice or sealed over with newly formed ice, and there is no movement or sound. With few birds, no whales and no bears, one might mistake the Arctic for a desert. But if you go down to the ice edge, pick a hole in the new ice deep enough to reach water and drop in a hydrophone (an underwater microphone), the cacophony is astonishing. "
"Some of the most challenging, rewarding, and fun sounds to record are those within the vast spectrum of fluids. Wet, sticky, viscous, mushy; the tactful use of fluid sounds can reinforce the realism and impact of a scene, or just be the punchline of a joke. In order to effectively communicate an idea to an audience, there are a few challenges in recording fluids to consider before dipping your toes in. While most of these considerations are technical in application, they all serve to realize an idea and bolster the narrative. For live-action projects, capturing the complexity of fluid sounds on location can often range from impractical to impossible, which is where foley steps in."