Message In A Bottle Daegan Sheehan Final Project Ocean & Music UCSC Summer 2025

Daegan Sheehan
Final Project 
Ocean & Music
UCSC Summer 2025

	`			                        Message In A Bottle 
 
        My sound composition was designed as an homage to the remarkable, instinctive intelligence of whales, specifically their ability to communicate across vast distances using the SOFAR (Sound Fixing and Ranging) Channel. My creative journey began with a "sound memory" from a Science@NASA video that explained this unique oceanic feature. This short clip helped me visualize the SOFAR Channel as a sonic-wave guide, a hidden underwater highway for sound. This single concept became the foundation for the entire project.    
       The work helped me to imagine a project not just about sound, but about the very structure of sound within the ocean. I envisioned a deep-oceanic environment where the transmissions of large whales travel along this channel, while the "dialects" of other, smaller whale species pierce through the water layers above. This layered, ever-evolving acoustic orchestra became the core emotion and thematic message I wanted to convey. The composition is a sonic expression of the ocean's acoustic complexity and the profound, silent intelligence of its inhabitants.
       The artistic and technical process for my composition, “Message in a Bottle,” was a journey of layering and contrast. I gathered the core sounds from the Internet Archive, choosing specific whale songs from species like the humpback, beluga, and North Atlantic right whale. This choice was deliberate: by using the sounds of species negatively impacted by human activity, I was able to convey the thematic message of pollution's threat.
        I balanced these organic whale sounds with musical elements, including an electric guitar loop, a shimmery sound design, and soft Rhodes and saxophone notes. The juxtaposition of the natural whale transmissions with these human-created instrumental textures was my primary editing technique. This contrast was intended to represent the clash between the ocean’s natural acoustic world and the disruptive sounds of vessels and human activity. The most interesting aspect of using only listening as a medium was its power to create an immersive, non-visual world. The aural-only experience forced me to focus on the relationships between sounds, allowing the listener to feel the depth and emotion of the ocean without the aid of visuals.

Sources
Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/whale-songs-whale-sound-effects)
"What is a SOFAR Channel" (YouTube video) by Science@NASA


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Daegan Sheehan

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