Field Recordings von Andreas Bick

this is one of my favourite field recordings, pure magic: I made this unedited recording on a canoe ride down the river cano negro in Costa Rica, passing through the mangroves with howler monkeys giving their calls that are reflected by the water surface. on the other side of the river spider monkeys climb through the trees and the Oropendola bird is singing his song. later a caiman jumps into the water. 

cano negro canoe ride

I made this sound recording of a frozen lake in the winter of 2005/06 in the area around Berlin. Frozen lakes are known to give off most noise during major fluctuations in temperature: the ice expands or contracts, and the resulting tension in the ice causes cracks to appear. Due to the changes in temperature, the hours of morning and evening are usually the best times to hear these sounds. In my experience, thin ice is especially interesting for acoustic phenomena; it is more elastic and sounds are propagated better across the surface. Snowfall, on the other hand, has a muffling effect and the sound can only travel to a limited extent. The ice sheet acts as a huge membrane across which the cracking and popping sounds spread. Underwater microphones proved especially well-suited for these recordings: in a small hole drilled close beneath the surface of the water, the sounds emitted by the body of ice carry particularly well. The most striking thing about these recordings is the synthetic-sounding descending tones caused by the phenomenon of the dispersion of sound waves. The high frequencies of the popping and cracking noises are transmitted faster by the ice than the deeper frequencies, which reach the listener with a time lag as glissandi sinking to almost bottomless depths.

Dispersion in Ice Sheet

Composer, sound artist, field recordist. Soundtracks, radio play and podcast music, radioart.