Listening to Parks

August 2016. National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks Grant. Michigan Technological University

US Army 2nd Lieutenant Erik Doering and I were contracted by Christopher Plummer, one of the principal figures of the grant, to spend a week recording on Isle Royale National Park & on the Apostle Islands National Shoreline for their grant.  Recordings were predominantly long-form stereo and ambisonics. Each location offered particular challenges in recording. 

2022 Update: Recordings from this project were featured in the American Pavilion at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27).

For More Information about the Grant Project, Click Here

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore are comprised of shoreline in Northern Wisconsin as well as a series of islands in Lake Superior. We loaded all of our equipment into two sea kayaks and kayaked along Lake Superior to three different locations.

A major goal of this location was to record sea caves.  To accomplish this, we waded into the caves when it was shallow, recorded from our kayaks themselves and, whenever possible, placed recorders on naturally occuring shelves within the caves.

Photo Credits: Erik Doering

Isle Royale National Park

Isle Royale is a ~900 square-mile island located in Lake Superior that is only accessible by boat and seaplane. Laden down with 50lb packs, we backpacked about 30 miles over the course of three days to get to our recording locations. In addition to the usual backpacking gear, we carried 7 recorders and a DSLR with GPS-tagging.

Photo Credits: Erik Doering